By Ana Londe Silva (anapls@cedeplar.ufmg.br)

“The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any”.^[1]

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

Ancient Greece and Rome, feudal Western Europe, and 18th-century American colonies shared an important characteristic according to Adam Smith’s political economy: all faced the economic disadvantages that emerged from the massive employment of coerced labor. The Scottish philosopher was convinced that slave labor had always been more expensive than free labor because enslaved workers had no incentives to increase their own productivity.

The lack of incentives faced by people under bondage was grounded on their condition of extreme dependence according to Smith^[2]. Being completely subjected to the slave-owner’s desires,  they did not experience the liberty and security required to ‘enjoy the fruits’ of their labor^[3]. But why would they need liberty and security to be more productive if they could be forced to work through violence? The philosopher did not consider the use of violence as an effective way to increase labor productivity. Actually, he argued that the productivity of a slave-based activity would increase when slaves were not subject to the utmost violence^[4].

For Smith, what really drives a person to work harder is the human’s natural desire to improve their own condition. The individual’s desire for improvement, understood as the attempt to increase personal wealth and/or achieve a better social position, should be ‘protected by law and allowed by liberty’^[5]. Enslaved workers could not legally possess anything beyond their daily subsistence without the consent of their ‘owner’^[6]. Therefore, according to him, people under slavery would never face the same incentives as free workers to produce as much as possible hoping to improve their own condition. For this reason, he believed that the low productivity of slave labor would always increase its cost.

But, if that was the case, how did Smith explain the high profitability of sugar-cane plantations in the British Caribbean colonies at his time? These profits, according to him, were artificially maintained above their normal rates by the economic policies regulating the international colonial trade. In other words, the high profitability of sugar-cane plantations was a consequence of commercial and production monopolies. Under free colonial trade, planters could not afford the higher cost of the massive employment of slave-labor in agriculture^[7].

However, this is not equivalent to say that Adam Smith believed that free trade would unequivocally end Atlantic slavery. On the contrary, he was concerned about the possible hindrances to global emancipation. One of them was economic, since he believed that no government would have the authority required to manumit enslaved Africans and, thereby, extinguish the larger part of white colonists wealth^[8]. Even though Smith believed that these same colonists only afforded the expenses of slave labor because they benefited from monopolies, he did not postulate a straightforward causation between free trade and abolition.

What is most striking about Smith’s theory of slavery is that it goes on the opposite direction of the usual arguments of his time. Scholars often tell us that antislavery writers mobilized moral arguments to fight the economic discourse grounded on the extreme profitability of colonial slavery and its relevance to Britain’s own economy^[9]. In this broader scenario, Adam Smith not only reinforced his defense of the superior productivity of free labor – which was questioned back then and remained under dispute for the next centuries – but also reconciled it with the undeniable profitability of colonial plantations.

Author’s bio: Ana Londe Silva is a PhD student in Economics/History of Economic Thought at Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She is currently researching the nexus between political economy and antislavery in Britain’s public debate during the mid to late-18th century.

Further reading

Anonymous. An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America from a Censure of Mr. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, By an American. London: Printed for the author. Sold by T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt, in the Strand, 1764.

Luban, Daniel. Adam Smith on vanity, domination, and history. Modern Intellectual History, v. 9, n. 2, p. 275–302, 2012.

Salter, John. Adam Smith on slavery. History of Economic Ideas, v. 4, n. 1, 1996.

Shiliam, Robbie. Forget English freedom, remember Atlantic Slavery: Common Law, Commercial Law and the significance of slavery for Classical Political Economy. New Political Economy, vol.17, No.5, 2012.

Endnotes

^[1]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 387.

^[2]             Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael, P.G. Stein. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 176

^[3]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 405.

^[4]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 587

^[5]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 341-346.

^[6]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 386-389

^[7]             Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), 2 vol., edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984, p. 388.

^[8]             Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael, P.G. Stein. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 187-188, 451-52.

^[9]             For a discussion about Adam Smith’s difference in relation to other political economy writers see Greene, Jack P. Evaluating empire and confronting colonialism in eighteenth-century Britain. Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, chapter 5.

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