Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian

Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the ExchequerThis book aims to show that Adam Smith (1723-90), the author of The Wealth of Nations, was not the promoter of ruthless laissez-faire capitalism that is still frequently depicted. Smith’s “right-wing” reputation was sealed after his death when it was not safe to claim that an author may have influenced the French revolutionaries. But as the author, also, of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which he probably regarded as his more important book, Smith sought a non-religious grounding for morals, and found it in the principle of sympathy, which should lead an impartial spectator to understand others’ problems. This book locates Smith in the Scottish Enlightenment; shows how the two books are perfectly consistent with one another; traces Smith’s influence in France and the United States; and draws out the lessons that Adam Smith can teach policy makers in the 21st Century. Although Smith was not a religious man, he was a very acute sociologist of religion. The book accordingly explains the Scottish religious context of Smith’s time, which was, as it remains, very different to the English religious context.The whole book is shot through with Iain McLean’s love for the Edinburgh of his birth, and for the Scottish Enlightenment. It begins and ends with poems by Smith’s great admirer Robert Burns.

Iain McLean is Official Fellow in Politics, Nuffield College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics, University of Oxford. He is the author of more than 100 papers and 15 books. Iain was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Royal High School and Oxford University. He has worked in Newcastle, (where he was also a county councillor), Warwick, and Oxford and held various visiting professorships overseas. He has been studying devolution and Scottish independence since his postgraduate dissertation on the SNP. He is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Unlike the other little boys who watched the trains go under Blackford Road bridge, he became an engine-driver (on a narrow-gauge steam railway in Wales). He has co-authored two policy explainer books for Edinburgh University Press: Scotland's Choices: The Referendum and What Happens Afterwards and Legally Married: Love and Law in the UK and the US.