Adam Smith’s three strikes against commercial society

Abstract

It is commonly held that Adam Smith is a prophet of capitalism. There is a good deal of evidence pointing towards his optimism about commercial society. This article claims to show the pessimistic side of Smith’s view of commercialism. While some of Smith’s pessimism is obvious, some emerges only after considering his six ends of human nature. We show that according to Smith’s own criteria, commercial society is not good. We also show that Smith considers commercial society to be neither inevitable nor permanent. In other words, Smith says that commercial society fails on three counts. Rather than a prophet of capitalism as the end of history, Smith emerges from this analysis as a major critic.

Citation

Alvey, J.E. (1998), "Adam Smith’s three strikes against commercial society", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 25 No. 9, pp. 1425-1441. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068299810214016