Abstract
This dissertation is focused on Adam Smith’s history of laws, government, economic progress and slavery in order to examine his theoretical disagreement with Hayek’s social theory. Smith was celebrated by Hayek as a systematic proponent of the idea of spontaneous order. However, although Hayek’s interpretation of Smith’s thought is not without merit and is rightly very influential – for example his astute awareness of Smith’s attention to unintended consequences of human actions, and Smith’s scepticism about systematic designs – he downplayed his own theoretical originality while highlighting his agreement with Smith’s thought, thereby missing Smith’s insights on the formation of various institutions that buttress free modern European societies.I argue that although Smith shared with Hayek’s philosophical concerns about the origin of modern society, their respective findings about how it was formulated diverge in important aspects. Smith’s history does not conform with Hayekian models of spontaneous order, which emphasise our rule-following dispositions, the limited scope of human reason in selecting social practices, and an identifiable continuity of customary convention in history. Instead, Smith lays great stress on ruptures, revolutions, violence and clear evidence of human deliberate intervention.
This thesis turns to Smith’s historical account of institutions both in England and more broadly in Europe, including the origins of the English common law, the changes to the English constitution, the foundation of the Revolution Settlement, and the enduring economic growth that characterised early modern Europe. Hayek saw these institutions as key examples of spontaneous order. But Smith believed that their formation cannot be regarded as entirely unintended or spontaneous without human (re)direction. Through careful historical investigations, Smith found that the development of English laws and politics were redirected by many revolutions, of which the violent effects altered, and even overthrew, old conventions. Furthermore, he acknowledged the role of prudential design and sovereign interference in the creation of modern English liberty, whose recent origin should not be traced to an immemorial past. Smith’s engaged study of European economies is also highly important in these regards. His famous reconstruction of the “unnatural and retrograde order” suggests the great significance of historical contingencies and political calculations in inducing economic prosperity in early modern Europe. This important historical lesson was further applied by Smith to Scotland, which was still troubled by economic backwardness and uneven development in the eighteenth century. Finally, Smith not only pointed out that many key institutions congenial to liberty and progress did not evolve without political displacement and violent change, but, in the case of slavery, he also found this to be a perversity spontaneously generated from human nature and social progress, the long and robust existence of which poses a direct challenge to Hayekian spontaneous order theory. For Smith, slavery as an unjust practice incompatible to human freedom was abrogated by a combination of intentional reforms and historical contingencies. Only under a special political framework slavery was abolished in “a small corner of Europe”. Smith’s historical research reveals Europe’s crooked path to liberty and prosperity, which, however, was not on his analysis a spontaneous order.
| Date of Award | 1 Jun 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Paul Sagar (Supervisor) & Robin Douglass (Supervisor) |