Adam Smith Comics: Man of System
May 11, 2023
"[The Man of System] seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board."
"[The Man of System] seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board."
Our third entry in our NEW AdamSmithWorks comic series takes a look at Adam Smith's Man of System and why treating people as your pawns will cause you to lose in the end. Artist Douglas Curtis and script author and editor Jeremy Lott put together a playful defense of pawns and their, also important, desires. You can read more about the man of system here at the Online Library of Liberty.
The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess–board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess–board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess–board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. (TMS VI.ii.2.17)
Douglas Curtis and Jeremy Lott's Adam Smith Comics: The Invisible Hand
Paula Richey and Jeremy Lott's AdamSmithComics: The Opening of The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Teacher Resource for a Man of System Activity