Adam Smith and the man-nature relationship

Abstract

Usually, Adam Smith has been described as the defender of the free market and his political economy has not been related to environmental issues. This article aims to present Smith as an ecological thinker since nature has also been defined in his works, and his analysis has been combined with a moral dimension. The methodology is based on an extensive review of the literature, combining aspects of the PRISMA method and the analytical approach of recursive content abstraction.

We argue that Smith held that markets must be in balance with the natural world, an idea we could interpret as a kind of social ecology. As specified by environmental economics, in classical economics attention has been paid to the material aspect of production, unlike in neoclassical economics. The Wealth of Nations is related to the emergence of knowledge about nature and the environment, which characterized the Enlightenment. The Theory of Moral Sentiments shows how man transforms nature but maintains that these changes must be subject to the good of man and respect the limits of the natural world, thus introducing environmental ethics.

We conclude that Adam Smith's political economy was based on a socio-ecological vision, although during his time climate change, threats to biodiversity, and the depletion of natural resources were not problems. Therefore, Smith’s model does not include important aspects of the Anthropocene. However, rescuing all the contributions to the man-nature relationship, this model can be revised and expanded to be applied to the search for sustainability. Moreover, this will allow us to streamline our political and economic analysis to tackle the multidimensional crisis we are experiencing today.