This is the second in my series of posts about Jonathan Lipow’s 2023 book, Public policy for progressives.
In “Economics Without Apology,” a subsection of Chapter 1, Jonathan addresses his concerns about progressives who reject economics, writing:
Unfortunately, many progressives view the economy with great suspicion. Instinctive hostility toward economics is a textbook example of the left’s tendency to take automatic positions without reference to basic moral principles or scientific evidence. For example, many progressives believe that Adam Smith, the founder of the field later known as economics, invented capitalism or justified its excesses. This is simply not true. Smith’s groundbreaking contribution, The well-being of nationsdescribed the systemic features of the capitalist institutions that emerged a hundred years earlier to replace the feudal order in Europe, and analyzed both their virtues and vices. And far from preaching that greed is ‘good’, says Smith The theory of moral sentiments – the book that laid the intellectual foundation on which Wealth of countries was built – strongly associated with ‘good’ with social solidarity and concern for the fate of others.
He then follows up with one of my favorite quotes The theory of moral sentiments:
However selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others and make their happiness necessary to him, although he derives nothing from them except the pleasure of it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we see it or are conceived in a most vivid manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others is in fact so obvious that no examples are needed to prove it; for this feeling, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or human, though they may feel it with the most refined sensibility.
He also understands the origins of the term ‘Dismal Science’:
The early economists insisted on freedom of religion and conscience, advocated for women’s rights, and, above all, took an uncompromising position hostile to the institution of slavery. All this long before it was even fashionable among the cool kids. The reason why economics is often called “the dismal science” is that early economists had a bad habit of ruining dinner parties by lecturing other guests about the profound evils of forced servitude. The nickname was actually coined by Thomas Carlyle, who sought to delegitimize economists who opposed his “visionary” proposal to reintroduce slavery in Britain.
I’m not sure about the “dinner parties” part, but he correctly identifies the originator of the term and Carlyle’s reason for coining the term.