CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

seated concern for exemplary behavior, there was, between his ethics and
his self-interest, no conflict.
Das Adam Smith Problem? The supposed contradiction between Moral
Sentiments and Wealth of Nations does not prevail in all people. It does manifest
itself in society, but it is not an inherent flaw that cannot be overcome,
either within a single person’s character or in the scholarship surrounding
Smith’s two books. The author of these seminal works would have understood
and respected J.W. Baker, and today Smith would turn to those puzzling
over Moral Sentiments’ ethical system and Wealth of Nations’ economic
system and say in his gentle manner, “You see, ladies and gentlemen, there is
no problem, except as we may choose to create one.”
THE TEARS OF ADAM SMITH
The Anguish of Adam Smith 297
Theory of Moral Sentiments was subjected to widespread commentary, both
during Smith’s lifetime and deep into the next century after his death. One
objection to his analysis focused on the concern that, seemingly, a sense of
sympathy had to be prefigured within a person before sympathy could flow
to another person. Some philosophers saw this inversion of order as a fatal
flaw, which was in part addressed by Smith as he strengthened the role of the
impartial spectator in later editions of the book. A more common criticism
was that the ethical system leaves each individual in a position of being his
or her own arbiter of behavior, producing variable standards according to
circumstance and place. Related to this, another criticism was that the approbation
of others, as an essential element in the system, subjected morality
to group norms and pressures and worked against principled stances at odds
with social values.
Whatever the merits of these assessments, there were at least two other
factors that contributed, after its initial popularity, to Moral Sentiments’ decline
in readership. First, Wealth of Nations eclipsed the earlier work and became
the book on which Smith’s fame most firmly rested. And second, the
fields of ethics and moral philosophy, following the active explorations of
the Enlightenment period, faded as subjects of inquiry over the course of
two generations following Smith’s death. In fact, it was not until the 1971
publication of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, commented upon in