Adam Smith's inquiry into the nature and causes of the death of nations

The year 1776 saw the publication of two of the Enlightenment's landmark texts: Edward Gibbon's multivolume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Adam Smith's multivolume Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Each was the work of an erudite scholar deeply learned in ancient and modern history. Each reflected its author's intimate conversance with the 18th century's leading theories of political economy and moral philosophy. And each in time would launch an intellectual revolution in its particular branch of social science. Yet for all this, the two works also share a further, less well appreciated similarity: both are inquiries into the causes of the decline and demise of nations. Today we tend to associate this inquiry with Gibbon more than Smith. The Smith we have come to know is a theorist of growth and “the natural progress of opulence” and not a theorist of decline (WN 3.1).1 Yet while his insights into growth undeniably constitute his most recognized contribution to the emergence of modern political economy, reading Smith exclusively as a theorist of growth can lead us to miss the sophistication of his inquiry into the causes of national decline. What follows thus reverses the causal arrow that has led other scholars to read Gibbon by way of Smith's influence (e.g., Pocock, 1999, pp. 309–329, 2003, pp. 372–399), and instead revisits Smith through the lens of Gibbon's key political problem in order to bring to the fore Smith's understudied inquiry into the causes of national decline and fall. The chief benefit of this reading lies in how it clarifies an underappreciated paradox at the core of Smith's project.2 At the heart of this paradox lies Smith's understanding of the necessary tension between national opulence and national power. Put simply, Smith taught that national opulence is ultimately inimical to national power; the paradox, in short, is that the very growth that political economy seeks to promote ultimately proves counter to the nation's political interests.3 Thus even as “the great object of the political economy of every country, is to increase the riches and power of that country” (WN 2.5.31), Smith repeatedly would argue that the discrete project of increasing a country's riches subverts the discrete project of increasing a country's power. Smith furthermore believed that this paradox was both natural and necessary. This is especially clear in the way he frames the paradox in his lectures on jurisprudence: “it must happen that the improvement of the arts and commerce must make a great declension in the force and power of the republic in all cases” (LJA iv.81; italics added). Or again: “wherever therefore arts and commerce engage the citizens, either as artisans or master tradesmen, the strength and the force of the city must be very much diminished” (LJA iv.85; italics added). And again, progress in the useful arts, together with “commerce, the attendant on all these, necessarily undo the strength and cause the power to vanish of such a state till it be swallowed up by some neighboring state” (LJA iv.80-81; italics added). What is especially striking in this last formulation is Smith's insistence not only that national opulence and national power are “necessarily” in tension, but that the ultimate end or resolution of this tension is the collapse of the nation. Here and elsewhere Smith frames this in existential terms as a matter of the nation's annihilation. He takes this approach, one presumes, in order to emphasize the magnitude of the potential threat; a teacher of rhetoric and renowned rhetorician in his own right, Smith's use of rhetoric in his framing of moral and political problems in his economic writings is well appreciated today (see, e.g., Herzog, 2013; Ortmann & Walraevans, 2022, pp. 31–65). Yet the present essay's focus is less on how rhetorical concerns may have shaped Smith's methods of presenting his paradox, but rather on the substantive mechanisms Smith sees as driving the decline of commercial societies.4 In an effort to unpack Smith's understanding of these mechanisms, in what follows I treat them under two distinct headings: mechanisms giving rise to external vulnerabilities and mechanisms giving rise to internal vulnerabilities. By disaggregating these two distinct processes, I aim to demonstrate the role of each in Smith's inquiry into national decline, and also to contribute to a central debate in the specialized scholarship. Recent Smith scholars have increasingly become interested in the role of the concept of corruption in his thought, and have helpfully documented its significance in Smith's moral philosophy and his political theory.5 What follows seeks to add to this by demonstrating that Smith in fact distinguished between two discrete types of corruption in wealthy societies. Each type, he believed, can be traced to the progress of opulence, and each type he saw as having identifiable political consequences. But while one type renders the nation susceptible to external threats to its existence, the other renders a nation susceptible to internal threats to its existence. What follows takes up Smith's analysis of these challenges serially, and, in so doing, aims to show how Smith directly connects each of these threats to a specific type of corruption, as well as how he traces each of these types of corruption more generally to the progress of opulence. Smith's concerns with regard to the external threats to which commercial opulence renders advanced nations susceptible is rooted in one of the fundamental principles of his political theory: the primacy of national defense. Smith very explicitly claims “defense” is “much more important than opulence” (WN 4.2.30). And while the specific context of this claim demands recognition—it comes in a discussion of the 1660 Acts of Navigation, in the course of which Smith presents an exception to his otherwise generally unqualified support for free trade (see Collins, 2022)—the idea at its heart reappears at several places in his political thought, and in particular his accounts of the origins and ends of political society. Smith repeatedly argues that society's origin lies in an attempt to provide effective defense against external invaders. The original impetus for mutual association in the age of hunters was a concern for “mutual safety” and “mutual defense” (LJB 19, 27–28) so that allies “might be at hand to give one another assistance and protection against the common enemy” (LJA iv.36-37; cf. LJA iv.64). This need to secure of mutual defense against only as the the hunters to the of in which and pp. pp. Smith to on the primacy of mutual that of together under to support one another against the of (LJA Smith to emphasize the role of and in for as well as the as (LJB And this concern its in advanced commercial in which “the of the is of the the and of other (WN cf. and leading Smith to that “the most important of the of is of defense and (WN cf. Smith's concern with the of for effective external defense is thus a focus of both his analysis of the progress of opulence as well as his political This is well appreciated What is less well appreciated is the of Smith's concern with regard to the in which the progress of opulence in a nation in fact it more rather than less for a nation to secure the of and the of the Smith's claim on this is that even as works to secure the of that make the growth of commerce and national opulence the growth of opulence which ultimately subverts the and of by national defense. Smith's on this are to be in what he as well as in what he to Smith in fact to the in which national opulence benefit his for is of how a can that can defense this Smith to a on the by of advanced (WN he on how the growth of national opulence renders the nation susceptible to both and of these of Smith traces to the corruption that he to be the necessary of commercial In a of that have and to Smith traced “the of a commercial on the and of a or and the (LJB Here and elsewhere Smith presents these as moral the of and and and to This moral is especially in his of the in which presents power and riches as and to a to the at every to into and to into e.g., But Smith was not a and of the moral of commercial corruption is an of the political and economic causes and of these moral The of the of are necessarily by The is in a of which the the or very the has to his or to his in for which He the of such and generally as and as it is for a to at his own particular trade in this to be at the of his and But in every and this is the state into which the that the great of the must necessarily takes some to (WN cf. Smith's of the moral of has a great of particular has Smith's political to this and in particular the of he in fact for the he to Yet this focus on the and of his has two of his concerns the to which Smith this as a natural and necessary Smith thus that these “necessarily” the great of the of and to The is that Smith sees this corruption as several discrete Smith not some corruption of but a corruption of the the and the This is important even as Smith traces the corruption of all of these types of to the of specialized he on to argue that the political problems to the corruption of the are distinct the political problems to the corruption of the intellectual the corruption of the the nation's to threats the corruption of the intellectual its to threats Smith's of the way in which the corruption of the renders a nation susceptible to external is especially Smith is as as he can be that “the of every must more or the of the great of the (WN the of the Smith commercial progress thus to the strength and of the nation. 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