Thomas Paine compared to Adam Smith

Edward J. Dodson

[A letter to the editor published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 April, 1997]

B.J. Phillips' coverage (Inqirer, April 4) of the University of Pennsylvania's symposium on the late 18th-century political economist Adam Smith confirms for me one essential truth: Economists of today know far less about how societies are organized and work than their forebears.

Adam Smith was not only a political economist; he was moral philosopher. He argued the case for the reliance on moral principles in the establishment of socio-political arrangements and institutions. Smith was in good company with Benjamin Franklin and Francois Quesney (and others within the French school of Physiocratie). Yet, Smith was not above succumbing to the pressures of living within a society dominated by a privileged, landed elite. This is very evident in Smith's defense of the status quo where landed property was concerned.

The Physiocrats wrote extensively, and persuasively that a very significant portion of the material goods being produced by labor (a "factor of production" meaning both the physical and mental work that people did) utilizing the capital goods (the tools and animals and factory buildings) they owned, was confiscated by those who had been granted titles to land (i.e., to the control over locations and natural resources) and who in their capacity as titleholders contributed nothing to the production of wealth.

Smith acknowledged this was the case but made a moral judgment in favor of the system of law that allowed some individuals to monopolize nature.

There is one contemporary of Smith who possessed both the intellectual capacity and the moral courage to understand and attack the status quo where property was concerned. That person was Thomas Paine. Paine's essay "Agrarian Justice" (1796) is a bright light shining on the moral principle that the earth is our equal birthright. Paine anticipated the writings of Henry George by nearly a century in calling for the societal collection of "ground rent" and distribution of this fund to each citizen.

Smith may. be heralded as the father of political economy. Paine ought to be similarly and more importantly heralded as the champion of equality of opportunity and a just distribution of wealth.