Violent Saviors, page 4
Omitting further reference to the sad outlook for natives in America and groups three and four in Africa and Asia, Condorcet returned to the cheerful prospect for development of those in the Rest who were willing to be led by us European philosophes. There was again a “we” and a “they”: “The progress of these peoples is likely to be more rapid and certain than our own,” because they are so lucky to “receive from us” all “those simple truths and infallible methods” for progress. Now “all that they need to do is to follow the expositions and proofs that appear in our speeches and writings.”21
Condorcet’s summary picture of the progress of the Rest was full of contradictions. He saw the great powers as establishing “equality between societies” and offering “respect for the independence of weak states,” yet he was describing European conquest and settlement of native lands in America, Africa, and Asia and the disappearing of some native groups.22
To justify these contradictions, Condorcet could have noted that there might be conflicting goals, of the West fostering material progress in the Rest versus respecting the rights of their people. Condorcet did not go in this direction. A few pages later in the “Sketch,” Condorcet insisted that all goals were consistent with each other. Progress featured “the reconciliation, the identification of the interests of each with the interests of all.” His vision had no conflicting interests of different peoples: There was only “the human race” who would be “emancipated from its shackles,” overcoming the “enemies of its progress,” and “advancing with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue and happiness!”23
Everything went together: “Nature has linked together in an unbreakable chain truth, happiness and virtue.” A century and a half later, the great liberal Isaiah Berlin would cite the “unbreakable chain” quote of Condorcet as one of the roots of the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. Condorcet saw only one truth, one goal, one interest. Berlin lamented how unintentional this was, because Condorcet was “one of the best men who ever lived.”24
Condorcet’s resolution of the contradictions was given by his nearly limitless faith in enlightened men to figure it all out. In an article in 1786, Condorcet had explained: “Let men be enlightened, and soon you will see the good emerge effortlessly from the common will.” In a 1790 article, he had similarly celebrated “enlightened men of all countries” who made up “only a single body, ruled by the same principles, and heading toward a single goal.” These men were everywhere the “peaceful apostles” of “reason and freedom.” They were “superior to the inhabitant of the forests of Ohio.” Such apostles of reason were also superior to “ordinary people” not much advanced beyond the Indigenous people in Ohio. These commoners “have often simply substituted degrading vices for the brutality of the savage.”25
We European experts could not just do nothing. We had to make progress happen. Condorcet wanted us to be guided by “maxims that favour action and energy.” We had “to learn how to recognise and so to destroy, by force of reason,” any “tyranny and superstition.” For Condorcet, the experts were to be in charge of defining and achieving rights and boosting material incomes, without questioning their right to be in charge.26
Smith had a different view on the role of experts. As we saw in the previous chapter, Adam Smith had already offered a different vision of the West and the Rest before Condorcet wrote his “Sketch.” Smith’s critique of the West’s conquest of the Rest was central to his thought. It came in the middle of his crucial rejection of mercantilism in Book Four of The Wealth of Nations, which was among his biggest contributions to economic thinking at the time. What later became known as mercantilism was the view that a nation’s wealth consisted of its reserves of gold and silver, which it should increase by promoting exports and restricting imports. A trade surplus of exports over imports would result in an inflow of more gold and silver.27
The policy experts of Smith’s time treated reserves of precious metals as an objective measure of progress. Although Condorcet was not a mercantilist, he shared their notion of some tangible index of progress that the experts could seek to increase. In contrast, Smith did not offer any single measure of progress to replace mercantilism.
Smith said the mercantilists’ measure of progress was nonsense. He ridicules those who thought that “to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it.” They thought that “to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce.” From this stupid point of view, “it necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods.” For Smith, “the mercantile system” sought to maximize domestic production, as if it were “the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.”
Mercantilist views are still around today, as if the object of policy should be to make everything at home. Smith’s original insight is as compelling as ever. If achieving trade surpluses is the goal, there is an unresolvable conflict between nations. If one nation is running a surplus, one or more other nations must be running a trade deficit. Mercantilism sees trade as a zero-sum game. Policymakers compete with each other to make their nation the one with the trade surplus by restricting imports. The competition will kill off international trade and both sides will be worse off.28
Smith defined progress by what people wanted rather than by what the mercantilist experts said they should want. Trade “carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand.” The crucial word here is “demand.”29
Smith now suddenly brought up the conquest of America as an example of his key anti-mercantilist point: “It is not by the importation of gold and silver that the discovery of America has enriched Europe.” The enrichment was the opportunity to realize new gains from trade, which should have benefited both sides. The two sides had different goods to offer and different wants for those goods, the ideal conditions for beneficial trade. Like mercantilism, conquest took what could have been a positive-sum game and made it into a zero-sum game.
Beginning with the Spanish, the mania for precious metals motivated conquest instead of commerce, as they seized “possession of the countries of which the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending themselves.” They got gold through “the plundering of the defenceless natives,” until the natives were “stript of all that they had.” According to the mercantilist definition of success, brutal conquest was indeed successful.30
Smith took particular relish in denouncing the Spanish, a safe attack to make in eighteenth-century Britain. But later in the chapter, Smith extended the critique to all European conquerors in both Asia and the Americas. He saw that “the discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” The possibility of trade would seem to make these events beneficial to both sides: “By uniting in some measure the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments, and to encourage one another’s industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial.” But the Europeans’ conquest ruined the benefits for the non-European side: “To the natives, however, both of the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost.…”31
Smith was hardly an anti-colonial saint. Like virtually every European writer in the eighteenth century, Smith referred to the American natives (although not to the Aztecs or Incans) as “savages.” Moreover, Smith spent a lot of time in The Wealth of Nations describing the development successes of the European settler colonies compared to the “savages” as a descriptive fact, and relatively little time on moral condemnation. Perhaps because of this, Smith’s normative critique of conquest was overlooked by many readers then (and now).
Despite Smith’s fierce critique of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, he described even this conquest as progress by objective measures like population: “The progress even of the Spanish colonies, however, in population and improvement, has certainly been very rapid and very great.” If the Spanish had not come, it would have been impossible for these lands to “have been so much improved or so well cultivated as at present.” On one hand, he noted “the cruel destruction of the natives.” On the other hand, he pointed out that the lands of the Incas and Aztec were “more populous now than they ever were before” and this population now had better development potential because “the Spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the ancient Indians.” Smith singled out the future United States as an even greater success: “But there are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the English in North America. Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies.” He omitted noticing that the plenitude of land came from somebody else, and that this somebody else did not have liberty.32
Smith repeatedly used the words progress, improvement, and prosperity in ways similar to modern uses of the phrase economic development. Like Condorcet, Smith was often not that clear whether this was what should have happened as opposed to what did happen. And Smith’s main contribution was correctly seen as making the case for liberty because it facilitated material progress.
But the crucial distinction between Condorcet and Smith is that Condorcet saw European settlers as agents of progress for non-Europeans, while Smith saw the settlers as benefiting only themselves. Smith never claimed that European settlement was good for the natives, either in the present or the future. Smith was deeply skeptical about those who claimed to be acting in the interests of others.
The other critical difference between Condorcet and Smith is on individual freedom. Throughout The Wealth of Nations, Smith insisted on individual freedom of choice in all market transactions as an end in itself. In his critique of British policy toward the European settlers in North America, Smith saw free trade as a moral good. The British banned the settlers from constructing steel furnaces or other manufactures, forcing them to buy manufactured goods from British merchants. Smith was appalled at this violation of the settlers’ freedom even though the policy’s empirical effect on their prosperity was small: It was “a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”33
Variations on the noun “choice” or verb “choose” occur forty-eight times in The Wealth of Nations, usually referring to individual choice. Smith mentions “consent” twenty-four times.34
Interestingly for the subsequent history of philanthropy, Smith thought even the recipients of charity should be free to choose. He noted that charitable foundations offering college scholarships decided which college the recipients should go to. He thought the students should choose and that this would force the colleges to provide something worth choosing.35
In contrast to Condorcet, Smith doubted the philosophes knew what was best for everyone else. Whoever thought they knew what was best for others was just suffering from “innumerable delusions.” “No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient” for “superintending the industry of private people.”36
Smith’s moral critique of the experts puts the two most famous passages of The Wealth of Nations in a different-from-usual light. Both are about self-interest:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.37
The butcher offers himself as a selfish trader. He is not a savior. We are OK with that. In Smith’s most famous quote, the trader
intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.38
In contrast, Smith doubted the claims of some merchants to be selfless: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” Smith’s great paradox was that the selfish do more good than the saviors do. Many readers of Smith ever since have expressed disbelief that others’ self-interest could be so benevolent for us. In fact, reviewing Smith’s views outside of these famous quotes, he was actually saying to these readers: You are right.39
Smith insisted the evaluation of progress needed normative guidelines, a theory of justice. He had already set forth his theory of justice in 1759 in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He periodically revised his first classic until his death in 1790. In the space of two pages in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith sought to outline moral principles that would guide the future course of economics. That he did not succeed is one of the tragedies of intellectual history.
He asked us to imagine an “impartial spectator,” who is neutral between us and the other party we are dealing with. A transaction is just if this impartial spectator would approve. Our transaction with another person might use force “to take from him what is of real use to him merely because it may be of equal or of more use to us,” but this would fail the test: “No impartial spectator can go along with” such robbery.
The impartial spectator allows us to see things from the other side. What is important is not how “we may naturally appear to ourselves.” What matters is how “we naturally appear to others.” The spectator directs us to dealings in which our “self-love” is constrained to be “something which other men can go along with.” The impartial spectator is a test of reciprocity—would you be okay with him doing to you what you are doing to him? If yes, then it is just. If no, then it is unjust. This reciprocity principle was destined for a long career in liberal thought.40
Trade by mutual agreement passes the reciprocity test—we respect the other’s right to agree to the trade just as they respected our right to agree. The invisible hand requires mutual assent for our selfishness to be beneficial.
Similarly, the positive role that profit incentives play in economic prosperity holds only if they are constrained by freedom. Yes, profits are “useful and proper for rousing the industry and attention of mankind.” Yes, “success in every sort of business” is “the reward most proper for encouraging industry, prudence, and circumspection.” But profit incentives for robbery also exist, and these are not “proper.” Our stealing the lands of others could have a balance sheet identical to an enterprise based on voluntary exchange. The impartial observer cannot tell the difference between proper and improper profit by some objective indicator like our rate of profit. The observer needs to know whether we are using force. For Smith, profits were proper only if they come from voluntary market transactions for land, labor, capital, or goods.41
Smith was not claiming that justice is in our own individual self-interest. Justice is not self-enforcing. I may well be worse off by not stealing: “It could not surely be better for you, that I should possess what is my own, than that you should possess it.” Sometimes crime does pay. So justice can only be a purely moral principle: We ought “to abstain from whatever belongs to” someone else.42
Smith made clear that he was applying the analysis of injustice to our interactions with faraway parts of the earth, not just within our own societies. In a famous passage, he imagined how a Briton would feel if “the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake.” Sadly, “provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren.” He would care a lot more about any “paltry misfortune of his own.”
This is usually where the quote stops, but what Smith said next is the most important part. Would it really be okay for the Briton to act on his indifference to others? Should he prevent a tiny loss for himself by ruining a hundred million Chinese? According to Smith, only a villain full of the “greatest depravity and corruption” could say yes. No matter how little the Briton cared about the distant others, justice required that he not gain at the expense of those others.43
In a passage seventeen years later in The Wealth of Nations, Smith used the earthquake metaphor again on another set of British villains who sacrificed others for their own gains—the East India Company officials and traders colonizing India. Every company official wanted to loot India and then get out of India. The day after leaving India with his loot, the official would not care if India “was swallowed up by an earthquake.” Again, Smith applied principles of justice to Europeans’ interactions with the rest of the world and not just with each other.44
One quake-like disaster in India occurred shortly before Smith wrote these words. In 1770, a horrific drought and famine struck the Indian region of Bengal. Rice production fell by 70 percent. Peasants ate leaves and grass. They sold their children to pay the astronomical prices for rice. In the middle of this, the East India Company maintained its heavy taxes. Company soldiers set up scaffolds in the countryside to hang anyone who resisted the revenue assessments, which for some peasants the company raised by 10 percent. As a company official said, the revenues were “violently kept up to their former standards.” In the midst of one of the worst famines in Bengal history, East India Company revenue did not decline. Its share price even went up. The famine killed about one-fifth of the population.45
Smith indeed thought the Company’s heavy taxation of starving peasants had turned “that dearth into a famine.” The East India Company left Bengal only with “want, famine, and mortality.” The Company had “exactly the same tendency” as other colonial governments to be “so perfectly destructive a system.”46
