For Adam Smith, “Justice in the economic sphere amounts to respect for the possessions of others,” writes John Salter (1994, p. 299), a position that “would appeal to rule out consideration of distributional issues as matters of justice” (ibid.). This view, however—based on a passage in the Theory Moral Sentiments (TMS) where he contrasts commutative justice with distributive justice, the latter being a supposedly ‘imperfect’ and secondary consideration—has come under attack as a misreading of Smith’s framework (Verburg, 2000, p. 23). At stake, frequently, is a broader question of how Smith reconciled his assertion that commercial society was sufficiently just with his numerous “reservations regarding [its] morality” (Witztum, 1997, p. 241). John Salter (1994) takes the view that Smith’s narrow articulation of justice precluded considerations of ‘goodness,’ allowing unvirtuous activity to remain just. While Rudi Verburg (2000) broadly accepts that Smith’s formal idea of commutative justice does not assimilate distributive preoccupations, Smith was nonetheless deeply concerned with ethical questions of distribution that may nevertheless be understood as matters of ‘justice’ with similar importance. Amos Witztum (1997), in a convincing resolution of the tension between ethics and justice, sees Smith’s understanding of justice in a more dynamic light, arguing that the rigid distinction between commutative and distributive justice is flawed, and that the two may be understood as different expressions of the same underlying principle of ‘due shares.’ For Witztum, then, commercial society can only be considered just for Smith if it meets the basic distributional outcome whereby a basic standard of subsistence is assured for all.
Salter’s interpretation sees Smith’s idea of justice as being grounded in a fundamental and inviolable distinction between commutative and distributive justice. Commutative justice—according to Salter—deals with matters of rights to “what one already possesses” and is violated when we cause someone positive harm “either in his person, or in his estate, or in his reputation” (Smith, 1976b, TMS. VII.ii.1.10 cited, Salter, 1994, p. 301). Distributive justice, conversely, implicates the idea of entitlement to one’s due. Importantly, commutative justice is said to correspond to ‘perfect rights’ and distributive justice to ‘imperfect rights,’ the latter which “ought to be performed to us by others but which we have no title to compel them to perform” (Smith, 1978, LJ (A) i.14cited Salter, 1994, 302). Perfect rights are, on the other hand, “those which we have a title to demand” and may be enforced (ibid.). The breach of imperfect rights, interprets Salter, was subsequently less important to Smith and falls under his notion of ‘beneficence’ rather than justice, as justice—the subject of jurisprudence—must deal with principles that can be clearly ruled on and enforced (Salter, 1994, p. 302). Importantly, as justice now exclusively refers to the protection of ‘perfect rights,’ economic considerations of justice become quite narrowly interpreted by Salter as being largely limited to the preservation of private property (p. 299). Economic outcomes are excluded from the purview of justice as they necessarily relate to an interpretation of ‘one’s due,’ and justice can only work with what already exists, what is already possessed (p. 311). Smith’s concern with the morality of commercial society is thus, for Salter, entirely divorced from considerations of its justness. “Smith was able to restrict the security of economic justice to security of property holders,” writes Salter, “not because he had provided a satisfactory account of how the propertyless were to survive” but rather because his idea of justice paid no mind to ethical considerations of one’s ‘due share’ (p. 312).
Salter’s interpretation, upon first review, offers a clear and well-constituted case. It is apparent that Smith saw a distinction between perfect rightsand imperfect ones, and—to a certain extent—appreciated that the former offered a more operational approach to the administration of justice in commercial society. Salter is equally correct in observing that Smith saw breaches in justice as of higher concern than breaches in beneficence—indeed the imperative to act on the former as opposed to recommendation to act on the latter is explicitly presented (Smith 1978, LJ (A) i.14cited Salter, 1994, p. 302). Less convincing, however, is Salter’s assertion that the arena of justice and perfect rights is near-exclusively contained to considerations of property. Salter takes the content of Smith’s rights as a priori, and despite acknowledging Smith’s evolutionary derivation of the right to property (Salter, 1994, p. 309), does not dig deep enough into the dynamic process of approbation by impartial spectator through which rights are granted and formed. This leaves him with a static understanding that renders his interpretation vulnerable in the face of both Verburg and Witztum, who take pains to offer an evolutionary interpretation of how distributive considerations may emerge and impact Smith’s system of justice.
Smith’s notion of justice, in a manner that Salter addresses but does not sufficiently analyze, hinges on the rulings of the impartial spectator. Following an action done to us, Smith says, we can conceive of an impartial spectator who would rule on the appropriateness of our subsequent resentment or gratitude (Witztum, 1997, p. 243). Justice (and here Salter is in agreement), must result when the impartial spectator approbates our resentment, and would conclude that retribution must be “extracted, or served, by force” (p. 244). It is in turn from this process of approbation that rights, for Smith, are derived. Importantly, as both Verburg and Witztum observe, the sentiments of the impartial spectator are subject to change and development with the stage theory of society Smith proposes (Verburg, 2000, p. 3; Witztum, 1997, p. 249). The right to property, indeed, must be understood as a “function of the importance people attach to property” in commercial society (Witztum, 1997, pp. 247-248)—an impartial spectator in a hunter-gatherer society would have a different reaction to theft than one in 18th-century Britain. Justice and rights are thus socially and historically contingent for Smith and are formed through the process of approbation. While Salter is correct that in the commercial society Smith observed at the time of writing property is interpreted to be a ‘perfect’ right, he makes the error of reifying the content of what perfect rights may be understood to encompass, excluding distributional concerns on an a priori basis. As Verburg notes, Smith believed a system of natural liberty would “generate beneficent distributional outcomes, if the rules of justice … reflect community standards of propriety” (Verburg, 2000, p. 41). Evidently, these standards of propriety are fluid.
This said, while Verburg argues that Smith has clear distributive concerns vis-à-vis questions of justice, he is unable to assimilate this with Smith’s specific theory of commutative justice despite acknowledging its relative nature. Instead, he settles to argue that “the indeterminate nature of rules of distributive justice should not be taken to signal their subordinated status in Smith’s thought” (p. 43). Verburg’s particular preoccupation is with a longer run trend he believes Smith identified wherein commercial society has led to a narrowing of the opportunities for approbation. As attempts to better one’s condition increasingly rely on the accumulation of stock “in order to distinguish one[self] and to become the object of praise and admiration,” wealth emerges as the main object of admiration and sympathy (p. 41). Verburg argues that Smith saw this development as precluding opportunities for the poor to earn approbation through the “steady exercise of virtue” (ibid.) and, given the material inequality inherent to commercial society, denied those of lower ranks the opportunity “to be taken notice of with sympathy” (p. 42). As a result, Verburg asserts that despite Smith’s proclamation that “society may subsist without beneficence” (Smith 1976, I.iii: 2.1 cited Verburg, 2000, p. 41), Smith nonetheless understands that in the long run a dearth of distributive justice will invariably influence “the moral and economic viability of society” (Verburg, 2000, p. 41) and positive intervention may be warranted. For Verburg then, the distinction between commutative and distributive justice is maintained. Commercial society is just for Smith insofar as “beneficent distributional outcomes” result from the alignment of the laws of justice with community standards (p. 41). Ethical considerations of distributive justice are distinct from justice as jurisprudence, yet of equal importance when determining the viability of an economic system.
Verburg, however, despite convincingly identifying that Smith had deeply rooted distributive concerns, does not adequately motivate his assertion that we can understand this as a question of justice that is distinct-but-equal to justice in its commutative sense. As Salter demonstrates, Smith is explicit in his Lectures on Jurisprudence on the fact that justice relates to perfect rights, “those which we have a title to demand and if refused to compel an other to perform” (Smith, 1978, LJ (A) i.14cited Salter, 1994, 302). Verburg instead retains the notion of distributive justice as dealing with ‘imperfect rights.’ Thus, his argument rests largely on painting a historical narrative of social decay that convincingly shows Smith’s growing focus on distributional questions, yet is insufficient when faced with the task of justifying the parity between commutative and distributive justice he professes to observe. While he probes deeper than Salter into the process of approbation through which rights are formed, Verburg nonetheless fails to dissect what precisely may render a right ‘perfect’ versus ‘imperfect’ and is consequently limited in his efforts to motivate the inclusion of distributive justice as an imperative of jurisprudence.
Here is where Witztum’s effort to interpret the nature of distributive considerations in Smith’s conception of economic justice offers gains the most purchase. Identifying as Salter does that commutative justice in Smith’s framework is held to be the object of jurisprudence because it must be “extracted or served by force” versus other forms of justice which amount to recommendations only (Witztum, 1997, p. 244), Witztum seeks to identify why “some actions call for active reprisal while others do not” (ibid.). Given the contextually determined sympathies of the impartial spectator, he rejects Salter’s idea that there exists an a priori body of substantive claims that are enforceable versus those which are not, suggesting instead that the imperative for retribution must emanate from the strength of the impartial spectator’s sympathy (ibid.). “The most sacred laws of justice, therefore, those which call for the loudest vengeance,” writes Smith, “are those which guard the life and person of our neighbour,” followed by laws guarding property and lastly those which guard “what is due to him from the promise of others” (TMS, p. 84 cited Witztum, 1977, p. 247). Witztum seizes on this last point, noting that although a hierarchy is built, Smith understands each violation—including the breaking of a promise—as causing “real injury” (p. 249). Indeed, Witztum further identifies in Smith’s discussion on the origin or property, a similar underlying principle of ‘frustrated expectations,’ where Smith grounds the sympathy of the impartial spectator with a victim of theft in the “reasonable expectation” of the victim to make use of their property (p. 250). Clearly then, contra Salter, the notion of ‘one’s due’ is at the heart of Smith’s idea of justice—what varies is the degree to which the impartial spectator approbates the resulting resentment. Lastly, Witztum demonstrates how “as all members of society own their natural faculties, which presumably were given to them to enable them to survive,” there exists a reasonable expectation in Smith to not simply possess one’s own body, but to make use of the intended fruits of said body (that is, life itself) (p. 259). Thus, an economic arrangement that does not guarantee a level of subsistence to all its members would frustrate the expectations of the labourer, causing a “real injury” that would be approbated by the spectator, in turn warranting that justice be “extracted or served by force” (p. 259; 244).
Through his rigorous analysis of how, particularly, the process of approbation by impartial spectator grants rights on the basis of sympathy with one’s ‘reasonable expectation’, Witztum overcomes the difficulties of both Salter and Verburg. What is just is distinguished from what is good not through a priori considerations of substance as per Salter, but rather by the intensity of an impartial spectator’s reaction. Distributional matters, to the extent that they are sympathized with by the spectator (as conditioned by history and context), may thus be integrated into Smith’s idea of ‘perfect rights’ in a way Verburg is unable to achieve. Smith’s emphasis on the importance of commutative justice is consequently upheld; the scope of its reach has simply been analysed to its fullest extent. While Witztum’s interpretation is admittedly complex in its line of argument and reliant on certain (mostly justified) assumptions, he finds a compelling way to reconcile Smith’s moral concerns regarding commercial society with his generalized assertion of its justness using the underlying principle of ‘due shares.’ Smith’s proclamation as to the liberty and justice of commercial society must not be taken as eternal then—it is a qualified claim necessitating constant attention to the subsistence of all.
Works Cited
Salter, J. (1994). ‘Adam Smith on Justice and Distribution in Commercial Societies’. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 41(3), 299-313.
Verburg, R. (2000). ‘Adam Smith’s Growing Concern on the Issue of Distributive Justice’. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 7(1), 23-44.
Witztum, A. (1997). ‘Distributive Considerations in Smith’s Conception of Economic Justice’. Economics and Philosophy, 13(2), 242-259.
Oskar Steiner 