------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
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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