Adam Smith is often read as having sought to develop a systematic and universally applicable science of political economy, but in fact he did not believe that it was even possible to do so. This is true for a variety of reasons. First, Smith was generally skeptical of system-building, holding that intellectual systems tend to be reductive and distorting. Although Smith aspired to develop a theory of natural jurisprudence that would lay out a set of universally applicable laws, such laws were in fact incompatible with his own conception of justice. Smith’s general approach to politics and political economy also tended to be far more pragmatic, in several senses of that term, than universal or scientific. Finally, Smith’s aversion to the “spirit of system” in politics led him to be wary of implementing even his own preferred policies immediately or in their entirety.
