Posted Sep 29, 2022, 7:50 AMUpdated on Sep 29, 2022 at 7:57 am
In the context of the great events of 2022, it may seem anecdotal, but the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth II coincides with the 300e anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith. A priori, these two outstanding personalities of British nationality do not have much in common. We would rather associate Smith with Margaret Thatcher who, according to some, always had a copy of the “Wealth of Nations” in her purse. Yet Smith was much more of a humanist than a “Thatcherist.” Like the late queen, he was driven by creating a happy, peaceful, prosperous, and caring society. He believed that adopting certain Stoic ideals was a path towards this goal.
Her speech advocating the Stoic model of duty recalls that of Elizabeth II, who never passed for a liberal economist. Smith condemned greed and had little faith in private enterprise; he believed that the values he defended were embodied in a class of peasants who owned their land and whose primary objective was to serve the community in a totally disinterested way. In his eyes, this type of society made it possible to best defend freedom in the political sense and the market economy.
