The Federalist Paper

I really enjoyed this past week's reading of a few selected Federalist papers, especially as we read them side-by-side with Adam Smith's economic theory. I guess this blog is supposed to be on a single Federalist paper, but I'm going to play with that a little. What I appreciated the most in all of these works - James Madison and Adam Smith together - was the similar theme of pluralism.

In Federalist 51 and 57, James Madison argues that the best cure for factions is actually to let factions perpetuate and multiply. The fact of having "several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places" (51). A plurality of many minority factions provides safety from the take-over of a single majority faction. The presence of a "multiplicity of interests" and a "multiplicity of sects" will, Madison argues, protect in turn civil and religious liberty (51). A multiplicity of factions and interests requires, as Madison more fully elaborates in Federalist 57, a large are of land. Here, Madison argues that factions act out of self-interest, but further that having several competing parties act out of self-interest actually benefits the rights and liberties of all, because it checks the 'tyranny of the faction,' as we could say.

Madison says it this way: "Extend the sphere" (allow a single government to rule a larger populace) "and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens" (57). This, as Dr. Hozapfel mentioned in class, is James Madison's so-called Large State Theory, and it seems, to this point, to have more or less worked.

This sounds, in a certain way, similar to Adam Smith's theories set forth in The Wealth of Nations. From the very beginning, Smith praises the "division of labour" because it allows for improvement of "skill, dexterity, and judgment," giving the classic example of the hatpin makers. For Smith, divvying up tasks allows workers to specialize, which enables efficiency and productivity. This clearly recalls Madison's claim that a greater diversity of factions enables a productive protection of civil and religious liberties.

In the second chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Smith states he fundamental principle of his economic theory: that the market operates on self-interest, which actually benefits the market. This is so similar to what Madison says - that several competing (and let's say 'specialized') factions can actually factions benefit the society.

In the third chapter, Smith argues that in a small market, there is less division of labor, and that thus in a larger market, there is greater diversity and specialization of labor. Again this sounds like Madison: in a large populace, there is a greater diversity of interests and thus factions.

The gist is this:

Both Adam Smith and James Madison argue that in a larger market or a larger population, there is a great degree of specialization. For Smith's economic theory this means that rather than being a jack-of-all-trades, an individual in the market will analyze basketball statistics or make shoelaces for a living. For Madison's political theory, this means that an individual will be a tobacco lobbyist or protest abortion clinics. In both theories, this diversity and specialization benefits the whole society. In Smith's economy, our basketball statistics analyst can call a plumber to fix his shower head and buy his milk and bread at the grocery store rather than farming himself. In Madison's political 'economy,' the tobacco lobbyists and pro-lifers, along with thousands of other factions, are vying for their own interests, which competition means that neither can take over and rule as a tyrannical majority.

Cool.