Clark, Henry C., Commerce, Culture & Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam
Smith (2003), 680p.
This is an edited scholarly anthology of important writings on the development of
capitalist ideas and culture in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries published before
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter is generally considered to be the
foundation of the modern discipline of economics and a key statement on the moral value
of capitalism. This nicely produced and inexpensive book was produced by the Liberty
Fund Foundation in Indianapolis, which states that its purpose is “to encourage study of
the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.” As the editor points out in his
Foreword, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, students of economics
“combined their analyses with moral and cultural considerations more often than is
usually the case in today’s more specialized intellectual environment.” One could go
further and say that almost all economic writing before economics became a professional
discipline in the second half of the nineteenth century was quite explicit about its moral,
cultural, political and ideological purpose and perspective. Among the topics discussed in
these selected and edited writings are: the nature of exchange relations and their effects
on a traditional and hierarchical social order, the role of commerce in fostering civility
and sociability, the effects of commerce on the fabric of community life, the dangers to
moral virtue posed by increasing prosperity, the impact of commerce on sex roles and the
condition of women, and the complex interplay between commerce and civil or political
liberty” (p. ix). This is a substantial volume that includes thirty-seven selections, ranging
from about ten to thirty pages, with good brief introductions and scholarly references.
The book also includes a useful glossary and index. The selections consist of mostly well
known but also some interesting less-known authors. Some of the better-known authors
include, Pieter de la Court, Josiah Child, Dudley North, John Law, Bernard Mandeville,
Daniel Defoe, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Henry Fielding, Jean Jacques Rousseau, David
Hume, and John Millar.
Reading the selections chronologically one learns that the meaning of the word
‘commerce’ was quite different in the early modern period than in today’s common
usage. Daring the early modern period, and especially in the seventeenth century,
‘commerce’ was still often used to describe social relationships rather than just business
transactions, although by the late eighteenth century its modern usage had become much
more common. The editor’s use of ‘culture’ in the title does not refer to the formal works
of art of the period but to the modern anthropological use of the term as social relations.
One of the fundamental themes in these edited primary sources is the debate about the
creation of a commercial society during the period that challenged more traditional social
and cultural values, customs and mores. The debate about the social utility of luxury in
the eighteenth century was an especially important indicator of the rise of individual
acquisitiveness as a social value and relationship. The period also saw a fundamental
discussion of the morality and utility of individual freedom. This volume is a good
introduction to the larger question of whether individual freedom, or liberty, which in
Western society became increasingly viewed as central to economic growth and the
triumph of capitalism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, despite powerful
socialist critiques, should remain fundamental to our understanding of the history of
capitalism, in light of the economic success of Asia in recent times, which appears to
have been forged with less regard to what we in the West would call individual liberty.