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I
Introduction
The influence of the materialist interpretation of Adam Smith’s treatment of
history, associated with Roy Pascal, Ronald Meek and Andrew Skinner,1 has
been weakened, if not entirely eclipsed, by writers such as Donald Winch and
Knud Haakonssen who have objected strongly to the narrowing of the scope
for an independent political and jurisprudential sphere which, they argue,
materialist readings of Smith imply. Thus Donald Winch writes:
if we take the ‘science of the legislator’ seriously, materialist inter-
pretations of Smith’s use of the four stages, with their more or less
mono-causal overtones, have unfortunate implications: they place severe
limitations on any genuinely political vision of society. Political and legal
institutions are treated as epiphenomenal to underlying economic forces,
leaving little or no scope for a science of the legislator designed to show
what active steps should be taken to remove injustices and adapt institu-
tions to changing circumstances.2
Knud Haakonssen has taken a similar position. He emphasizes Smith’s stated
purpose of providing a normative theory of justice, and details the basis which
Smith provided for such a theory in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. As
Haakonssen points out, such a project would have little point if Smith believed
that politics and law were merely reflections of some other underlying forces.3
* For their helpful comments and criticisms, I thank Alistair Edwards, Michael Evans, Hillel
Steiner, Ursula Vogel, Robert Wokler and two anonymous referees.
1
R. Pascal, ‘Property and Society: the Scottish Contribution of the Eighteenth Century’, Modern
Quarterly, 1 (1938), pp. 167–79. R.L. Meek, ‘The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology’, in
Democracy and the Labour Movement, ed. J. Saville (London, 1954). Reprinted with amendments
in R.L. Meek, Economics and Ideology and Other Essays: Studies in the Development of Economic
Thought (London, 1967). R.L. Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy: Essays and Translations,
(London, 1962). R.L. Meek, ‘Smith, Turgot and the ‘‘Four Stages’’ Theory’, History of Political
Economy, 3 (1971), pp. 9–27. R.L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cam-
bridge,1976). R.L. Meek, ‘The Great Whole Man’, The Times Literary Supplement (3 December
1976). A.S. Skinner, ‘Economics and History — the Scottish Enlightenment’, Scottish Journal of
Political Economy, 12 (1965). A.S Skinner, Adam Smith: ‘An Economic Interpretation of History’,
in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. A.S. Skinner and T. Wilson (Oxford, 1975). A.S. Skinner, ‘A
Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology?’, in Classical and Marxian Political Economy, ed.
I. Bradley and M. Howard (London, 1982).
2
D. Winch, ‘Adam Smith’s ‘‘Enduring Particular Result’’: A Political and Cosmopolitan Perspec-
tive’, in Wealth and Virtue, ed. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (Cambridge, 1983), p. 258.
3
K. Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator (Cambridge, 1989).
Few authors would deny the importance of the contribution of Pascal, Meek
and Skinner in drawing attention to the four stages theory and to the fact that it
provided a point of reference for Smith’s discussion of property and govern-
ment. For its critics, the fundamental flaw in the materialist interpretation is the
determinism that materialism is said to imply. Haakonssen for example, writes:
‘let us face squarely the central issue at stake in a discussion of a materialist
conception of history, that of determinism’.4 His discussion of determinism
suggests that he is using the term in the sense of economic reductionism, a view
which denies causal significance to all levels other than the economic.5 Haak-
onssen’s principal concern is to show how Smith allowed for human agency,
especially through law and political and legal institutions; for morals and
intellectual and religious beliefs; and also for chance and the influence of
exceptional individuals. The force of this line of criticism will have been felt
strongly by anyone who believes that Smith held to an extreme form of
economic reductionism in which economic forces, somehow transcendentally
produce political and legal outcomes without the involvement of individuals
acting as politicians, legislators, soldiers etc., or that individuals acting in these
capacities are mere cyphers or ‘places’ in a structure, which do no more than
reflect underlying material forces.
That the materialist reading of Smith in question encouraged such a simplistic
interpretation is undeniable, less so because it identified a form of materialism
connected with the relationship between property, power and dependence, than
because this relationship was transposed to the plane of an over-arching
historical theory, by linking it with Smith’s use of the four stages. The signifi-
cance of the four stages for Meek was that it provided an explanation of how
wealth distribution depended upon the stage of society. It was thus possible to
identify an economic ‘base’ which developed independently of the ‘superstruc-
ture’ and which acted upon it through its characteristic patterns of distribution.
In this form, the materialist thesis was open to numerous qualifications and
objections. For example, the distribution of wealth in Smith depends upon a
range of factors, from the consequences of the upheaval following the collapse
of the Roman empire to the contingent fact that Elizabeth I had no heirs and
sold off the royal demesnes, and does not appear to be related in any systematic
way to the stage of society. The agricultural stage and the commercial stage are
both consistent with a variety of institutional forms; for example England,
France, Germany and Spain are all examples of societies which have arrived at
the commercial stage but which have different political characteristics.
4
Ibid., p. 185. See also H.M. Hopfl, ‘From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish
Enlightenment’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. XVII, no. 2 (1978), who criticizes materialistic
interpretations of Smith for their supposed determinism on similar grounds to Haakonssen.
5
Haakonssen is not, I think, opposed to describing Smith as a determinist where determinism
means that events can be described as a chain of cause and effect — his ‘antidotes’ to determinism
do not imply that Smith was not a determinist in this sense. See ibid., pp. 185–6.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 221
6
Skinner, ‘A Scottish Contribution’, p. 100.
7
See The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, ed. R. Hilton (London, 1976). That Smith
conceived of the transition from feudalism to capitalism prior to Marx is argued by Eric Hobsbawm
against William Letwin’s claim that it was a Marxist invention. See Times Literary Supplement (25
March and 1 April 1977).
8
Skinner, ‘A Scottish Contribution’, p. 100.
9
R. Brenner, ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, in
New Left Review, 104 (1977), p. 27.
10
Ibid.
222 J. SALTER
11
Ibid., p. 40.
12
See S. Rigby, Marxism and History (Manchester, 1987), Ch. 5.
13
D. Forbes, ‘Sceptical Whiggism: Commerce and Liberty’, in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Skinner
and Wilson, p. 193.
14
Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator, p. 188.
15
A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R.H. Campbell,
A.S. Skinner and W.B. Todd (Oxford, 1976), III. iii. 5.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 223
have the effect of creating strong central government, which he believed was a
precondition for liberty and justice.
Materialism in this sense does not, of course, imply determinism or economic
reductionism. If materialism and the kind of economic reductionism which has
been the target of criticism were synonymous, the question of whether Smith
was a materialist would be superseded by the question of whether materialism
was a defensible position to adopt in any circumstances. Materialism, in the
sense being suggested, does not imply that there is a necessary and automatic
connection between commerce and liberty. Neither does it limit the scope for
advocacy. Smith’s advocacy was directed towards the implementation of the
system of perfect liberty, which he regarded as the system most favourable to
commercial progress. But Smith also spoke of liberty in the more general sense
which had been attained in most of the modern European states where a tolerable
degree of security had been introduced by the appearance of strong central
governments and this was the unintended result of economic progress. It is
therefore the contention of this paper that it is possible to give due recognition
to the normative dimension of Smith’s treatment of liberty and justice while, at
the same time, acknowledging Smith’s materialism.
The argument of this paper can be summarized as follows. The materialist
interpretation, and particularly the contributions of Pascal and Skinner, justifi-
ably stressed the importance of the way in which political power was based on
wealth and how economic progress acted to destroy arbitrary centres of power.
However, by embedding Smith’s account of the demise of feudalism in the four
stages theory, and by interpreting it as part of a theory of the transition from
feudalism to agrarian capitalism, the materialist interpretation deflected atten-
tion away from Smith’s primary purpose of explaining how commercial pro-
gress created a more favourable climate for justice and liberty by causing
changes in the structure of sovereignty. The contributions of Winch and
Haakonssen have provided a valuable antidote to some of the deterministic
implications of the materialist interpretation. In particular, they have succeeded
in recapturing the ground on which Smith discussed liberty and justice as
questions for the legislator and have countered the view that they are automatic
outcomes of material processes. However, by equating materialism with deter-
minism and by directly challenging the centrality of Smith’s treatment of the
relationship between property, dependence and political power, they place
undue weight on the normative dimension of Smith’s treatment of liberty and
justice and obscure what can appropriately be described as a materialist
dimension.
II
The Marxian Interpretation
Roy Pascal’s 1938 article ‘Property and Society’, which deals with the Scottish
Historical School, is taken to be the first statement of this so-called Marxian
interpretation of Smith. Pascal points out that Smith regarded history as a
material process: ‘The process of social development is not governed by a
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 225
16
Pascal, ‘Property and Society’, pp. 170–1.
17
Ibid., pp. 171–2.
18
Ibid., p. 172.
19
Ibid.
20
This has the advantage of focusing on one of Smith’s published works. As R.D. Cummings has
pointed out, Smith chose to consign his unpublished notes to the flames. See R.D. Cummings, ‘The
Four Stages’, in Political Theory and Political Economy, ed. C.B. Macpherson, mimeo, Conference
for the Study of Political Thought (Toronto, 1974).
226 J. SALTER
of subsistence and the nature of property and government, Skinner claimed that
it is also part of the Scottish argument that changes in the mode of subsistence
are brought about by ‘quantitative’ developments in the ‘productive forces’.
Thus, while Meek had identified two levels of analysis in the Scottish ‘materi-
alism’ — the mode of subsistence and the forms of property and government,
Skinner identified three interrelated levels: the productive forces, the type of
economic organization and the pattern of dependence and authority.21
The major illustration of the relationship between the forces of production
and the type of economic organization given by Skinner is the emergence of
the ‘exchange economy’ from the agrarian economy. The growth of manufac-
turing and trade, which are characterized by Skinner as the forces of production,
dissolved the ties of dependence that characterized the agrarian economy and
eventually caused the break up of the agrarian economy and its replacement by
the exchange economy: ‘Smith argues in effect that the quantitative develop-
ment of manufactures based on the cities eventually produced a qualitative
change in creating the institutions of the exchange economy, that is of the fourth
economic stage.’22
Skinner has described these qualitative changes in the following way:
since the object was now to maximize the disposable surplus, it was in
the proprietor’s interest to change the forms of leasehold in order to
encourage output and increase returns. In this way, Smith traced the
gradual change from the use of slave labour on the land, to the origin of
the ‘metayer’ system where the tenant had limited property rights, until
the whole process finally resulted in the appearance of ‘farmers properly
so called who cultivated the land with their own stock, paying a rent
certain to the landlord’ (WN III.ii.14).23
In ‘A Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology?’ (1982) Skinner made
explicit what was implicit in his 1965 contribution, namely the distinction
between the statement of the four stages and their relationship to government,
and the process of transition between the stages. As the question mark in the
title of the 1982 article suggests, Skinner came to question the materialist
interpretation: ‘Smith gave due weight to the importance of economic factors,
but also to the role played by political considerations, quirks of character,
physical elements and pure accident’.24 However, Skinner came to see Smith’s
account of the emergence of the exchange economy as the most robust and
clear-cut example of ‘historical materialism’ in Smith’s works.
21
Skinner, ‘Economics and History’, p. 21.
22
Skinner, ‘Adam Smith: an Economic Interpretation of History’, p. 167.
23
Ibid., p. 166.
24
Skinner, ‘A Scottish Contribution’, p. 102.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 227
III
A Critique
the emergence of modern Europe deals with a series of political changes and
the corresponding developments in the progress of opulence.
33
See Hilton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism.
34
H. Pirenne, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (London, 1936).
35
G.E. Mumy, ‘Town and Country in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations’, in Science and
Society, XLII, 4 (Winter 1978–9); and L.A. Dow, ‘The Rise of the City: Adam Smith Versus Henri
Pirenne’, Review of Social Economy, 32 (October 1974), pp. 170–85.
36
Smith, Wealth of Nations, III. ii.
37
For example, D. Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge, 1978); Skinner, ‘A Scottish
Contribution’, and Mumy, ‘Town and Country’.
38
K. Takahashi, ‘A Contribution to the Discussion’, in Hilton, The Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism.
230 J. SALTER
imitation, and that in some cases that meant imitation of the manufactures of
non-European countries, does not detract from the fact that the logic of his
argument does not require that foreign commerce be other than exclusively
European.
44
Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iii. 114.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., iii. 118.
47
Ibid., iii. 119.
48
Ibid., iii. 121.
232 J. SALTER
49
Smith, Wealth of Nations, III. ii. 12 (emphasis added).
50
Ibid., III. iv. 4.
51
Ibid., III. iv. 6.
52
Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iv. 155.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 233
the form of lenient rents in the case of the tenants, that the lord gains loyalty in
politics and war. This does not describe either the economic or the political
relationship between the lord and his serfs. Serfs can hardly be said to share the
surpluses of the landlords. Coercion, not bribery, is the basis of the landlord’s
authority over the serf. Furthermore, since the serf does not play any role in
politics or war he is not the object of the landlord’s largesse. In the Lectures on
Jurisprudence Smith makes it clear that his argument about economic depend-
ence being the basis of authority does not apply to servile labour: ‘in Rome,
where all the luxury was supported by slaves who had no weight in the state,
the luxury of the nobility destroyed all their power’.53 Smith contrasted this
with a situation without slavery where tradesmen, who would be dependent for
their custom on the rich, would thus have to support the rich in elections.54
The important development in agricultural relations which Smith is describ-
ing in Book III of the Wealth of Nations, therefore, is the origin of long term
and secure leases and not the demise of serfdom. The effect of long term leases
in addition to productivity gains, was that landlords no longer exercised the
influence over their tenants which lenient rents gave them:
Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not altogether
dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which they
receive from one another, are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will
expose neither his life or his fortune in the service of the proprietor. But
if he has a lease for a long term of years, he is altogether independent;
. . .55
Landlords thus lose political influence over their tenants as they do over their
retainers.
IV
Commerce and Liberty
The result of the decline in the power of the feudal barons throughout a large
part of Europe, brought about by the progress of commerce, was absolutist
government. This was a development which was favourable to liberty because
regular government was no longer interrupted by the barons. In the above-
quoted passage where Smith says ‘commerce and manufactures gradually
introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security
of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country’,56 he is referring to the
common developments in a large part of Europe, and liberty and security, in
the sense that he is using the terms here, do not depend upon particular, national
53
Ibid., iv. 73.
54
See also A. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [B] (1766), ed. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael and
P.G. Stein (Oxford, 1978), p. 410.
55
Smith, Wealth of Nations, III. iv. 14.
56
Ibid., III. iv. 4.
234 J. SALTER
barons to interrupt regular government was based upon the political and military
support which their wealth gave them. The connection between wealth and
political power hinges, at least partly, on the economic dependence of the poor
on the rich. When those without property depend for their livelihood on the
generosity of the rich, political authority is created and the poor must obey the
wishes of the rich to secure their livelihood. Haakonssen, however, has ques-
tioned the economic connection between property and power. He argues that
for Smith it is taste and vanity, rather than the procurement of the necessities
of subsistence, which are the principal motivation of mankind, and that eco-
nomic motivation is rarely the basis for the important relationship between
dependence and authority. It is rather ‘men’s aestheticizing participation in the
lives of the rich through sympathy, whereas hopes of personal gain play little
or no role’.62 For Haakonssen, the strength of government is less a question of
wealth than of opinion63 and the sequence in which the progress of commerce
leads to the decline in the powers of the feudal barons would not appear to
illustrate a process of any great general significance. In fact, if the psychological
basis for the relationship between property and power is all that matters, there
is no reason why commercial progress should alter the structure of sovereignty
at all: the barons do not lose their wealth, they use it for different purposes. Why
therefore do they not continue to command the obedience of those who admire
and respect them for their riches?
Winch’s approach, which recognizes that there is both a psychological and
an economic basis for the connection between property and power64 leads him
to distinguish between commercial and pre-commercial societies:
One of the benefits which modern societies derived from the decline of
feudalism was that power and property were no longer connected. This
was true of all forms of government but it was especially true of ‘free
countries’ where, as Smith said ‘the safety of governments depends very
much upon the favourable judgement which the people may form of its
conduct’.65
62
Ibid., p. 184.
63
Ibid., p. 131.
64
In support of his case Haakonssen quotes Smith in Lectures on Jurisprudence [B]: ‘in general
the poor are independent, and support themselves by their labour, yet tho’ they expect no benefit
from them [the rich] they have a strong propensity to pay them respect.’ (Smith, Lectures on
Jurisprudence [B], 12.) However, this has to be seen against Smith’s account of the progress of
government where, for example, he says in relation to the age of shepherds: ‘This inequality of
fortune, making a distinction between the rich and the poor, gave the former much influence over
the latter, for they who had no flocks or herds must have depended on those who had them, because
they could not now gain a subsistence from hunting as the rich had made the game, now become
tame, their own property.’ (Ibid., 20.) See also Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iv. 7–8.
65
Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, p. 169.
236 J. SALTER
The problem with this formulation is that if property and power are unconnected
in all societies, in what sense are commercial societies different from non-
commercial societies? What does it mean to say that property and power are
‘especially’ unconnected in commercial societies? Political power is not the
result of property but of property which yields a surplus in excess of the
consumption and investment requirements of the owners. In this respect,
commercial societies are no different from any others. The distinction is that in
commercial societies the number of property holders who posses such a degree
of wealth is reduced, not because of the reduction of wealth holdings but because
of the increase in consumption and investment opportunities.66 This allowed
Smith to distinguish between different modern European states: in the case of
Germany, for example, where wealth holdings tended to be larger than else-
where, the progress of commerce failed to restrict the number of power bases
sufficiently for strong central government to emerge.67 In other places the
monarch was the only property holder whose wealth was not entirely consumed
by personal expenditure. But in all cases, political power resided in those who
possessed the superior wealth.
It is only by recognizing the connection between property and power in all
societies that the full implications of the political revolution can be grasped.
Moreover, this is more than an isolated event. It illustrates a theme of general
significance. As Winch has noted: ‘commerce is more than a stage of society;
it is a constant cause producing the same effects at all stages’;68 the effects being
to reduce the number of power bases thereby altering the structure of sover-
eignty in a way that is generally favourable to liberty and justice. The problem
with the four stages interpretation was that liberty and justice were associated
with particular institutional forms and patterns of wealth distribution, which in
turn depended upon the transition from feudalism to the stage of commerce.
Skinner, for instance, writes: ‘Smith observed that the new sources of wealth,
arising from commerce, manufacturing, agriculture, etc., were likely to be more
equally distributed’,69 leading to a more equal distribution of political power.
In support of this argument, however, it is John Millar and not Smith whom
Skinner quotes. Millar did indeed believe that commercial activity would lead
to the redistribution of wealth, and that the monarchy and the feudal lords would
thereby lose some of their political power.70 Millar also believed that the
opposite tendency was at work since the progress of opulence would create
standing armies, thus increasing the power of the sovereign.71 Smith’s
66
Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iv. 161–2.
67
Ibid., iv. 162–3.
68
Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, p. 64.
69
Skinner, ‘A Scottish Contribution’, p. 90.
70
J. Millar, The Origin and Distinction of Ranks (1779), in W.C. Lehman, John Millar of Glasgow
1735–1801 (Cambridge, 1960), p. 292.
71
Ibid., p. 284.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 237
argument, however, is not that inequalities would diminish, but that they would
cease to create dependence between the nobility and the populace. Whether the
monarchy or the populace, or indeed the great nobility and princes, would be
the beneficiaries depended upon the existing distribution of wealth. If liberty
and justice are exclusively modern, as Skinner’s reading implies, not least
because the revolution involves the ending of slavery, then ‘[t]he obvious
parallels between the three great attempts by mankind to live in commercial
societies, in Greece, in Rome, and in modern Europe,’72 recede, and the
relationship between commerce and liberty is restricted to the context of a single
European political revolution.
The interconnections between patterns of distribution and the degree of
commerce are thus closely related to the strength and autonomy of governments,
and it is in this sense that Smith can be described as a materialist. The presence
or absence of slavery is also a factor. In the Lectures on Jurisprudence Smith
argues that without the institution of slavery the economic power of the rich
can sometimes continue to be translated into political power, even with the
progress of commerce and luxury.73 Without slavery, Smith argues, the rich can
still exert considerable influence over tradesmen who want their custom. It is
also possible to see, in connection with Haakonsen’s principal objections to a
materialist interpretation, that there is no conflict between a materialist account
of sovereignty in this restricted sense and Smith’s normative theory of justice
founded upon the principles of sympathy and the impartial spectator. As
Haakonssen emphasizes, advocacy on the basis of Smith’s theory of justice is
unlikely to be very effective unless governments have attained the requisite
degree of autonomy for justice to be a possibility.
72
Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator, p. 178.
73
Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iv. 73.
74
D. Forbes, ‘Sceptical Whiggism’.
238 J. SALTER
And this famous story of the destruction of baronial and ecclesiastical power
needs to be looked at more closely before one generalizes about it’.75 He
concludes:
Surely no ‘law’ of commerce giving rise to liberty could be drawn from
such peculiar conditions? . . . One cannot have freedom without com-
merce and manufactures, but opulence without freedom is the norm rather
than the exception.76
However, if what I have said above about the ending of slavery in Europe is
correct, then Forbes’s argument would appear to be even more forceful. The
destruction of baronial and ecclesiastical power was not coincident with the
abolition of slavery or serfdom, but continued as long as the relationship
between landlords and the direct producers was not based on clearly defined
economic contracts. Liberty, as defined by Forbes, is not the product of
commerce even in the restricted context of European history.
However, if we are prepared to regard liberty, even in the sense of security
under the law, as a matter of degree rather than a perfected state, the force of
Forbes’s argument can be mitigated somewhat. As Haakonssen has pointed out,
Smith’s treatment of slavery is not incorporated into his discussion of natural
law.77 Smith’s discussion of justice in relation to slavery focused on the rights
and treatment of slaves rather than its abolition, and he argued that slaves were
worse off in free and prosperous countries.78 Smith could still talk of freedom
in situations where slavery existed, and emphasized that what mattered for the
rights and treatment of slaves was strong government — although even strong
governments could not be expected to abolish slavery.79 Moreover, Forbes
provides an excellent discussion of the different senses in which Smith used the
words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ and, as argued above, when Smith does refer to
freedom ‘in our present sense of the word’ in relation to the removal of the
attributes of villeinage and slavery from the inhabitants of the towns, he is using
the term in a different way from the freedom which comes from the ending of
feudal dependence which was brought about by the progress of commerce.
If, on the other hand, slavery is to be regarded as incompatible with any degree
of liberty and, as a consequence, liberty is to be regarded as an exceptional
condition for mankind, then it is not just the connection between commerce and
liberty which is called into question. We are once again confronted by the
question posed by Haakonsen, for entirely different reasons: what was the
practical significance of Smith’s extended consideration of liberty and justice
75
Ibid., p. 200.
76
Ibid., pp. 200–1.
77
Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator, p. 72.
78
Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [B], 136–7.
79
Ibid., 135; also Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence [A], iii. 104; and ibid., 89–101, where Smith
discusses the treatment and rights of slaves.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 239
V
Conclusion
The materialist interpretation of Smith, from its beginnings in the contribution
of Pascal, interpreted the account of the destruction of feudal power in the
context of the transition from the third to the fourth economic stage, a transition
which incorporated the demise of slavery and serfdom. This has had two
unfortunate implications. The relationship between commerce and liberty and
justice is restricted to the developments in modern Europe. The progress of
commerce is favourable to liberty and justice, on this reading, because it ushers
in a new economic system — the exchange economy — in which servile labour
has been replaced by commercial rents and wage labour. This has exaggerated
the extent to which Smith regarded liberty and justice as modern, dependent on
the institutions and wealth distribution of the commercial society of his own
day, and has detracted from the normative dimensions of Smith’s interest in
liberty and justice which Winch and Haakonssen have brought to the fore.
However, the recognition of Smith’s normative purposes should not preclude
the recognition that he was also concerned to demonstrate that the progress of
commerce and opulence tended to produce strong central government, which
he saw as a precondition of liberty and justice, a theme which can justifiably
be called materialistic.
The second consequence is that it has led to exaggerated claims regarding the
similarity between Smith’s account of the decline of feudalism and certain
Marxist explanations of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Anticipa-
tory readings of Smith have been the subject of a great deal of critical comment
in the literature.80 Such an approach is particularly inappropriate in the present
context since, as is well known, Marx read Smith and was influenced by him.
A more promising approach might have been to have traced these influences
with the same care and rigour with which Meek discussed the origins of the
four stages theory.81 This is not, of course, the place to undertake such a task;
but I will conclude by noting that Marx provided an accurate summary of
80
For example see Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics.
81
See Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage.
240 J. SALTER
82
K. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 508 (emphasis added).
83
Ibid., p. 506.
84
K. Marx, Capital (London, 1974), Vol. 1, p. 672.
85
Ibid.
86
Smith’s argument is open to serious criticism which arises because the condition for the
prolonged existence of allodial and feudal violence is the absence of outlets for the surplus other
than expenditure on retainers. This leads to an unconvincing explanation of the way in which feudal
power is ultimately destroyed as G.E. Mumy has argued. See Mumy, ‘Town and Country’.
ADAM SMITH ON FEUDALISM, COMMERCE & SLAVERY 241
proletarians was hurled on the labour market’.87 Smith by contrast, focused his
attention not on the way the economic surplus was generated but on the way in
which the surplus was consumed. By sharing his surplus the landlord gained
authority by the dependence thus created. It was this form of authority that was
swept away by the progress of commerce.
87
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 672.