Political Economy; Behavioral Economics; Traditional Economics > Likes and Comments

This thread is a continuation of posts numbers 3-6 in the Ethical Philosophy of Socrates and Plato topic.

December 14, 2024 Note:

I have just now changed the title of the present topic from "Government and Economy; Property Rights" to "Political Economy" (which includes all the subjects of the previous title).

Randal, your reviews are extraordinary. I must admit that I have a math phobia, which is why I never went very far in the study of economics. But I will have to read the books you reviewed. My wife (Mimi) is currently reading Polanyi's book and may comment further (she is a member of this group). I will have additional comments in a few minutes.

I reviewed Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression here. I tried to read Ludwig von Mises's Human Action decades ago, but I never got more than about fifty pages into it. Likewise, Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty has been on my shelf, substantially unread, for a very long time. Although I am currently preoccupied with finishing my book on Roger Williams, I will read the books mentioned in Randal's reviews after I have published the book.

Alan,

Thanks so much for your kind words. Modern Political Economics is a big book and quite expensive, even for the paperback. And not much stocked in libraries in the US, I would imagine. The Global Minotaur is much more of a popular book and much more accessible to someone with a general understanding of political affairs. There is a second edition out in paperback from Zed Books. It is more an analysis of the last 60 years of world history than a detailed math analysis. Varoufakis is currently a fellow at a UT Austin think tank headed by Galbreathh's son Jamie. The German-imposed Greek austerity shut down his exciting program of economic theory at the University of Athens.

I have both the Rothbard and Hayek books you mentioned sitting on my shelves. I find Rothbard mostly mad and Hayek incredibly boring, but Hayek is certainly the more important thinker. Rothbard's monetary theories came from von Mises and Hayek. I consider Rothbard a hack.

Mimi will enjoy Polanyi, I hope. He was one of those courageous (Jewish) Hungarians who was hounded out of Europe in the thirties and eventually commuted to Columbia (from Canada) to teach. He was a prominent critic of von Mises in the twenties. A friend of mine took a class in economic history from him there. His critique of laissez-faire is the classic one.

Regards,

Randal

Thanks, Randal. I buy Kindle e-books whenever they are available (I can easily highlight and annotate on my Kindle Fire or on my desktop Kindle app), and Kindle editions are usually less expensive than the paper books. There are reasonably priced Kindle editions of each of these books. I've found that some academic publishers are quite expensive. The worst are Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press, which often do not have Kindle editions and frequently charge more than $50 for a particular book. Since I've been reading a lot of books on English history (Stuart and Interregnum periods) the last year or two for my Roger Williams project, I've had to spend a great deal of money for books from these academic publishers. Even some American professors publish with OUP or CUP, and some of the books sold by American academic presses are likewise expensive, even in the Kindle editions. But, hey, I worked a very long time to be able to afford such luxuries, which, in my case, are necessities.

Rothbard's book on the Great Depression is not as crazy as some of his other books. As I said in my review, I think he is probably about half right: the Republican presidential administrations during the 1920s did deliberately inflate the money supply to create an artificial boom to benefit their big business allies. The 1929 crash was the inevitable consequence. Rothbard's books on anarchocapitalism are, admittedly, bizarre. As I noted in my review of Goldstein's book, Rothbard's whole notion is contrary to historical experience, past and present. All one has to do is look at what's happening in parts of the Middle East and Africa right now. Weak (or nonexistent) central governments are not the way to go. Hobbes was right after all--or, more precisely, up to a point. When the government becomes the criminal, then there is a problem, as Locke noted. But to Rothbard's mind, all governments are criminal gangs. Yes, Rothbard is an Austrian, but he went considerably beyond Mises and Hayek. Hayek even supported national health insurance, which would probably be a surprise to today's Austrian epigones. I think that Hayek was mainly concerned to refute the ideas that central economic planning and government ownership of industry (big issues in England and Europe at the time) could solve all problems. He won that battle, eventually. But the pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction. Hayek might end up on the progressive side of things if he were alive today and could see how big corporations are destroying the environment, impoverishing the middle class, etc. We watched the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" over the weekend. While watching it, I thought, "This must be some sort of caricature of Wall Street and cannot possibly be true." Then, after checking it out on Wikipedia, I found that it was based on a true story--indeed on a book written by the perp himself! It's the Roaring Twenties all over again--this time with a vengeance!

Alan wrote: "Hobbes was right after all--or, more precisely, up to a point. When the government becomes the criminal, then there is a problem, as Locke noted...."

Alan,

I am prone to say that Locke was "the confused man's Hobbes." I love Hobbes. I once sat down with a copy of The Leviathan in the Reading Room of the British Museum. The librarians went back into the stacks and brought me out a seventeenth century edition. They didn't bring tea and cakes, but I felt Royally served. Among many other things, Hobbes wrote the "objections" to Descartes's Meditations. A very worthy effort. I am certainly no Monarchist and more Sceptic than Materialist, but Hobbes's lively style and ruthless wit I very much admire.

I usually see Locke as a shill for the gentry. That is, of course, too simplistic. I guess I just think that Hobbes was on firmer ground limiting his "natural rights" to "Life" and leaving "Liberty and Estate" to the political process. Or, as C.B. Macpherson put it, "Locke read back into the state of nature, in generalized form, the assumptions he made about differential rights and rationality in existing societies. The generalized assumptions could not but modify in his own mind the initial postulates of the Treatise. But they did not not displace them. We can now see that Locke entertained both at the same time, so that the postulates on which he was operating were confused and ambiguous (The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, p 238.") But, clearly, I have a lot to learn!

Regards,

Randal

Randal, you and I probably disagree to an extent about Hobbes and Locke. I recently reread Hobbes's Leviathan and was not impressed with most of his arguments. Of course, like everyone else in the seventeenth century, he had to argue, at least in part, from the Bible, and his theological arguments were risible. (I have no doubt that Hobbes was actually an atheist, but I don't hold that against him.) Hobbes was correct on the first step: that government is necessary to preserve peace (preventing the war of all against all). But, apparently unlike the Straussians and others (I have not read Macpherson, whose book Strauss reviewed somewhere), I think that Locke added some very important qualifications and principles to Hobbes's political philosophy. And, of course, the American Founders followed Locke rather than Hobbes. Jefferson quoted virtually verbatim from the Second Treatise of Government in the Declaration of Independence.

Yes, Locke was employed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Locke probably drafted part or all of what came down to us as the Two Treatises of Government before Shaftesbury's exile to Holland in 1682 and the latter's death in Holland in 1683. And yes, Locke retained connections with the Whig gentry opposed to Charles II and James II up to the point Locke anonymously published the Two Treatises in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But I think that the Two Treatises transcended the political circumstances (the exclusion crisis involving the succession) during which they were composed, as evidenced by the fact that they were a major source of political theory for all of the leading American Founders. If Hobbes rather than Locke had been the tutelary guardian of American history and constitutional law, there would hardly have been anything left to protect us from arbitrary power: no Bill of Rights, no Fourteenth Amendment, no tradition of judicial review. Leaving issues of liberty and estate (property) to political determination would have had profound and undesirable consequences.

I have known Professor Richard L. Wilson, a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, since high school (we were debaters together, though he is a couple of years older than I) and college (we both attended the University of Chicago). Rick loves teaching so much that he refuses to retire, and he is now involved in a new form of teaching called the "flipped" classroom, which he describes as follows: "Short 15 minute or less lecture summaries are taped and posted on You Tube. They are tested by quizzes for each class period to encourage students to watch them. This frees class time for more discussion and Q&A. It also provides a study guide for exams." He is in the process of preparing such YouTube "lecture summaries" on political theory, and they can be located at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WGD.... They are basic (most of his students have little or no previous background in this field), but I have found the videos quite interesting. He has distilled a lifetime of study of political theory into these videos. He has prepared additional videos on this subject, but his technical people have not yet posted them online. They should be online soon. Although the videos are not addressed to graduate students or scholars, I think they do set forth important principles of political theory and of American government. His video on Locke will be online soon.

I recently read Jeffrey R. Collins's The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (London: Oxford University Press, 2005). This book attempts to place Hobbes in his historical context and interprets his writings accordingly. Although I don't agree with all of Collins's interpretations, the book is generally interesting.

In college, I read an original seventeenth-century edition of Sir Robert Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist in the University of Chicago rare books reading room and wrote a paper about it. Early English Books Online (EEBO) (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home) has facsimile reproductions of many seventeenth-century English and American works. You might find this of interest. The collection is not generally available to the public, but you can check to see whether your alumni association participates. Mine does not, but I am able to access it through my membership in the Renaissance Society of America (http://www.rsa.org).

August 11, 2022 Note::

The foregoing comment makes reference to my longtime friend Richard L. Wilson. Unfortunately, Rick passed away in 2021 as a result of multiple medical problems.

Regarding Hobbes and Locke: See the threads in this group on Hobbes (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...) and Locke (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...).

Alan wrote: " If Hobbes rather than Locke had been the tutelary guardian of American history and constitutional law, there would hardly have been anything left to protect us from arbitrary power: no Bill of Rights, no Fourteenth Amendment, no tradition of judicial review. ..."

Alan,

We certainly would have taken a different course! I don't think Hobbes would have been a good guide for making a constitution. A certain lack of acid reason is required for this task. But maybe we should have used Plato instead of Locke! Or Cicero?

I said I had a lot to learn.

Thanks for the links.

Randal

Randal wrote: "But maybe we should have used Plato instead of Locke! Or Cicero?"

Some of the remarks below about the U.S. constitutional system might be unnecessary for many Americans, but we have several group members from other countries for whom such background may be helpful.

The title of my 1971 master's essay was "The Teaching of Plato's Seventh Letter. I haven't (and won't) publish that paper in its original form, because parts of it are dated and I now have a somewhat different understanding of these matters than I did in my twenties. Perhaps I'll publish a revised version of that essay someday. From a series of posts in another group, I know that Randal is intimately familiar with Plato's Seventh Letter, and I accordingly will not summarize the details of that public letter's contents here (other readers can consult this writing themselves, if they are interested). In the Seventh Letter and in some of his dialogues, Plato discussed what the ideal regime (politeia) would be as well as the second-best and other regimes. Suffice it to say that Plato taught that a requirement of a good regime is that the political leader(s) be wise—indeed, if at all possible, philosophic. Several of the U.S. Founders—most notably James Madison but also, to an extent, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and perhaps a few others—were wiser than most or all of our present-day politicians. None of them approved of Plato for a number of reasons, one of them being the appropriation (and distortion) of Plato by official religion, e.g., "Christian Platonism" (see especially, in this connection, the correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams on this subject). In any event, Plato's political concepts are inadequate for a large political society such as the United States (Plato knew only Greek city states and "barbarian" empires). Additionally, none of the ancient philosophers really had any clear notion of individual rights, though the Athenian polis (city-state) touted its freedom of speech during the Age of Pericles (see Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War). Madison—and, to a lesser extent, Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton—had the genius to construct a political order that combined individual rights and some form of democracy with a large territory. The masterpiece of this analysis was Madison's Federalist No. 10; it is arguable, albeit controversial, that this essay borrowed an important idea from David Hume in the latter's "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" (first published in 1754 and an essay that Madison had certainly read before he wrote Federalist No. 10). One other component of Madison's political solution was the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution), which he shepherded through the first Congress in 1789. Of course, Madison initially opposed any bill of rights for a number of reasons. The Antifederalists (those who opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution) and Jefferson (who was an American diplomat in France at the time) convinced him otherwise. The foregoing is a very brief summary of a very long story (including many other events and considerations) that has been detailed by countless historians and political scientists. My conclusion from an extensive reading of this history is that Madison and Company had it basically right except for one troublesome item: slavery. The latter was resolved, in principle, by the American Civil War (1861-65), the presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1861-65), and the ratification of the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1860) Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In reality, the legacy of slavery persisted, in one form or another, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and its successors) and beyond. This too is a very long story, which I cannot detail here. But the U.S. has made substantial, albeit unduly slow, progress in dealing with its "original sin."

So, Plato's political theory could not be applied to the complicated circumstances that the U.S. found itself in during the years after independence. A fortiori (one of my favorite terms of legal jargon from my former career as a lawyer), Plato's political theory cannot be applied, simply, today. However, Plato's great insight that political leaders should be knowledgeable, rational, and wise is always relevant. Unfortunately, that desideratum is seldom realized in historical practice, as Plato recognized would be the case.

I have not looked at Cicero since college, so I cannot comment about him at this time. My vague recollection is that he had a kind of Romanized version of Plato's political theory. However this may be, his historical circumstances were decidedly different from ours, and I doubt that his political philosophy would be transferable to today's political societies.

August 12, 2022 Note: Contrary to my second paragraph above, I did later publish my 1971 Master’s Essay in its original form at https://www.academia.edu/22999496/The....

Alan wrote: " The masterpiece of this analysis was Madison's Federalist No. 10..."

Alan,

Thanks for your extended post. As it happens, I had just the other day read Madison's Number 10. I agree with his suspicions about direct democracy (as did Plato, for that matter.) I was reading from the Library of America volume of Madison's writings as a supplement to my reading of Garry Wills's short book on Madison (See my review here.) Wills shares the general respect for Madison's constitutional expertise, but brings out the elements of his post-Federalist life that caused Washington to conclude that Madison was "duplicitous and dishonorable" (Wills's quotation.)

But, actually, my concerns expressed about Locke above were not about his constitutional theories, but about his basing those theories on his belief in a Natural Right to Property. This, as I understand it, was based on an expropriation theory of labour: "His labour hath taken it out of the hands of Nature, where it was common, and belong'd equally to all her Children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself." He says later in the Second Treatise that "Man being born, as has been proved, with a Title to perfect Freedom, and the uncontrouled enjoyment of all the Rights and Privileges of the Law of Nature, equally with any other Man, or Number of Men in the World, hath by Nature a Power, not only to preserve his Property, that is his Life, Liberty, and Estate . . . but to judge of and punish the breaches of that Law in others . . . "

Hobbes left property out of his theory of natural right, because he saw (wisely, I think) that this appropriation always involves violence, which leads to no good. Likewise did Jefferson leave property out of the Declaration of Independence. And it appears just twice in the Bill of Rights, in the Seventh Ammendment, not as a natural right, but as a right granted explicitly by law.

I wouldn't go as far as Bentham, who declared all natural rights "nonsense upon stilts," but I think that a more modest defense of rights needs to be made than the one Locke gives. I have reviewed what I call Amartya Sen's "Sceptical Defense of Rights" here.

The most egregious right to property in the American colonies, of course, you have referred to as our "original sin." I rather think of slavery as our basic contradiction. As a practical matter, property ownership seems to me to always to be a matter solved by politics; that is, power. Lots of thinkers and actual societies have rejected private property rights to land. For example, Leon Walras, a founder of the marginalist school of economics that still dominates the field, thought that all land should be owned by the State, which would gather rent, in lieu of taxes, to finance its activities. There are lots more actual historical examples. Were these all contrary to "Natural Right?"

That is probably enough said about this here.

Regards,

Randal

I have not read either Garry Wills's or Lynne Cheney's books on Madison. I have, however, read Henry Adams's works on the Jefferson and Madison administrations as well as several other books by historians on Jefferson and Madison as well as on Washington, John Adams, and other Founders. I do not know the specific context of Wills's quotation from Washington (and cannot find it in the Library of America edition of Washington's writings), but it was obviously after the split, during the Washington administration, between the Federalists (led by Hamilton with Washington eventually coming into tow) and the Democratic-Republicans (led by Jefferson and Madison). The term "Federalist" in this historical context has, of course, a different meaning from the term "Federalist" in the 1787-88 debates over the ratification of the Constitution. Madison was a "Federalist" in the constitutional debates but opposed to the emerging Federalist party under Hamilton during Washington's administration. I will not discuss here Madison's presidency or his specific actions in the House of Representatives other than his support for the Bill of Rights. Each of these issues would require a separate extended discussion, which is beyond the scope of my present focus, except that I do note that Madison's opposition to Hamilton's economic program has many similarities to the current progressive issues with Wall Street. I do observe, however, that Washington and the Federalists never favored the First Amendment or, initially at least, the Bill of Rights. The Federalists' true colors were shown in their passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), which resulted in the criminal prosecution of Democratic-Republican editors. Washington was by then retired, but he strongly opposed "these self created societies" (George Washington to Edmund Randolph, October 16, 1794), by which he meant the emerging Democratic-Republican political organizations. The First Amendment rights that we currently take for granted (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, etc.) were beyond the ken of the Federalist Party partisans but were essential to the political understandings of Jefferson and Madison (though Jefferson himself may later have backslid on these issues, as he did on slavery). The Federalists were also not very keen on the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, especially Federalist supporters of New England theocracy (which did not die in Massachusetts until 1833). In contrast, Jefferson and Madison were strong supporters of these First Amendment principles, and they (with the help of some dissenting religious sects) were able to achieve the disestablishment of religion in Virginia even before the adoption of the Constitution. Of course the First Amendment was not generally considered to apply to state governments until long after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. That is another subject of extensive scholarly debate, with some conservative scholars and Justice Clarence Thomas arguing, heretically, that the Establishment Clause does not apply to state and local governments.

Locke's specific theory of property has, of course, long been a subject of philosophical and historical debate. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans used it to justify their appropriation of Indian lands. One of the reasons the Massachusetts Bay government banished Roger Williams in 1635-36 was Williams's support of the Indians' rights in opposition to the Lockean theory. I will discuss this in depth in my forthcoming book on Williams.

The question whether property rights are natural as distinguished from positive is an interesting issue on which I have not yet reached a firm conclusion. Jefferson apparently did not think so. Madison's position is unclear, though he did support the Contracts Clause in Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the original Constitution in opposition to the arbitrary legislative actions of various state governments during the Articles of Confederation period. Still, a constitutional right is not necessarily a natural right. The whole Southern notion of property rights in slaves contradicts all rational theories of property. Here, Ayn Rand and the libertarians are helpful in their position that no one can have a property right in another person.

As a constitutional lawyer, I litigated hundreds of cases involving the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clauses and the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause. The Fifth Amendment provides in pertinent part that "[n]o person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law [the Due Process Clause]; nor shall property be taken for public use, without just compensation [the Takings or Just Compensation Clause]." These provisions applied originally only to the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) provided in pertinent part: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . ." Although the Fourteenth Amendment did not mention any takings or eminent domain issue, the Supreme Court later held that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated and applied to the states the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause.

I litigated only one case, in the Ohio Supreme Court, regarding the life interest identified in the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. That, of course, was a criminal case involving capital punishment; a team of lawyers, including myself, was successful in saving a convicted murderer-rapist from execution. A dubious victory, but, to a lawyer, a victory nonetheless. In that particular case, the prosecutor prejudiced the jury in the sentencing phase of the trial by showing them repeatedly slides of the victim's naked, strangled body. So it was a victory for constitutional law more than a victory for that particular criminal defendant.

I have litigated many, many civil cases involving the property and liberty interests of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause as well as the Takings Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. A very long and complicated constitutional jurisprudence has balanced property rights against governmental interests in taxation and economic regulation. On the whole, I think the federal courts have struck a somewhat acceptable compromise on the property rights issue, though the Supreme Court has probably erred too much on the side of property rights and big corporations in recent decades.

The liberty interest identified in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments normally (but not exclusively) involves police pretrial arrest and incarceration of criminal suspects; there are interrelationships here with the Fourth Amendment. This is where I have my big issue with Hobbes, who recognized no right to liberty but only a right to life. Hobbes was the protégé of Francis Bacon, who supported, in theory and in practice (in high governmental positions under James I), absolute monarchy. Roger Williams, in contrast, was the protégé (for a time a law clerk) of Sir Edward Coke, the great theorist and defender of common law rights of individuals and parliamentary institutions against Stuart absolutism. Bacon and Coke engaged in a long mortal combat, with each attempting to have the other imprisoned (and even executed). Bacon secured the imprisonment of Coke as punishment for Coke's expression of constitutional views. Coke later helped obtain the imprisonment of Bacon for bribery. I address Coke's influence on Williams (which did not extend to Williams's theological views) at some length in my forthcoming book.

Randal, thank you for your thoughts and for your links, which I will read later. I have an appointment this morning, for which I must now, mercifully for the readers, terminate my post.

Alan,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments on constitutional issues. As a sewage treatment engineer, I would be a fool to argue with your conclusions.

My use of the term "post-Federalist" regarding Madison was intended in exactly the sense that you describe. Madison was an associate and fellow with Hamilton during the period leading up to the Constitutional Convention and, of course, an opponent with Jefferson after the mid-1790s.

I was able to plough through all of Henry Adams's wonderful book on the Jefferson administration, but I only got as far as Tippecanoe in the Madison volume; a frightful tale of ego-grasping, fool-hardiness, and deceit by Harrison and honorable bravery by Tecumthe and his warriors. More of this I couldn't abide. Not that I hold Adams at fault, quite the opposite, for he gives a well-researched and honest story of this "war fever." Just that it is such a common story in our American history, that another example of it was not something that I needed at the time.

In any case, I look forward to your book on Roger Williams, a figure who had been unknown to me.

Regards,

Randal

Thanks, Randal. I read the Henry Adams histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations over a decade ago. They were well done, though there are other good histories of this period as well. I have always said that Jefferson and Madison were better Founders than they were presidents, but they were not dealt a particularly good hand (then, again, that is the common fate of virtually every president). What is most interesting is to read the correspondence and writings of these Founders and their contemporaries--Ben Franklin, John Adams, and others. These men--whatever their faults (and they certainly had some)--were brilliant thinkers and eloquent writers. Reading the correspondence between Jefferson and Madison is an especially enlightening experience. My book on Roger Williams will discuss in some detail the eventually successful efforts of Jefferson and Madison to disestablish the Episcopal Church in Virginia. There is an interesting back story there on how Roger Williams, who lived a century earlier, might have had an indirect hand in that development as well as in the adoption of the First Amendment later. Best, Alan

Alan wrote: "I litigated only one case, in the Ohio Supreme Court, regarding the life interest identified in the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. That, of course, was a criminal case involving capital punishment; a team of lawyers, including myself, was successful in saving a convicted murderer-rapist from execution. A dubious victory, but, to a lawyer, a victory nonetheless...."

Alan,

I have been opposed to capital punishment since reading Camus's Reflections on the Guillotine as a freshman in college. My only first-hand experience has been attending argument in the penalty phase of a man convicted in a well-publicized murder in the County Courthouse in Seattle. A lawyer friend of mine was good friends with the attorney hired for the penalty phase argument. Like you, he won his case, and the defendant received a punishment of life without parole. Hobbes would have agreed. Government has no right to kill its own citizens. That would go against its very reason for existence. Lawyering can be a very noble profession. Congratulations on your right livelihood. My sewage treatment studies rarely make it onto the front page of the local, much less national, newspapers and lives are not directly at stake in the outcome!

Our Governor, who is a neighbor of ours on Bainbridge Island, some time ago declared that there would be no executions in our State on his watch. I voted for him for Congress and for Governor and would do so again, especially for this brave act.

Randal

Alan wrote: "Thanks, Randal. I read the Henry Adams histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations over a decade ago. ... What is most interesting is to read the correspondence and writings of these Founders and their contemporaries--Ben Franklin, John Adams, and others. . . . "

Alan,

I have copies of the selected writings of Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton on my shelves, which I have dipped into, mostly for reference. Certainly thoughtful and well intentioned men, if not without blind spots and contradictions to which all men (and maybe even some women) are prone.

R

Randal wrote: "Certainly thoughtful and well intentioned men, if not without blind spots and contradictions to which all men (and maybe even some women) are prone."

Exactly.

Randal wrote: "My sewage treatment studies rarely make it onto the front page of the local, much less national, newspapers and lives are not at stake in the outcome!"

Well, without engineers we would be living in the Stone Age! See Ayn Rand's Anthem, which does not contain the political propaganda of Atlas Shrugged and other of her writings. Hobbes is, indeed, strange in recognizing only the right to life and not the right to liberty: the sovereign may imprison anyone without law and due process, but he/she may not utilize capital punishment. Conscription is also problematic for Hobbes for the same reason (if I recall correctly). My opposition to capital punishment is mainly due to the imperfections of the judicial system (of which I saw many, many examples during my legal career of more than three decades). Someone who consciously and deliberately takes the life of another, assuming a modicum of intelligence, perhaps has forfeited a right to exist, but I don't trust juries and judges to adjudicate this properly and in a manner that is racially and socio-economically consistent. Rich white people often get away with murder, literally and figuratively. Not so, people outside the privileged group.

Randal wrote: "Our Governor, who is a neighbor of ours on Bainbridge Island, some time ago declared that there would be no executions in our State on his watch. I voted for him for Congress and for Governor and would do so again, especially for this brave act."

Ah, yes, the wonderful progressive cast of the Northwest (see American Nations by Colin Woodard)! We poor progressive souls (my wife and I, period) who live in Greater Appalachia (Pittsburgh, PA area) can only wonder what it would be like to live in an area where one does not have to keep one's month shut regarding politics and religion.

Alan wrote: "Locke's specific theory of property has, of course, long been a subject of philosophical and historical debate. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans used it to justify their appropriation of Indian lands. One of the reasons the Massachusetts Bay government banished Roger Williams in 1635-36 was Williams's support of the Indians' rights in opposition to the Lockean theory."

Clarification: Locke's Second Treatise, published in 1689, was, of course, decades after the dispute between Roger Williams and the Massachusetts Bay Puritans regarding Indian rights to land, but the arguments used by Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s were similar to Locke's famous theory (obviously not original with Locke). However, it has just occurred to me that Locke's property theory may actually have been directed against the large landowners in England, who neither used their lands (except for hunting) nor allowed commoners to hunt or farm on them. In England, land was dear and labor was cheap. In America, it was the reverse (at least if one disregards Native American rights to land). Perhaps Locke was a closet Digger instead of a protocapitalist. I will explore this hypothesis after I finish my current book. In the meantime, if anyone is aware that someone else has suggested this theory, please let me know.

Eureka! The following is an excerpt from a book I read earlier this year. I must have had this in the back of my mind when I composed the earlier posts on this subject. This discussion follows an account of how Native Americans on the New England coast were substantially eliminated by their lack of resistance to disease brought by Europeans. Note the implicit reference in the last sentence to the Diggers (mid-seventeenth-century English advocates of redistribution of land).

"The depopulation and generally weakened condition of the Indians provided powerful reinforcement for the legal justifications which colonial leaders employed to support their claims to, and occupation of, Indian land. They argued, to begin with, that they were obeying the Biblical injunction to 'be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it,' and the pronouncement that while the heavens are God's, 'the earth bath he given to the children of men.' Beyond that, and more specifically, they cited the doctrine, recently emergent in international law, of vacuum domicilium. As spelled out by [Massachusetts Bay Governor John] Winthrop in 1629, this doctrine distinguished between two categories of right to the earth, natural and civil: 'The first right was naturall when men held the earth in common, every man sowing and feeding where he pleased: Then, as men and cattell increased, they appropriated some parcells of ground by enclosing and peculiar [particular] manurance, and this in tyme got them a civil right.' While the second, civil stage of this evolutionary process might seem to apply equally to Indian and English agriculture, such was not the interpretation of the colonial spokesmen. 'The Indians,' declared Francis Higginson, 'are not able to make use of the one-fourth part of the land, neither have they any settled places, as towns to dwell in, nor any ground as they challenge for their own possession but change their habitation from place to place.' And Robert Cushman noted that 'their land is spacious and void, and there are few and [they] do but run over the grass, as do also the foxes and wild beasts. They are not industrious, neither have [they] art, science, skill or faculty to use either the land or the commodities of it, but all spoils, rots, and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, etc.' According to both Biblical and legal authority, those not 'using' the land were to make way for those who would: 'As the ancient patriarchs therefore removed from straiter places into more roomy, where the land lay idle, and none used it, though there dwelt inhabitants by them . . . so it is lawful now to take a land which none useth, and make use of it.' New England was full of idle land and idle people. As other Puritans would later argue with respect to wealthy English landholders during the Civil War, those who did not work the land had no right to withhold it from those who would."

Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), Kindle ed., Kindle loc. 1811-24 (endnote omitted).

Alan wrote: "Eureka! The following is an excerpt from a book I read earlier this year. I must have had this in the back of my mind when I composed the earlier posts on this subject."

In a treatise that has not survived, Roger Williams opposed this Puritan land acquisition theory, which has similarities to the later theory of property articulated by Locke in his Second Treatise of Government. This is one of the reasons that the Massachusetts Bay government banished Williams from the colony in 1635-36. I am currently writing the section of my book on Roger Williams that discusses these events. There is ample information about Williams's approach to this issue from the descriptions of his book by his opponents as well as from references in Williams's still extant later writings.

Alan wrote: "The whole Southern notion of property rights in slaves contradicts all rational theories of property. Here, Ayn Rand and the libertarians are helpful in their position that no one can have a property right in another person."

This was also evidently the position of Locke (Second Treatise, § 27 (Laslett ed.)): "Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself."

I don't have all the context that you two have, but I recently read some works by Frederic Basitat. He argued that property precedes law; that it is not created or defined by law but is as fundamental as man. Man has needs, those needs are fulfilled with work, and we only work if we are certain of receiving the fruit of our labor. Just thought it was an interesting line of reasoning.

I was a libertarian for almost three decades (approximately 1973 to 2001). Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Friedman, Rothbard, and others have very interesting—and intellectually seductive—ideas. However, it is my current belief that their ideas cannot be simply put into practice under present economic and social conditions without disastrous results. See my posts in the Objectivism and Libertarianism topic, including, especially, the link to my review of Goldstein's book on Plato. We see in our politics today the vulgarization of libertarian theory in the Tea Party and similar movements. (Surprise of surprises, Hayek actually favored national health insurance! He was not a Tea Party ideologue.) As I said in my review of Goldstein's book, impractical, theoretical ideologies used to be the preserve of the Left (e.g., Marxism, the New Left, etc.). Now they are the preserve of the Right. See also the review I posted today regarding Jill Lepore's book on the Tea Party.

Thank you for your contribution. This group does not have an ideological litmus test, and your views are welcome even if they vary from my present views. I could hardly say otherwise, given that I was myself influenced by libertarian theory for an extended period of time. Additionally, the libertarian theorists, including Bastiat, had some important insights. The decisive argument for me in my earlier attraction to libertarianism was the principle of noninitiation of force, as elaborated initially, I believe, by Locke and adopted by Rand and many libertarian theorists. That principle would negate taxation and regulation if one does not accept what is admittedly a fiction of consent through elected representatives to the legislative and executive branches of government. But it is impossible, especially under modern conditions, to require actual consent to taxation and regulation. It is on this issue that I eventually parted company with libertarianism. That said, there is definitely a danger of majority tyranny (The Federalist, No. 10), but Madison's solution in 1787 and 1788 was an eminently practical one.

John, my previous post may have gone way beyond what you were saying. The question of whether property is a natural rather than a conventional (legally defined) right is a difficult question that involves, among other things, how property is naturally acquired. The Lockean theory is, as Randal observed, problematic. I have not actually read Bastiat's view of this, so please feel free to explain it to us.

I haven't read any Locke since college and frankly I wasn't really thinking very hard when I read it so I am not in a position to compare their views. Bastiat was very critical of the idea that some tiny group of people under the authority of "the state" would be arrogant enough to presume that they could determine the best way to live for everyone else. He was very much a hard line individual liberty ideologue. He claimed that the status quo going all the way back to the Greeks was that the state defined what property was and who could own it. He bristled at this idea and claimed that property is foundational and precedes the law (and the state). Incidentally, I ran Bastiat's position on property by my Dad and his first reaction was that it might not hold up in tribal societies (he spent his career as a missionary in the Philippines). To paraphrase him, some people might in fact be willing to work if they don't individually get the benefit of their labor as long as their tribe/group benefits.

I'm not really a libertarian but I did think Bastiat had some very interesting and valuable thoughts.

Thanks for the additional information and, by the way, welcome to the group! I see you joined today.

If property is by nature rather than law, the question arises how it is acquired by nature. When I get a chance, I'll see how Bastiat addresses that question, but if you recall, please let us know.

By "property," I am referring primarily to land.

John, I've now located my copy of Bastiat's The Law in my library. I purchased it sometime in the 1970s, but I apparently never actually read it. I have the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. edition (1972). This is the only one of Batstiat's writings that I possess.

In looking at The Law now, I see that Bastiat argued that God gave human beings the gifts of life, liberty, and property. Ibid., 5-6. "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." Ibid., 6. All right, life and liberty certainly preceded laws. But what does it mean that God gave human beings property (by which I mean here property in land)? Life and liberty appertain, by nature, to the individual. But how is it that the individual acquires property in the form of land? Bastiat does not argue that God gave each individual a defined parcel of land, nor that God gave unequal plots of land to different individuals. How then is each individual's parcel of land, assuming he/she owns any land at all, to be apportioned before there are laws?

Here we run into the implacable fact that virtually all current property rights in land originated in violence. In Europe, certain monarchs and their retainers conquered large areas of land by force. Under feudalism, the monarchs owned all of the land in the territories they had conquered. They then parceled out this land to their immediate military supporters in subordinate estates. These retainers became the dukes or other high nobles. The dukes then parceled out their portions, in part, to their vassals, again with estates less than what we now call fee simple absolute. The vassals, in turn, parceled out their land to other subordinate vassals. For centuries, these lands could not be freely alienated (sold or given to another outside of the feudal chain, which also involved military and other duties). Ultimately, the estate of fee simple absolute was created (at least in England, with which I am mostly familiar). At that point, the land could be freely sold. Thus, every current landowner in Europe (including England) did not acquire his/her/its land by nature but rather by a title that originated in violent conquest.

A somewhat similar scenario occurred in America. King James I and King Charles I distributed lands in America on the theory that they were Christian kings and, as such, had superior rights to the "heathen" Native Americans, whom God had, at any rate, decimated with disease. Of course, many Native Americans had survived the epidemics brought by Europeans, and those who had succumbed did so as a result of not having any immunity to the European diseases (the Europeans had built up immunities over many centuries of exposure to the diseases, which were hitherto unknown in America). Alone among American founders, Roger Williams rejected this entire theory of land ownership in America. Instead, he negotiated directly with the Native Americans for the acquisition of land. This might seem to be the "natural" way of acquiring land until one stops to consider that probably much of the Native land was, in turn, acquired by conquest in wars among the Natives.

So the question of how individual property rights in land can be acquired by nature (or, as Bastiat would put it, as a gift from God) before human government and law is unanswered. Bastiat's solution would assume that the landed aristocracy in France and elsewhere had a "natural" (or God-given) right to the land they owned, but any such right is actually not by nature but rather purely by convention and law.

In my forthcoming book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience, I discuss in depth Roger Williams's approach to land ownership in America and how it differed, substantially, from virtually every other theory then popular in "Christendom" (a concept and term Williams also emphatically rejected).

Bastiat wrote The Law shortly after the 1848 ephemeral socialist revolutions in France and Germany. He was obsessed with what he regarded as the threat of socialism, which he said would soon lead to communism. (Marx and Engels had also published The Communist Manifesto in 1848.) In looking at The Law now, I am reminded of our contemporary Tea Party tracts, though Bastiat was a much better writer. There are today many difficult issues about the wisdom or lack of wisdom of particular governmental measures. However, the proposition that property in land is a natural right that precedes government and laws is a proposition that has yet, in my opinion, to be proved.

First, thank you, I'm excited to join the group and have enjoyed what I've read so far.

I read a collection of Bastiat's work which included The Law but they all blend together in my mind and were often repetitive. I would say that Bastiat used the word property more broadly than just land. I think he would say (using religious language) that our God-given right stems from the fact that he created us with the need for food and shelter, etc and that he created the universe in such a way that someone has to work to fulfill those needs. He spent a lot of time on the idea of "plunder". If I need corn, I can work to get it myself or by trading my effort for another's corn, or I can simply try to live off the efforts of others (plunder). He hated the idea of plunder and therefore backed into the idea that because plunder is morally wrong, there has to be the natural right to the fruit of your own labor.

Separately, he did address land specifically in a few places. He argues that we only pay a price for something if it would require labor to acquire on our own. So if there is a spring of fresh water outside my house, I wouldn't pay anything for fresh water. But if getting fresh water requires a 30 minute round trip to a spring, then I am suddenly willing to pay someone for the effort of providing me with water. He extends that to land by saying that the price we pay for land is only a reflection of the effort expended over generations to improve it and the labor required to harvest, maintain, and sell the produce. I didn't find this argument very satisfying though. The issue of scarcity of land came up but I remember thinking that he didn't handle it very well.

Another contribution to the issue: I read chapter 14 in Say's Treatise on Political Economy this morning which is about Property. As an economist, he was content that property rights existed and were stable, and then claimed that property rights are the "most powerful of all encouragements to the multiplication of wealth".

However he quoted Dugland Stewart, who I had never heard of, as being one of the best thinkers on property in a work called Right of Property. I'll copy some of the best quotes below.

"It is necessary to distinguish carefully the complete right of property, which is founded on labour, from the transient right of possession which is acquired by mere priority of occupancy; thus, before the appropriation of land, if any individual had occupied a particular spot, for repose or shade, it would have been unjust to deprive him of possession of it. This, however, was only a transient right. The spot of ground would again become common, the moment the occupier had left it; that is, the right of possession would remain no longer than the act of possession."

"The general conclusions which I deduce are these; - 1. That in every state of society labour, wherever it is exerted, is understood to found a right of property. 2. that, according to natural law, labour is the only original way of acquiring property. 3. That, according to natural law, mere occupancy founds only a right of possession; and that, whenever it founds a complete right of property, it owes its force to positive institutions."

Property rights come from "two distinct sources; the one is, that natural sentiments of the mind which establishes a moral connexion between labour and an exclusive enjoyment of the fruits of it; the other is the municipal institutions of the country where we live."

"Among those questions, however, which fell under the cognizance of positive laws, there are many on which natural justice is entirely silent, and which, of consequence, may be discussed on principles of utility solely. Such are most of the questions concerning the regulation of the succession to a man's property after his death."

That last one in particular raises the biggest issue in my own mind. I'm comfortable with the idea that property is, and should be, linked to our labour. But what right does my daughter have to that property, having expended none of her own labour to acquire it? But disallowing inheritance would create an incentive to hid property from the law and reduce the incentive to build any entity that might last significantly longer than a single lifetime. I don't have an answer to this yet, but I've been wrestling with it for over a year.

John, thank you for your interesting additional information and quotations. I have not read either Say or Stewart.

With regard to Bastiat, his obsession with "plunder" had to do, I would guess, with his terror of socialism/communism occasioned by the 1848 revolutions. I see now that Rand took several of her ideas from Bastiat (except for his references to God--Rand was an explicit atheist). Rand made exactly the same argument, including the emphasis on plunder. Rand (apparently like Bastiat) believed that government should be limited to defense against foreign enemies, police protection against internal criminals (those who violate the principle of noninitiation of force), and a judicial system to enforce contracts (and apparently to enforce the criminal law). I'm not sure what Bastiat's position was on taxation, but Rand considered it a violation of the principle of noninitiation of force. Both Bastiat (explicitly or implicitly) and Rand (explicitly) opposed public (tax-supported and government-compelled) education, social welfare programs (e.g., Social Security), government-funded infrastructure (roads, etc.), and so forth. Although Rand was a famous proponent of the industrial society, she opposed all governmental intervention to protect workers, etc. (She did support labor unions as long as government was not involved.) She strongly supported those two great carcinogens: the smokestack and the cigarette. She opposed all environmental regulation. She died (of emphysema) too soon. One wonders what her position would be today on climate change. Given her devotion to modern science, I doubt that she would have been a climate-change denier. She despised the Religious Right (she was an avowed atheist), and she would have not had any time for the Tea Party. She was an admitted elitist: she thought everyone would be better off if the intellectual elite were in charge and could have their way (in the private economy, not in a Platonic Republic; she hated Plato with a passion).

As for both Bastiat and Rand, I have a simple answer to their simple prescription: it's impossible, at least in an industrial or postindustrial society. The inevitable result would be that people like the Koch Brothers would run everything. The poorer classes would become poorer as the rich became richer. (Of course, this is already happening.) I disagree with the view that intelligence equates to wealth. Plato and Aristotle had a better understanding of this issue: the moneymakers have a kind of shrewdness but lack true philosophical understanding. However, I disagree with the political solutions proffered by the ancients: I think Madison and other American Founders were on the right track when they devised the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. However, Jefferson and Madison did not anticipate the Industrial Revolution and all the changes it would bring. Ergo, their nineteenth-century political theory (as distinguished from Madison's more nationalist views at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and in his contributions to The Federalist) may (or may not) have been appropriate for a preindustrial society with limited internal communications and transportation. But it is not appropriate for today, not to mention the issue of slavery, on which Jefferson backslid in later decades of his life (from his earlier emphatic opposition to it).

The quotations in your second post, which I gather are from Stewart (quoted by Say), are interesting and get at the root of the land question. Related to the question of inheritance, the Lockean view that property is naturally acquired by labor brings into question whether government has the right to expropriate large landholdings in which the owners allow much of their land to remain dormant and unused (except for hunting). This was the issue that the Diggers raised during the English revolutionary period. On the other hand, the New England Puritans argued that the Native Americans had no right to the lands they claimed because they did not improve those lands with agriculture. Roger Williams opposed this view.

Again, thank you for your thoughtful contributions. These are issues that I plan to explore further after I finish my current book project on Roger Williams.

Bastiat was a libertarian of the right. Proudhon was a libertarian of a different color:

"I contend that neither labor, nor occupation, nor law, can create property; that it is an effect without a cause: am I censurable?

But murmurs arise!

Property is theft! That is the war-cry of ’93! That is the signal of revolutions!

Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way! . . . Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?

Property is robbery! . . . What a revolution in human ideas! Proprietor and robber have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack universal consent, and give the lie to the human race? Who are you, that you should question the judgment of the nations and the ages?

Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name,like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER."

P J Proudhon, What is Property (1831)

Ah, these French theoreticians!

I was just waiting for Randal to swoop down from the Left. In my part of the country (western Pennsylvania), there are no left-wing people (or at least none that I have met). I have not read Proudhon, but that great philosophical source Wikipedia uses the terms "anarchist" and "libertarian socialist" to describe him. So we have anarchocapitalism (Murray Rothbard et al.) on the Right and libertarian/anarchist socialism (Proudhon et al.) on the Left. What strikes me is the intemperate rhetorical language of both sides. Somehow I prefer the measured and prudent classical language of James Madison, who never seemed to get overly excited about anything (unlike his best friend Jefferson).

I will read Proudhon, Bastiat, Say, and others (I think Rousseau also had something to say about this, if I recall correctly) after I finish writing my current book. I read most of volume one of Das Kapital in college (in an English translation) and will also read Capital by Pickety sometime next year. Although I have serious doubts that I will ever master the "dismal science" of economics, I may at some point arrive at a better understanding of the nature of property as well as the proper governmental policy (if any) toward it.

My thanks to both John and Randal for their enlightening comments.

I read Capital Vol 1 by Marx a couple years ago and I don't remember him talking much (or at all) about property rights at a fundamental level. If I'm just not remembering it, I hope to be reminded. I found his economic theories to be very poorly reasoned, his observations on the social conditions to be justifiably enraging, and grasp of history to be moderately good.

I haven't read Proudhon, but after that quote I can imaging he and Bastiat just yelling at each other.

Alan wrote: "Ah, these French theoreticians!
I was just waiting for Randal to swoop down from the Left...."

Proudhon was the William Blake of political philosophy and political economy: ethnocentric (those French!), probably manic depressive, or manically excessive, like Zizek, surely not prudent, like Madison. I have been reading his book, The Evolution of Capitalism, System of Economical Contradictions or, the Philosophy of Misery. Marx parodied this book in his broadside against Proudhon, The Poverty of Philosophy. Marx was totally provoked by Proudhon, whom he had known in Paris prior to '48. Marx was captivated by What is Property? but set on fire by the Contradictions book. Marx's contradictions were Hegelian, that is, historical. For Proudhon the contradictions of capitalism were dialethistic, or eternal.

I am working up to a blog piece on Proudhon and his critics (Marx and Walras). Marx considered Proudhon petit bourgeois. Walras skewered him for clinging to the labor theory of value. Walras, one of the three inventors of the marginal utility theory that dominates modern day economics today, called himself, BTW, a socialist and favored nationalization of all land (purchased by the State) which would provide (he thought) sufficient revenues from rent to run the necessary functions of government.

Bastiat's "Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that can-not be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?" is, in Bentham's words, "Nonsense upon stilts", IMHO! I would go along with "his person," with Hobbes. The rest is politics, or violence, as Alan has so aptly put it above.

Ciao,

Randal

John: I last read Das Kapital in 1967. Needless to say, I hardly remember any of it, except I do recall that he had, as you say, an interesting historical discussion. I was going to read volume 2, but I just could never get up the gumption to do it. I still have those volumes in my library, but I doubt I will get back to them anytime soon.

Randal: I look forward to your blog piece. Be sure to link it in this thread. As for Hobbes, we've been around that block in other posts. I just don't want to be in a political society where I have no rights other than life. For example, Hobbes was an Erastian who wrote that the government should dictate everyone's religion and compel everyone to attend religious services mandated by Leviathan. Thanks but no thanks.

OK, it's going on 11:00 p.m. here (three hours ahead of Randal), and I'm going to call it a day.

Alan wrote: "John: I last read Das Kapital in 1967. Needless to say, I hardly remember any of it, except I do recall that he had, as you say, an interesting historical discussion. I was going to read volume ..."

Sleep well!

John wrote: "However he quoted Dugland Stewart, who I had never heard of, as being one of the best thinkers on property in a work called Right of Property. I'll copy some of the best quotes below...."

John,

Dugald Stewart, in the words of James Buchan in Crowded with Genius The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind, "Professaor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh between 1785 and 1820, was (Adam) Smith's first biographer. In a paper read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in early 1793 he sketched out what might be called the 'Adam Smith problem.' Stewart made it his task to find the connection between The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments: between the great philosopher's 'system of commercial politics, and those speculations of his earlier years, in which he aimed more professedly at the advancement of human improvement and happiness.' Stewart was not successful. In the next century H.T.Buckle, who thought The Wealth of Nations 'perhaps the most important book that has ever been written', simplified Smith out of existence: The Theory of Moral Sentiments was about sympathy, The Wealth of Nations about selfishness, and that was humanity sorted." (Buchan, p 121)

Wikipedia says that Stewart wrote a similar biography about Thomas Reid, the Christian champion of "common sense" who savaged Hume. Wikipedia says, "He was principally responsible for making the "Scottish philosophy" predominant in early 19th-century Europe. In the second half of the century, Stewart's reputation fell to that of a follower of the work of Thomas Reid."

The Dugald Stewart Monument, Northeast of the train station in Edinburgh, is prominently displayed in the BBC cop show, Rebus. It is one of the most photographed sights in Edinburgh!

Cheers,

Randal

I downloaded a collection of his works, but realistically, no idea when or if I will get to it. Just glancing at the table of contents, most of his subject matter isn't a priority for me. Can only read so many hours a day.

I took many courses at the University of Chicago from 1966 to 1970 from Joseph Cropsey (1919-2012). Cropsey's Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia was on Adam Smith. He transformed that dissertation into a book: Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957). I last read this book during the 1960s and do not recall much of it, though I still have my annotated copy in my library. One of the arguments of Polity and Economy is that "the tension of outlooks reflected in Smith's writings [specifically, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)] betokens not an inconsistency but an intention." Polity and Economy, vii. A reprint of Polity and Economy was published in 2012, but the price is somewhat formidable ($84.76). The copy I bought in 1966 at the University of Chicago bookstore was $2.50. But all is not lost. It looks like a 2001 reprint is available on Amazon for $11.70.

See also Cropsey's essays on Smith and Marx in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

Yet another topic (or topics) for study after I finish writing my Roger Williams book! During my decades as a practicing lawyer, I had little time for such study.

The following are some of Cropsey's reflections on the relationship between David Hume (one of Randal's favorites) and Adam Smith (not so much):

"Smith is of interest for his share in the deflection of political philosophy toward economics and for his famous elaboration of the principles of free enterprise or liberal capitalism. By virtue of the latter, he has earned the right to be known as an architect of our present system of society. For that title, however, he has a rival in Locke, whose writing antedated his own by roughly a century. Our thesis will be that, although Smith follows in the tradition of which Locke is a great figure, yet a distinct and important change fell upon that tradition, a change that Smith helped bring about; that to understand modern capitalism adequately, it is necessary to grasp the 'Smithian' change in the Lockean tradition; and that to understand the ground of engagement between capitalism and postcapitalistic doctrines —primarily the Marxian— one must grasp the issues of capitalism in the altered form they received from Adam Smith. To state the point in barest simplicity: Smith’s teaching contains that formulation of capitalist doctrine in which many of the fundamental issues are recognizably those on which postcapitalism contests the field.

"It would be vastly misleading to suggest that the initiative in modifying the classic modern doctrine was Smith’s. To avoid that intimation, we must cover all of what follows with a single remark on the obligation of Smith to his senior friend and compatriot, David Hume. Smith’s moral philosophy, as he in effect admits, is a refinement upon Hume’s which differs from it in respects that, although very significant, are not decisive.1 A thorough study of the relation between the doctrines of Smith and Hume would disclose in full the connection between liberal capitalism and the 'skeptical' or 'scientific' principles upon which Hume wished to found all philosophy . The broadest conclusions that would emerge from such a study can be deduced from an examination of Smith’s doctrines alone, precisely because they do reflect so deeply the influence of Hume."

"1. Theory of Moral Sentiments, in The Essays of Adam Smith (London: Alexander Murray, 1869), part VII. sec. II. chap. iii ad fin., p . 271. Comparison of such a representative passage from Hume as part V of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals with , for example, part I of Theory of Moral Sentiments will suggest the broad agreement between the two doctrines."

History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed., 635-36, 656, Kindle loc. 12655-70, 19985-87.

When I went to college and graduate school, the only available edition of History of Political Philosophy (1963) had a black cover. Accordingly, it became known as "the Bible" as a witty reflection on the allegedly cultish nature of the "Straussians" (who themselves adopted the ironic usage). Perhaps this is why they changed the color in the second and third editions. No fourth edition has been published.

Thanks Alan! It sounds very good from the quote you posted and the reviews I found on Amazon are glowing. However, about three years ago, I decided that I wanted to read the great works, not read books about the great works. I hope I still have another forty years to live, so I'm willing to take the long route.

Professor Cropsey always said that one should read the great works first and not the scholarly commentary on the great works. I read Wealth of Nations long ago but have never read Theory of Moral Sentiments. I'll read/reread both at some point and then reread Cropsey's analyses of them. However, I am much older than you (68 next month), so my time is even more limited. And I need to finish my current book project on Roger Williams, which has taken up most of my time the last couple of years. So Adam Smith is on my "to do" list for next year (or the year after), along with many other reading items. I have been retired since October of 2012, but working for a living (six days a week as a practicing lawyer) distracted me from philosophical studies for many decades, except for a brief period during the late 1990s, when I wrote First Philosophy and Human Ethics: A Rational Inquiry. Now that the blessed state of retirement has finally arrived for me, I find myself in another race against time--the final one (LOL)!

Alan,

Thanks for the Cropsey reference. I didn't know him. I may well go back to read him on Smith and Marx. I have read a bit of The Wealth of Nations and speed read The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I refer to the latter in my review of Amartya Sen's book on justice here. I would say that I admire Smith, and not just for his weekly trips to Edinburgh by coach to share bottles of claret with his buddy Bon David. Hume needed all the solace that he could get, surrounded by Presbyterians (my people). It is ironical in extreme that Bon David's half-naked statue, covered only by a toga, is indirectly across the street from the church of John Knox, whom he had skewered in the History of England and elsewhere. So thanks to the more sober Professor Smith for keeping him company.

Cheers,

Randal

Randal and John,

If you don't have it already, you might be interested in The Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987). I purchased this volume in 2004 but have not read it. It includes, of course, much of the correspondence between Smith and Hume (letters from each to the other).

Randal's linked blog post is interesting. I will get to twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy after I have mastered the philosophy of all the preceding centuries, so don't hold your breaths—hopefully I will get to at least the twentieth century during this lifetime. I have, however, read one book by Martha Nussbaum: Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008). I hate to criticize anyone at my alma mater, but I must say that her account of Roger Williams is historically inaccurate in many respects. For example, Nussbaum argues that separation of church and state "is not a key idea in [Williams's] writing." Ibid., 69. (Nussbaum repeatedly dismisses the concept of separation of church and state, apparently because it hurts the feelings of the Religious Right.) She alleges that Williams only used the phrase "wall of separation" "in a letter, not at all in his major writings." Ibid., 65; cf. ibid., 41. To the contrary, Roger Williams referred, approvingly, to "the hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world" in one of his first major published writings, Mr. Cottons Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered , which was forty-seven pages long (plus an unpaginated preface "To the Impartiall Reader") in the original edition. Mr. Cottons Letter Examined (London, 1644), 45. Although this publication could be called a pamphlet rather than a book, it definitely was not a letter. Much of the present paragraph is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, which also addresses Nussbaum's attack on the concept of separation of church and state in greater depth.

Randal, your remarks about Scottish Presbyterianism are witty and on point. As you probably are aware, the last phase of the English revolutionary period (1640-60) involved the conflict between the desire of the Presbyterians for a strict theocracy modeled on their government in Scotland and the desire of the Independents/Congregationalists (Oliver Cromwell, John Owen et al.) for a modified theocracy with limited toleration of some but not all Protestant sects. The Presbyterians considered the Congregationalists to be heretics, and a huge amount of ink was spilled on this question. Roger Williams opposed both the Presbyterian and Independent versions of theocracy. In the final irony, the Presbyterians made nice with the exiled Anglicans/Royalists to bring back Charles II as king. The Presbyterians thought they had an understanding that King Charles II would make Presbyterianism the established religion. But, alas, there's no honor among thieves, and Charles and his allies restored the Church of England, which persecuted the Presbyterians and Congregationalists alike with a vengeance.

I discuss in depth in an appendix to my book the theocracy established by Calvin in Geneva in the sixteenth century and its similarities to the seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay theocracy. I also discuss some of Calvin's theological views, including double predestinationism. Of course, even Roger Williams was a predestinarian, but he drew entirely different political consequences from Calvinist theology than did, for example, John Cotton.

Lest I should seem overly critical of Randal's religious tradition, I should say that I was raised a Lutheran. Now, don’t even let me get started on Martin Luther, who considered reason to be a "whore."

By the way, I loved Hume's criticisms of Puritan irrationalism in the History of England. However, I hated Hume's solution: hereditary monarchy and the established Church of England. How a man could be so "liberal" in speculative philosophy and so conservative in political philosophy is a mystery that I someday hope to unravel. But it was consistent with the view of many Enlightenment thinkers that the masses, being incapable of philosophy, must be controlled by authoritarianism, including coerced religion.

Best,

Alan

Alan,

I was actually never baptized into the Presbyterian faith of my ancestors. In fact, my parents went to the Congregational church when I was young. The owner of the company where my father worked was a deacon there, so that was all the theology that my father needed. But my mother was born in the shadow of the Ballantine distillery on the Clyde in Dumbarton, so my Presbyterianism is by descent only. And you will have guessed that I don't favor Hume in his Tory statements. I do share Plato's doubts about democracy, but I would not embrace a monarchist system for my own polity. I have actually not read Hume's History (It extends to six volumes) nor have I read his political essays. I see that The History is on-line and will surely dip into it. In reading what he says there, however, I would think that we need to keep in mind the message of Professor Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing. Going against the tide of current opinion cost Hume a teaching post in Edinbugh, I understand. I revere him for his acid wit and sceptical integrity, not for his professed political inclinations. If I follow any creed, it is the creed of Sextus Empiricus, and I see Bon David as a fellow member of that congregation.

Cheers,

Randal

Alan wrote: "I have, however, read one book by Martha Nussbaum: Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008). ..."

I have not read Nussbaum. She is a friend and co-author (if I am remembering rightly) with Amartya Sen, whom I respect greatly. Perhaps she was better at classics than at seventeenth century English history.

I look forward greatly to seeing the new book.

Randal

I read the six volumes of Hume's History of England over a period of years, a few pages every day. (I recommend the Liberty Fund edition, which I read in paperback but which is now available for free online here; Randal may have been referring to this edition.) This tome is quite interesting, though at times maddening. Thomas Jefferson hated it: see my Post 2 in the David Hume topic of this group. I think Randal is correct that it is an example of what Leo Strauss referred to as Persecution and the Art of Writing in Strauss's book by that title. Strauss did not mention Hume in that book: he was focused on earlier philosophers. Hume, of course, had the last laugh when he arranged for the posthumous publication of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Adam Smith advised him not to publish it, fearing it would destroy his reputation, which it did at least in the near term. But Hume had already been accused of being an atheist (which he probably was). If I recall correctly (Randal may have better information), they were going to try Hume for heresy but Hume beat the rap by arguing that an atheist could not be a heretic.

To be David Hume in eighteenth-century Scotland must have been an "interesting" experience (as in the Chinese curse, "May your times be interesting"). Speaking of atheists or deists, I also want to read Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire someday. I've only read perhaps fifty pages of it. Hume and Gibbon were remarkable figures.

Alan,

You are amazing. I should live so long as to read all six volumes (I have just now downloaded them). This History was good enough to allow Hume to build a nice house in New Town. The story that I remember about Hume's heresy was the one where he fell into the bog at the bottom of the gulley that runs between High Street and Princes Street and begged for help from an elderly woman who was passing by. She replied (the story goes) "Is that Davie Hume, the famous blasphemer?" He (reportedly) replied that he was, but that he would repent of his sin if she would help him out of the bog. She did.

The other famous story was that when Hume was dying, Boswell tried to get him to repent and declare his belief in the great beyond, but Hume cheerfully went to his grave without. Bon David.

R