Gregg on Peart and Levy, eds., _The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism_

[Book Reviews in Economic and Business History]

Published by EH.NET (December 2008)

Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy, editors, _The Street Porter and the 
Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism_. Ann Arbor, MI: 
University of Michigan Press, 2008. viii + 437 pp. $60 (hardcover), 
ISBN: 978-0-472-11644-7.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Samuel Gregg, Acton Institute.


In a world where academic disciplines work in increasing isolation from 
each other and where much contemporary economic science functions almost 
as a branch of applied mathematics, it is always refreshing to come 
across texts that seek to re-open a substantial conversation between 
social philosophy and economics. Adam Smith, among other fathers of 
modern economics, would have thought it strange that the discussion ever 
stopped. It is not surprising then that a number of philosophers, 
economists and students of political economy view Smith’s corpus, with 
its profoundly integrative approach to human knowledge, as the place to 
begin articulating novel approaches to important social, political, and 
economic dilemmas of the present.

“Analytical egalitarianism” is the phrase employed by the editors of 
this volume of essays, conversations, and correspondence to describe 
their desire to apply Smith’s model of social interactions as exchanges 
among equals, in the sense of “the theoretical system that abstracts 
from any inherent difference among persons” (p. 1), to a range of 
contemporary problems. It is distinguished from the more common 
theoretical and political use of the word “egalitarian” understood as 
the advocacy of the normative goal of equalizing income (and, one might 
add, virtually everything else), which the editors label “practical 
egalitarianism” (p. 1). According to the editors, Sandra J. Peart and 
David M. Levy, debates over practical egalitarianism underline key 
divisions between the political right and left. By contrast, analytical 
egalitarianism, they suggest, has the potential to transcend these 
divisions and to develop symmetries between thinkers apparently at odds 
over many questions such as James Buchanan and the late John Rawls.

To illustrate their argument’s validity, the editors have assembled an 
impressive group of scholars interested in theoretical and applied 
economics as well as the much neglected history of economic thought. 
Stressing that Smith’s analytical egalitarianism essentially disappeared 
from economics in the 1850s as concepts of hierarchy and race were 
imported into the discipline, the authors share a common commitment to 
the notion that classical political economy “_rightly_ presupposed human 
homogeneity and _rightly_ rejected hierarchical presuppositions of any 
sort’ (p. 4). The key anthropological assumption of this approach is 
that of Smith: that all people “are motivated by fame and fortune, and 
we are all equally capable of making decisions” (p. 5).

Divided into five parts, _The Street Porter and the Philosopher_ 
addresses the general subjects of politics, markets, and equality; 
Smithian themes; the role of the expert; literature, biology, and 
economics; and concludes with previously unpublished correspondence 
between James Buchanan and John Rawls from the late-1970s. The quality 
of the essays is remarkably even. Those especially interested in the 
history of economic thought will find that the papers by Maria Pia 
Paganelli and Leonadis Montes provide striking insights respectively 
into Adam Smith’s ideas about usury and debates surrounding the famous 
Das Adam Smith Problem that has consumed the energies of many German 
intellectuals from the late-eighteenth century onwards. Equally 
revealing are the studies by Thomas Leonard as well as Peart and Levy 
into how the eugenics movement, with all its presumptions concerning the 
alleged innate superiority of certain races and the inferiority of whole 
categories of human beings (i.e., assumptions opposed to those of 
analytical egalitarianism), exerted considerable influence over 
progressive schools of thought pursuing the goals of practical 
egalitarianism.

Two conversations concerning themes related to analytical egalitarianism 
are interspersed through the book. Transcripts of conversations, however 
well edited, inevitably lack the precision of the authored text. Then 
there is the inherent difficulty of conveying the context and atmosphere 
of the discussion. Despite these limitations, the conversations 
contained in this book illustrate how deeply two prominent 
twentieth-century economists, Warren Samuels and James Buchanan, have 
absorbed Smith’s insights and applied them in different ways to their 
own work.

The book closes with the Rawls-Buchanan correspondence of the 1970s, 
which is provided with a very helpful contextual introduction by Peart 
and Levy. Both the introduction and correspondence underline the 
considerable degree of harmony between Rawls’ “justice as fairness” and 
Buchanan’s “politics as exchange.” One has the impression from the 
correspondence that Buchanan was rather more interested in exploring 
this and other commonalities than Rawls who, at times, seems to prefer 
circling around some of Buchanan’s suggestions rather than squarely 
engaging them. There will, of course, be many who suggest that the 
political and legal project of Rawls and his numerous disciples is so 
inseparable from the central agenda of _A Theory of Justice_ and 
associated works -- which is surely that of practical egalitarianism -- 
that one can only really associate Rawls with the project of analytical 
egalitarianism by effectively (and perhaps artificially) quarantining 
Rawls’ interest in these matters from the primary concerns of his work.

This minor observation aside, Peart and Levy have performed an 
invaluable service to the engagement of modern social philosophy with 
economics as well as the development of innovative ways of 
conceptualizing the modern history of economics. In many respects, they 
provide a model for how a return to the insights of the great 
philosopher-economists of the past provides illumination for the future 
of economic thought and its ability to resolve contemporary political 
tensions.


Dr. Samuel Gregg is research director at the Acton Institute and author, 
most recently, of _The Commercial Society_ (2007).

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