Will the Real Adam Smith Please Stand Up?: Teaching Social Economics in the Principles Course

Part of the difficulty of introducing social economics into the principles course is the perception that social economics is anathema to mainstream economics. 1 As noted by Warren Samuels, however, "neoclassical economics is already a form of social economics" despite its "pretensions of methodological individualism and value-neutrality" [Samuels, p. 2]. Heilbroner also makes the case that the " ... the preponderance of great economists were aware of economics as explanation systems of particular socioeconomic formations" [Heilbroner 1996, p. 45j.2 Like it or not, economists err in omitting from their models what McCloskey calls "S" variables-variables representing the "social embeddedness" of values which direct human choices [McCloskey 1997, p. 113]. This essay discusses a technique for teaching social economics in Principles of Economics using readings from a great economist, Adam Smith. But who is the real Adam Smith? Max Lerner says Smith, "gave a new dignity to greed," and "sanctified predatory impulses" in society, all of which sounds ominous from a social economic point of view [Lerner, p. ix]. As social economists are well aware, however, there is a much-neglected side to Adam Smith, whose sentiments provide 1 The flyer to the 1998 World Congress of Social Economics advertises that, "Social economists think about economic affairs in ways substantially different than mainstream economists. Social economists recognize two organizing principles, competition and cooperation, as activating economic affairs" (emphasis added). The Constitution of the Association for Social Economics identifies social economics as" ... the reciprocal relationship between economic science and broader questions of human dignity, ethical values, and social philosophy" [Elliott, p. 15]. 2 Examples of great economists one might wish to cite include a moral foundation for commerce [Samuels; Waters; Heilbroner 1982]. It is this Adam Smith that principles students might wish to understand. Before proceeding to a discussion of how to introduce social economics into the principles course, it is helpful to examine why one might wish to do so. The next section addresses two related questions: What are the goals of the principles of economics course? How does social economics advance these stated goals better than alternatives? Objectives and Methods in Principles of Economics The heterogeneity of most principles students creates a multitude of possibly overlapping and conflicting course objectives. (a) Liberal arts students need to learn to think critically [VanSickle; Petr 1990], to write informed essays [Crowe and Youga; Davidson and Gumnior ], to become better citizens via knowledge …