Chapter 6 Self Interest Is Not Selfishness

Smith prattled on through the rest of our main course and I wanted to choke him. All that babble to Susan Mitchell! With disappointment on her face, and unrestrained glee on Burgy's, the two retreated from the table. If guilt were by association, I was ruined. Prestigious economic prizes were given for deducing theories, complex mathematical ones! Assumptions didn't matter as long as the prediction worked: Nobel laureate Milton Friedman showed us that. Smith's silly jabber about bees would do me little good with the Samuelson Committee.

"All for themselves and nothing for other people," Smith intoned as we sat with our desserts, twenty minutes later into this unmitigated disaster of a lunch. "That has been the vile maxim of our rulers in every age."

"You sound like a comrade," Wayne said, digging his spoon into a chocolate mousse.

Smith seemed pleased with the attention. "How strange it is, really. You know that Karl Marx took Adam Smith to heart—those angry passages in Wealth of Nations where Smith denounces the deceitful traders, manufacturers, and landlords as exploiters and oppressors of workers. By Jupiter, landlords are the worst of the lot, completely indolent, and ignorant to boot, their sole motive to gratify the most childish vanities."

Carol chimed in, "Still true in Central America. Coffee and banana plantations exploit the indigenous workers, after stealing their lands. The Spanish conquistadors were bloodsuckers and their descendants haven't changed in five hundred years."

Smith grew despondant. "It's a terrible injustice that no institution protected the sanctity of their property."

The arrival of coffee and tea filled-in for a reply. After the waiter left, Smith continued, "It's well known that the search for profit puts into motion the greater part of the useful labor of every society. But it's astonishing to discover that whilst wages and rents rise with prosperity, profits rise with poverty—yes, the highest profits are in those countries going rapidly to ruin."

Wayne nodded vigorously.

"Seems backwards," I said. "Profits rising with poverty?"

"It's simple, really, poor countries have monopolies and guilds which restrain trade." Smith looked around, leaning into the table to bring his head closer to ours. He whispered, as if imparting a state secret. "You know, people of the same trade seldom meet, even for merriment and diversion—just as we do here—but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public! In some contrivance to raise prices!"

He leaned back, speaking louder. "And hear me. Do these exorbitant monopoly profits alleviate poverty or promote industry? Far from it!" He took a deep breath. "There is no order of society that suffers so cruelly from such a stagnant economy as labor, who live by wages which often are barely enough to bring up a family, and in decline they fall even below this. And whoever imagines that employers don't contrive to sink the wages of workers is as ignorant of the world as of the subject itself."

"My research bears that out," Carol agreed.

Smith became moody. He spoke softly. "No society can be flourishing and happy when the greater part of the members are poor and miserable." He lifted a spoon, gesturing at the busboys gathering dishes. "Besides, is it not equitable that the whole body of people should share in the produce of their own labor? So they are at least tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged?"

Raising a finger, Wayne said, "I must get you a copy of my latest book, The State and World Society. It shows how the corrupt rulers in Third World countries are mere puppets of transnational corporations." His face flushed with pride. "Only when profits and capital are expropriated—and private property abolished—can a society of virtue flourish. Mao and Fidel both showed what a single man could accomplish in that regard."

"Abolish private property?" Smith said, stunned, waking from a reverie. He looked around the table, grasping for words, as if his life depended on it. "That ... that Karl Marx was Adam Smith's demonic disciple! Went off on a dead wrong course. Good gracious, trying to create 'Utopia' here on earth!"

Wayne's mouth dropped; his eyes became small black disks.

Smith didn't notice. He rapped on the table. "The solution to oppression is not more oppression; the solution to oppression is competition! Wages rising with growth, growth resulting from the natural tendency of people to truck and barter—if they're given the freedom. Free exchange gives workers an alternative place to sell their labor. Workers who have options is what slays the arrogant landlord!"

Smith swept his arms out. "As for morality, you can't impose it! It must be cultivated. A free society is better able to do this than the man of system roosting on his high throne. A man of system..."

Smith caught himself, and for the first time noticed the slow burn on Wayne's face. "Oh, my." He reached out a hand. "Forgive me, I'm not wholly myself. Not myself at all. Normally, I'm well mannered. But I've had to borrow the mind, the persona, you see, of someone else."

My foot pressing under the table caught his shin, and he choked on his words.

Smith examined Wayne's face. "My temper was greatly provoked," he said, "at the thought of letting any man on his high throne, a so-called 'benign dictator,' establish all the rules of morality and commerce. Such a man, a man who constructs his own 'perfect' system, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit! So enamored with his own ideal plan that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from it!"

Smith picked up a salt and pepper shaker in each hand and began methodically placing them on different squares of the checkerboard tablecloth. "Mao, in the past—or the communist ruler of China today—imagines he can arrange the different members of the great Chinese society with as much ease as my hand arranges the pieces on a chess board. But 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 man of system might wish to impose upon it."

The condiments shuffled about the table under Smith's big paws. "For the man of system to make his judgment the supreme standard of right and wrong requires the highest degree of arrogance, and surely leads to the greatest misery of that society!" With this conclusion Smith swept his arm across the table, sending both shakers sailing. Salt and pepper sprayed the floor, attracting the attention of other diners. Mitchell and Burgy interrupted their meal to look in our direction. Mitchell shook her head slowly; Burgy wagged his index finger and grinned. He was enjoying himself thoroughly.

* * *

Eager to escape this fiasco, I suggested we finish our coffee on the outside patio overlooking the campus. It was empty, and we found shade under an umbrella. Wayne sat mutely, fuming, while Smith picked his teeth unobtrusively. I searched for a way to relieve us of Smith's monopolizing conversation. Just then an economics honor student appeared on the path.

"Hi Raj," I called out.

Raj approached shyly. "Hello, Mr. Burns. I finished the reading you gave me. When should we meet?"

I was about to answer when Smith interjected brightly, "Join us, young man! I've a question or two for you."

I cringed.

Raj pulled up a chair. "Yes?"

"What did you learn in your principles class about Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations?"

Raj reflected a moment. "That greed is good. Selfish actions lead to the betterment of society, even if the action is not intended to."

"You see!" Smith was triumphant. "He thinks he learned that from me!"

Wayne and Carol exchanged glances. Raj searched for my reaction.

I had to think fast. "Professor Smythe tutored some of our students," I said. "It's hard for him to remember which ones."

"I mean from Adam Smith!" Smith corrected himself. "You think The Wealth of Nations promotes greed?"

"Doesn't it?" Raj asked. "Our teacher made us memorize this quote: '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 interest.'"

"Oh blast it, that's a complete misinterpretation if you think it means selfishness is good!" Smith was turning a shade of purple. "How can you take one quote, out of the twelve hundred pages of Smith's two books, and construe any such thing?"

Raj looked dumbfounded and crestfallen at the same time.

I held up my hand to stop Smith. Like most teachers, I had almost memorized the quote from every principles textbook: "Surely," I exclaimed, "Smith did say that businesspeople employ their capital so as to promote their own greatest profit ... and are thus 'led by an invisible hand' to advance the public's interest more effectually than if they really intended to promote it."

Smith shook his head. "It's a lovely quote, but you can't read The Wealth of Nations in isolation. Would the New Testament make sense without the Old Testament? Well, would it?"

Finally, it was Raj who said, "I guess not."

"So, why do people quote one passage from The Wealth of Nations, which is a sequel, and totally ignore its foundation?" he fumed. "The Theory of Moral Sentiments laid it out so clearly."

A worried Raj tried to get my eye. Smith hammered on, "You've all confused Adam Smith with Mandeville, for God's sake. He's the one who said, 'private vice makes public virtue.' Smith spent his life refuting that view."

Carol stifled a giggle, holding a hand over her mouth, and finally caught Wayne's eye. I shot them dirty looks: even if he were a crazy old man, couldn't their egos take a jostling? This entire lunch was humiliating.

Smith set down his cup and spoke imploringly. "Human society is like a great, immense machine, and virtue is the fine polish on its wheels. Vice is a vile rust that causes the wheels to jar and grate upon one another. Knowing what he wrote, how could anyone say Adam Smith thought selfishness was good?"

Smith sat back, peering at me through the corner of his eye. No one spoke, and finally he went on, with a satisfied air: "Smith did say, however, that 'self-love' was a natural, and within limits, even a desirable, virtue."

He looked triumphant, and we stared back blankly. My mind was overwhelmed. Smith navigated tighter intellectual waters than anyone I'd known.

Now Smith's argument took hold. He rapped on the table. "Self-love, don't you see? Didn't Jesus say, 'Love your neighbor as yourself'? By loving yourself, did anyone take that to mean he favored selfishness?"

"No," said Raj, "because it would clearly be out of character."

"Exactly!" Smith beamed. "And it would be out of character to think Adam Smith meant anything else either. Self-love is a means, in Wealth of Nations, to inspire effort and production. When we confound means with ends, that is what leads to selfishness."

"What difference does it make?" Wayne grumbled. "Capitalism's the same either way."

"On the contrary," Smith sniffed. "The sentiment of the heart from which any action proceeds—and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends—must first be understood in relation to the motive which gives rise to it."

"But in practice—"

"In practice," Smith interrupted, "self-love is quite different than greed."

"How different?"

"Self-love means you take prudent steps to provide for your own needs and security and not be a leech on society." Smith shifted in his chair. "After all, carelessness in economic matters is no virtue. Every person is first and principally recommended to his own care, and every man is certainly fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person."

"And that's not selfish?"

"Of course not. Selfishness is an egoistic attachment to your own needs when they conflict with the legitimate rights of others." Smith rose and began pacing. "Selfishness could lead to harm or neglect of another. Nobody likes a selfish person, least of all me." Smith shot a glance my way.

"The butcher and the baker—they're not selfish?" I asked.

"Not necessarily," he replied. "They're promoting their own interest without harming others. Church doctrine in my time said that all self-interest was a sin. I showed that in looking out for oneself, others could benefit, too. Self-interest is morally virtuous in that narrow sense." Smith looked around dreamily, his eyes glazed. "Surely no one wants to bake his own bread, or sew his own clothes. It is the maxim of every prudent master, never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."

Smith swayed, speaking in a chant, "And what is prudence in the conduct of every family can scarce be folly in that of a great nation. But prudence does not demand selfishness."

Smith seemed to freeze.

I asked, "Isn't it human nature to be selfish?"

"Yes, but it is also human nature to try to balance that feeling." He gasped for air. "A virtuous person must develop the habit, must cultivate the consciousness, of ... of..."

His eyes focused on my forehead. Swaying, he slid sideways onto the table. We grabbed for him, but not soon enough. His legs collapsed, sending his heavy form crashing onto the deck.