Table Of Contentadam smith reconsidered
Adam Smith Reconsidered
history, liberty, and the
foundations of modern politics
paul sagar
prince ton university press
princet on & oxford
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contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations to Adam Smith’s Works xi
Introduction 1
1 Commercial Society, History, and the Four Stages Theory 10
2 Domination, Liberty, and the Rule of Law 54
3 Smith and Rousseau, after Hume and Mandev ille 113
4 Whose Corruption, Which Polity? 143
5 The Conspiracy of the Merchants 187
Conclusion 212
Index 221
v
acknowledgements
i have incurred numerous debts in writing this work. First and foremost,
I owe thanks to my colleague Robin Douglass, with whom I have engaged in
the most fruitful of conversations about po litic al thought, and regarding Adam
Smith in par tic u lar, that it is pos si ble to imagine the privilege of having. Many
of the ideas and interpretations argued for here were either originally Robin’s,
or had their genesis in conversations with him. Indeed, I am often no longer
sure who came up with what first. He has also been an unfailingly sharp reader
of drafts, who has always and significantly improved what ever I have written.
If this book is judged a success, he deserves shared credit for that (and if not,
the failings are mine).
Richard Bourke has similarly been a long- standing personal friend, profes-
sional supporter, and intellectual interlocutor. The existence of this book is
dependent on my having an academic career, and for that I owe Richard more
than anybody else.
Glory Liu I owe par tic u lar thanks to, both for her long- standing support of
what I am trying to do in my work on Smith, but also for her generous and
highly insightful reading of the draft manuscript, suggesting numerous changes
that markedly improved the argument.
Two anonymous readers for Prince ton University Press provided extremely
careful and helpful comments on an e arlier version of the manuscript. I have
done my best to incorporate their suggestions and comments into the final
version. Chris Berry and Barry Weingast offered insightful and instructive cor-
rections and comments at the proposal stage, many of which went on to shape
what became the finished draft.
I am also grateful to t hose individuals who have read portions (or in some
cases, all) of this work, or discussed some of the ideas that now feature in it,
and who gave vario us species of encouragement, as well as much- needed cor-
rection, along the way. The list includes (but is not l imited to, and with apolo-
gies to whomever is unfortunate enough to have been accidentally forgotten):
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Chris Brooke, Ross Carroll, Clare Chambers, Greg Conti, John Dunn, John
Filling, Sean Fleming, Nick Gooding, Ed Hall, Ryan Patrick Hanley, Kinch
Hoekstra, Rob Jubb, Duncan Kelly, Jacob T. Levy, Dan Luban, Tom Pye, John
Robertson, David Runciman, Jason Sharman, Matt Sleat, Mike Sonenscher,
Tim Stuart Buttle, Helen Thompson, Bart Wilson, and Bernardo Zacka. Spe-
cial thanks must also go to Heikki Haara for organising the 2019 Early Career
workshop in Helsinki, where a draft of chapter 1 was circulated and discussed.
Tejas Parasher and Lucia Rubinelli I would like to thank for their valiant efforts
to try to organise a half- day workshop dedicated entirely to the draft manu-
script of this book. Sadly, industrial action, and then nothing less than a global
pandemic, laid waste to the best of plans. Nonetheless, I am grateful for what
they tried to do for me. I must also thank Ben Tate, who has been (as previ-
ously) a model of editorial support and encouragement, and with whom it has
once again been a plea sure to work.
The ideas in this book grew out of the doctoral research I undertook at
Cambridge, and what became in turn my 2018 monograph, The Opinion of
Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith, likewise
published by Prince ton University Press. This book is very much a sequel to
that one. Accordingly, it likewise owes a massive debt to István Hont, who
supervised my doctoral work before his early death in 2013. What follows bears
the unmistakable imprint of István’s influence— but it also seeks to strike out
in diff er ent directions, not all of which he would have supported. It is a g reat
and continual source of sadness to me that the one person whom I really wish
I could show my readings to—a nd, who knows, perhaps even convince to see
it my way (who am I kidding?)— will never be able to judge them.
Since leaving Cambridge I have had the g reat good fortune of researching
and teaching in the Department of Po liti cal Economy at King’s College Lon-
don. I cannot imagine a better place to read, think, and write about Adam
Smith, and I am enormously grateful to the colleagues who have welcomed
me there, and have been a pleas ure to work alongside of. In par tic u lar I must
thank Mark Pennington for his outstanding work as head of department dur-
ing my first three years, and for the unfailing support and encouragement he
has given me then and since. Similarly, Andrew Blick, Jeremy Jennings, and
Frans Berkhout have been the best of se nior colleagues. Jonathan Benson,
Adrian Blau, Billy Christmas, Humeira Iqtidar, Steven Klein, Carmen Pavel,
Diana Popescu, and Adam Tebble are all owed a debt of thanks. I was also for-
tunate enough in the spring semester of 2019 to organise an ‘Advanced Texts’
module devoted entirely to TMS, consisting of a close- reading workshop with
Acknowledgements ix
a small group of KCL third- year undergraduates. This was a fantastic experi-
ence in and of itself, but reading and discussing TMS slowly and carefully with
my students considerably sharpened my appreciation of many of Smith’s argu-
ments. I am grateful to those who took that class.
Much of what follows was thought up and/or written down in Bryn Breth-
ynau cottage, Snowdonia, property of the North London Mountaineering
Club. The book is dedicated to the NLMC for its role in helping me to remem-
ber, amidst all my philosophy, to be still a man. Fi nally, my love and thanks to
Jess Williams, not only for putting up with me for quite some time now, but
for holding the ropes, both meta phor ically and literally.
