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TechnoratiFoley’s criticism raises several questions of fact: What direct moral evil does Smith urge us to accept? How does market competition impose costs on those least able to bear them? How does market competition foment social strife and balkanization in society?
As questions of fact, these questions should be answered with facts and not with philosophy or worldview. Does Smith actually commit Adam’s fallacy? The problem is this question cannot be answered on the basis of Foley’s book because he provides insufficient textual evidence for the claim. He defers to “better qualified scholars” to make “this case textually on the basis of the Wealth of Nations,” which allows him to take up a philosophical/hermeneutic approach rather than the more rigorous historical/textual approach. “I have ventured beyond the texts of the authors in question and pursued my own imaginative reconstruction of debates behind the debates, and the sometimes unconscious ground from which political economic knowledge arose. This is my own take on economics and exploits the great figures in the history of political economy shamelessly for my own ends. Be warned.”
If Adam’s fallacy is Smith’s rationalization for laissez-faire capitalism as Foley argues, what shall we call Foley’s “imaginative reconstruction” of economic history? How about “Foley’s Myth”?
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Stephen J. Grabill is executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality, published by the Acton Institute.
