Adam Smith's Lost Legacy

Gavin Kennedy makes an important point about the underlying perspective of Adam Smith.

Smith did not write in favour of “enterprise”; he wrote in favour of “commercial society”. The former is a projection of a modern word onto the past; in fact, he displayed throughout Wealth Of Nations strong suspicions about the conduct of “merchants and manufacturers”.

The entire post is well worth a read and it reminded me of Samuel Gregg's book of the same title - The Commercial Society.

From a review of the book on the Acton site

Gregg explains the centrality for a commercial society of the healthy human attribute of trust. The centrality of trust is found in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Gregg examines the contributions of Adam Smith’s fellows of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the section Peace and Tolerance, Gregg expands upon the contribution of French philosophers to those principles. He quotes the letter of Archbishop Francois Fenelon of Cambrai to Louis XIV on the destructive impact of his wars. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Constant, and Tocqueville developed the theme of the contribution of commercial society to peace and toleration. Gregg quotes the French classical liberal Benjamin Constant: “It is clear that the more the commercial tendency prevails, the weaker the tendency to war must become.”