THE BIG READ: Final resting place of 'father of capitalism' Adam Smith has resurrected Scottish slavery debate

No more than that. No long tribute. No quotation from the Bible. No great lines from his books. Just his name: Adam Smith.

He is, undoubtedly, the most famous person buried in this place, the graveyard of Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile, just up from the Scottish Parliament. 

No-one really remembers Robert Keith, author of A History of the Church and State in Scotland from the Reformation to 1568, or Professor Charles Alston, lecturer in botany at Edinburgh University, or Horatius Bonar, preacher and writer of hymns, or any of the others who are buried here.

But everyone remembers Adam Smith. He is the most famous economist who ever lived.

Fans and apostles of the great man, and historians and curious people interested in the Scottish Enlightenment, still visit the grave, but, unexpectedly, it has now become a source of controversy. 

Tomorrow, a body called the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group will meet to look at a provisional list of monuments, places, and place names which could be investigated for their association with slavery and the empire. Adam Smith’s grave is on the list. 

The review group was formed last year by Edinburgh City Council in response to the Black Lives Matter protests with the aim of investigating sites in Edinburgh that might have links with slavery, including statues, monuments, and street names. The group’s purpose, according to the council, was to recommend what needed to be done to “rectify the glorification of slavery and colonialism which the statues and other sites represent to many people”. The group will report by the end of the year. 

‘Not prejudicial’
The leader of the committee, Sir Geoff Palmer, professor emeritus in life sciences at Heriot-Watt University, has specifically said he doesn’t want any statues to be taken down – “the next statue down in our country should be racism”, he has said – and that his preferred method is education and information. 

He would like Scottish people to understand their history better. He says: “We’re going to provide people with information about their city. That information will not be prejudicial, it is there to give the public information about the city and its links with slavery and colonialism.”

However, the inclusion of Smith’s grave on the list, which was leaked to The Telegraph, has not gone down well. The historian Sir Tom Devine said he disagreed with a gravestone being treated in such a way. He also questioned the idea that Smith thought slavery was a fact of life, which was the apparent justification for including his grave on the list. 

Sir Tom said it was abundantly clear that Smith believed slavery was evil and inhumane. 
The question is: should we be surprised by any of this? Adam Smith, and his beliefs, have been misunderstood, or misappropriated, for quite a long time now. 

Thatcher’s praise
NOT only is it apparently being suggested that he was an apologist for slavery, he has often been described as the patron saint of capitalism or a cheerleader for the pursuit of self-interest, a kind of king of neoliberals. It also doesn’t particularly help his reputation with some modern audiences that one of his greatest fans was Margaret Thatcher.

But Thatcher herself knew Smith’s philosophy was much subtler than the popular image. He did say self-interest was the underlying principle of economic life and famously wrote that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest”. 

But, as Thatcher pointed out, he also wrote about our instinct to help others. “To feel much for others and little for ourselves,” he said, “to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.” 

What Smith was doing, really, was observing human nature and the fact that people are fundamentally self-interested, but it goes deeper than that. 

Russ Roberts, economist and author of How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, believes Smith laid down some principles that can be applied to modern life and even help us to live better. 

He argues that Smith’s lesser-known book The Theory of Moral Sentiments – one of the titles inscribed on his gravestone – can be a kind of self-help book. In answer to the question “what did Adam Smith ever do for us?”, Roberts’s answer would be “more than you think”. 

Roberts sums it up this way: it’s kind of shocking, he says, to realise that the person we know as the father of economics didn’t think the pursuit of wealth was a very good idea, he thought it was corrosive, he thought it was bad for you, he thought ambition was bad for you, he thought the pursuit of fame would destroy your character and your happiness, your serenity and your tranquillity, and it’s all there in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
 
The book, which was first published in 1759, is largely forgotten and unread now – overshadowed by its more famous brother The Wealth of Nations – but Roberts believes that, in its mix of economics, philosophy, and psychology, there are real gems of truth about wealth, fame and ambition. 

One of Smith’s ideas, for instance, is the concept of the “impartial spectator”, a kind of inner voice that can tell us what’s right and wrong, and guide our behaviour; imagine, he says, that you are being judged not by God but by another human being. 

Roberts believes this concept of the impartial spectator can be useful in modern life. Speaking to Reason magazine, he said the idea is an interesting way to think about your behaviour: “To step outside yourself and say, ‘in this setting, is my outrage really justified when I’m working myself into a state over some inconvenience or some ‘injustice’? would an outsider who’s not me think that?’ I think that’s a useful way to step outside yourself and see what’s going on.”

Roberts believes there are other values in Smith’s philosophy that have relevance today, particularly his “big three”, the values that he says should guide us all: justice, beneficence, and prudence. Justice means not hurting others, beneficence means being good to others, and prudence means being good to yourself. 

A principled man
THE prudent man, says Smith, is sincere and honest, he’s cautious in his speech and doesn’t stick his opinion into every discussion; he’s a good friend and his friendships are a “faithful attachment to a few well-tried and well-chosen companions”. In the world of social media, that’s not a bad set of principles to stick to. 

And Roberts says it isn’t the only example of Smith’s apparent prescience – in fact, Roberts believes that, in some ways, the great economist predicted our obsession with the internet, gadgets, and mobile phones.

“Adam Smith says, basically, that we fall in love with little conveniences,” says Roberts. “He calls them ‘frivolous trinkets of utility’ which is really what our gadgets are all about. In particular, of all things, he picks on the watch … he makes fun of the fact, and really judges the person who pays a premium for a watch that’s a little more accurate, just because it’s kind of amazing and wonderful. But it doesn’t make the person any more punctual. 

“They’re not more accurate, they just know how inaccurate they are. So, he makes fun of the fact that we love these gadgets.” 

Some might say there’s a paradox at work in all of this. How can the man famous for writing a book about self-interest and how it makes the world go round also write a book that says that self-interest and self-obsession isn’t the only thing that matters? 

But Roberts says Smith’s two most famous books are really about very different things: The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book about our personal space and the people we see frequently whereas The Wealth of Nations is about how we behave in the marketplace, a place of impersonal exchange, of strangers. 

But in both books, Smith is concerned about how we behave rather than how he’d like us to behave.

It is in this context that we should see his views on slavery. In response to the controversy over Smith’s grave, Tom Devine drew attention to the lectures the great man delivered on justice, police, revenue and arms in 1763, long before the formal establishment of the abolitionist movement in Britain.

In the lectures, Smith describes the treatment of slaves in ancient Rome. At night, he said, “nothing was to be heard but the cries of slaves whom their masters were punishing”. 

He also talked about the brutal day-to-day life that slaves must have led, “their life and their property entirely at the mercy of another, and their liberty, if they could be said to have any, at his disposal too”.

‘Colonial’ sites
WHAT seems to be more problematic – and it’s this that seems to have led to Smith’s grave appearing on the list of “colonial” sites in Edinburgh – was his pessimism about the chances of abolition. 

“Slavery,” he said, “takes place in all societies at their beginning, and proceeds from that tyrannic disposition which may almost be said to be natural to mankind. It is indeed almost impossible that it should ever be totally or generally abolished.”

Now, you may think that Smith’s views are abhorrent and suggest we must accept slavery as inevitable, or you may think that the existence of modern slavery in the 21st century proves him right. But the truth is that, as well as being credited with influencing modern economic thinking, Smith is also credited with influencing the anti-slavery movement. 

William Wilberforce, who met Smith in 1787, quoted him often, and Smith’s arguments were included in early anti-slavery material. Strange, then, that a council body looking for sites associated with slavery should zoom in on Adam Smith’s grave. Whether the site will make the final list is unclear.

Perhaps the review group will listen to the criticism – in any case, the decision will be taken tomorrow. But Geoff Palmer, the man who leads the group, knows the subtleties involved. If you start removing things from their context, he says – statues, for example – in 100 years we will have forgotten the context. 

And it’s important that we know that context, and the nuances and complexities, because the nuances and complexities cannot always be seen in the words on a gravestone, faded by 200 years of Edinburgh wind and rain.