Christopher S Martin

Scholars of classical economics have largely rejected the popular view of Adam Smith as an apologist for big business indifferent to the plight of the poor. To test and ultimately vindicate this consensus, I attempt to tabulate all mentions of the poor in Smith?s pub-lished works in which their well-being is under discussion. For each such appearance I assess his attitude toward such well-being, as well as where his sympathies lie should there be a conflict between the poor on one side and the rich and powerful on the other. The textual search strongly supports the idea that Smith was indeed partial to workers and the poor, although this judgment requires that the reader enter into Smith?s patterns of thought about property rights, economic growth, and the system of natural liberty. ? 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Scholars of classical economics have largely rejected the popular view of Adam Smith as an apologist for big business indifferent to the plight of the poor. To test and ultimately vindicate this consensus, I attempt to tabulate all mentions of the poor in Smith?s published works in which their well-being is under discussion. For each such appearance I assess his attitude toward such well-being, as well as where his sympathies lie should there be a conflict between the poor on one side and the rich and powerful on the other. The textual search strongly supports the idea that Smith was indeed partial to workers and the poor, although this judgment requires that the reader enter into Smith?s patterns of thought about property rights, economic growth, and the system of natural liberty. In this essay I argue that Adam Smith?s policy stances are largely consistent with a preference for the well-being of the least well-off in society. Specifically, I attempt to validate a claim about Smith made by Carl Menger in the nineteenth century. The claim is noted both in Emma Rothschild?s well-known article ?Adam Smith and Conservative Economics? (1992) and in a recent excellent translation of Menger by Dekker and Kolev (Menger 1891/2016). In his essay on ?The Social Theories of Classical Political Economy and Modern Economic Policy? Menger claimed: In every conflict of interest between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, Smith sides without exception with the latter. I use the term ?without exception? with proper consideration, as one cannot find one single instance in the works of Smith in which he represents the interests of the rich and powerful against the poor and weak. ( Menger 2016 , 475; see also Rothschild, 1992 , 89). While dramatic, this claim was perhaps more shocking when Menger wrote it than it is today. The view of Adam Smith

This paper examines Hayek's constitutional theory of the liberal state. Hayek argued powerfully that no central planner has sufficient knowledge to run an economy, and that no one has sufficient knowledge to determine ends for others. Pushed to their logical conclusion, these arguments would seem to prescribe the smallest possible state in both scope and size, or perhaps even no state at all. Elsewhere in his writings, however, Hayek explicitly endorsed government activity that goes far beyond a “night watchman” state (to include public works such as infrastructure, roads and bridge, as well as social insurance, conscription, a minimum safety net, and even countercyclical investment)—as long as state action was carefully constrained by a generality principle. After thoroughly setting forth Hayek's worries about knowledge and his proposals for acceptable station action, the paper synthesizes the two into a Hayekian constitutional theory of the liberal state, then closes with a brief discussion of some tensions in Hayek's work.

What are the limits of collective action? As James Buchanan famously worried, is it possible to empower the productive state without lapsing into the predatory state? This paper uses insights from F.A. Hayek to address problems of public goods and the role of the state. Hayek convincingly argued that no central planner has sufficient knowledge to run an economy. Yet Hayek also allowed for state provision of some goods beyond the prevention of coercion. The question, then, is whether Hayek’s safeguards offer a satisfactory response to Buchanan’s worry. This paper contends that Hayek violated his own conditions for permissible government activity. Nevertheless, he offers a serious research agenda for limiting state abuses.

Generations of readers have nodded in agreement with Adam Smith’s argument, in Book One of the Wealth of Nations, that a nation cannot be happy if the workers who constitute the majority of its population are miserable. Smith notes that equity, besides, demands that workers receive a generous recompense for their labor. I contend that this famous statement is best interpreted in light of contemporary arguments that it was socially useful for workers to be poor. Smith’s engagement with these arguments is usually interpreted with reference to the labor supply function, but I argue that it also involved deeper suppositions about the place of workers in the social order. Smith’s reaction to these suppositions enriches our understanding of his contribution to liberal economics.