Os Sentimentos Morais da Riqueza das Nações - Progresso e Pobreza na Economia Política Clássica

The debate on the alleged moral and political benefits of infant capitalism - as worked out in the now classical pieces by Louis Dumont, Pierre Rosanvallon and Albert Hirschman - concludes with the identification of a justification for the new order based on its expected positive effects on international peace and social coordination. Adam Smith represents a climax in the sequence of ideas to the extent that he shows how economic interdependence of a typical market economy would solve the problem of social coordination. However, given the salience of the “social question” in the birth of modern political economy, it seems plausible to conceive of social stability as being more robust the more socially fair the order appears to be. In fact, the specific contribution of this article is to demonstrate that, Smith does weave, in the distributive chapters of the Wealth of the Nations, a normative justification for capitalism based on the notion that it can generate a social order, not only congruent but also socially just.