Adam Smith and the “other” necessary to the “laissez faire-laissez passer"

Abstract

The objective of this work is to contribute to the debate of economic liberalism as a practice and ideology since from the perspective of the necessary “other” to the laissez faire-laissez passer disseminated by Adam Smith. We suppose that his conception is so radical that surpasses the capitalism of his time as it does today, simply because that foundational otherness of all egalitarian exchanges, which serves as the basis for his proposal, has only existed in fleeting, unrepeatable, interstitial ways.

Otherness that is still present in these brief ways among the subjectivist, economic and financial determinants of the last three hundred years, therefore, confirms its possibility as an alternative, certainly revolutionary, even facing the intersubjectivities of the collectivization of individualism that we live. For these purposes, the theoretical-methodological approach followed highlights financial economic practices induced by sensitivities analyzed by Smithian thought around alterity, the “other” as their own and common criterion in economic interaction and fundamental for economic growth and consumer welfare.