AdamSmithWorks Teaching Resources

“The man of system… is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it…. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it.”  (TMS, Part VI, Section II, Chapter II.)

 

What would Adam Smith say?

What is the role of the statesman? To what degree can government officials (statesmen) assess the needs of citizens? What incentives shape the decisions made by elected officials? How is society best served by elected “statesmen and states women”?

This month’s resource collection explores Adam Smith's idea of "the man of system." In a famous passage, Smith talks about “the great chess-board of human society” and the problematic nature of trying to mold a social system to a single plan. Ronald Coase analyzed Adam Smith’s view of man, including politicians’ motivations, in an article excerpt we’ve included below. The full article explores the psychology of man as presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments—this is complemented by a recent Great Books podcast about this lesser known work, which was written two decades before Smith’s 1776 masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
 

“A price is a signal wrapped in an incentive”, F.A. Hayek
 

Like Adam Smith, we believe that moral questions are connected to our economic lives. Deepen your discussion of the man of system by pairing it with lessons from attempts to plan society in economic theory. In 1945, economist Friedrich A. Hayek wrote an iconic essay, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," that explains why no single person can have all of the knowledge of a society, which makes it impossible to effectively plan an economy. Hayek describes the “spontaneous order” of markets where, producers are motivated by profit and loss, consumers try to make the best choices from the goods and services available, and everyone is guided by prices. Articles about this essay and a guide for using it in your classroom are linked below.

We hope that these primary readings, the additional articles we’ve mentioned, and more supporting articles and videos included below encourage lively discussion and debate about the current “role of the statesmen and stateswomen” governing economies.

Stay tuned for next month’s topic!
 

~ The AdamSmithWorks Educational Resource Team