In Thursday's speech, Gordon Brown invoked Adam Smith to argue that we have responsibilities as well as liberties:
It was seen [by the Scottish Enlightenment] as a mark of British citizenship that people accepted they had responsibilities, as well as rights, that British people felt they had duties to discharge, as well as liberties to demand....
While [Smith] wanted to remove...arbitrary constraints on citizens, he did not seek to remove all social bonds. The truth is that he wanted people freed from the old commands of the state, but civic responsibilities were a very different matter. Total freedom from them could diminish freedom. Civic duty mattered “whenever we feel the fate of others is our personal responsibility, we are less likely to stand idly by,” he wrote.
I'm not sure Brown should follow Smith - as there's a lot in the Theory of Moral Sentiments he wouldn't like.
For one thing, Smith did not think our sense of duty rested upon benevolence:
It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters. (TMS, Part III ch 3)
This phrase "superiority of our own characters" hints at what Smith saw as the origin of virtuous behaviour - the "impartial spectator, "the great inmate of the breast." It's this higher self, Smith thought, that restrained our base selfishness.
But in this sense, our duty is just another form of selfishness - it arises from our desire to placate "this judge within." It's the fear of suffering his opprobium that keeps us honest:
There is no commonly honest man who does not more dread the inward disgrace of such an action, the indelible stain which it would for ever stamp upon his own mind, than the greatest external calamity which, without any fault of his own, could possibly befal him.
What's more, Smith did not think our responsibilities extended to consider the poor our equals:
The mere want of fortune, mere poverty, excites little compassion. Its complaints are too apt to be the objects rather of contempt than of fellow-feeling. We despise a beggar; and, though his importunities may extort an alms from us, he is scarce ever the object of any serious commiseration.
Nor did Smith believe the state should impose duties upon us. Quite the opposite. It should instead adapt itself to the morality of the people.
He contrasts the public-spirited ruler to the "man of system". The former, he said, "will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people."
The "man of system, by contrast, is dangerous and arrogant:
Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, everything which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him and not he to them. It is upon this account, that of all political speculators, sovereign princes are by far the most dangerous. This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them. They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment. (TMS part VI, section 2, ch 2)
Is Brown really a good Smithian? Should he be?
I would have asked Gordon Brown what he meant by saying in his speech that Smith believed we have a 'moral sense'. His teacher, Frances Hutcheson, asserted we had such a sense, akin to the other senses, but Smith showed in his theory of moral sentiments that we acquired our sentiments from living in society with others and from considering the views of the impartial spectator. His answer would help answer the questions you pose.
Posted by: Gavin Kennedy | October 14, 2006 at 11:53 AM