Political Friendship and Degrowth by Areti Giannopoulou

Author:Areti Giannopoulou [Giannopoulou, Areti]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781000531022
Google: _69TEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2022-01-31T02:37:17+00:00

Smithian sympathy hides this kind of “strangership”, the attitude towards people who live at the margins of commercial society, and it does not question the unequal division of wealth and power. So, it cannot be contended that it embodies political friendship, since the latter implies an active concern for the other’s well-being, an undertaking of action for improving the other’s condition and volition for limiting economic differences.

Summing up, it may be said that the market, its ‘providence’, its “invisible hand” is what guarantees the good life in modern society according to Smith. Citizens involve themselves in trade and entrepreneurship, they communicate with each other in terms of trade, seeking their own interests, and thus automatically they further one another’s purposes. They do not produce for one another but for themselves, in order to make a profit from their labour. Smith holds that the “property which every man has in his own labour” should be “the most sacred and inviolable” since “it is the original foundation of all other property” (Smith, 1976a, p. 138). The ability to work is man’s “human capital” that he can sell in the market so as to ameliorate his condition. Smith cannot imagine people working with the intention of advancing the well-being of one another because for him it is self-interest and not altruism that can make individuals industrious and because humans as finite biological beings cannot care for the whole of society. However, what they can do for one another is to respect one another’s legal rights, and one another’s freedom to chase their interests within the market. This kind of respect, it could be argued, along with the indirect support for one another’s good and his “strangership”, constitute the weak Smithian friendship.

Smith seems to conceive society in contractual terms and he bases society’s cohesion and progress on the market and on the lawful participation in the market. He conceives citizenship and citizens’ relations in terms of an economic contract. Thus, market society resembles the commercial agreements that Aristotle uses in order to determine what a polis is not. For Aristotle, as we have said, a polis is considered as such because citizens care for one another’s character, for one another’s virtue. In contrast, Smith models political community and citizenship on the market logic and thereby his political friendship is rather frail. Although the market is to avail all citizens, it does not do so, nor does it extinguish economic differences since the latter are necessary for the functioning of the market and also they are justified because they arise from “the various degrees of capacity, industry, and diligence in the different individuals” (Smith, 1978, p. 338). Smith, however, acknowledges that being at ease leads to more sympathy towards others (Smith, 1976b, p. 205) but on the other hand, he seems to believe that the ‘amount’ of this moral attitude should be determined by the market. In other words, the degree of friendship among citizens should not overcome the limits that the market poses in order to safeguard its proper functioning.

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