There are many cases for liberty in Smith. We can view capitalism as broadly synonymous with what Smith called “the liberal plan” or the “system of natural liberty” in which “every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.” 2 But if we think about capitalism simply in terms of the private ownership of property, which includes a person’s ownership of her physical and human capital and the liberty to use that capital as she sees fit, the word can be reasonably mapped onto Smith’s thought.

Smith of course never used the word “capitalism”-that came with Karl Marx and his followers. To Smith, “common good capitalism” would seem redundant. Our economic situation is a far cry from the economic freedom advocated by our founders and the luminaries of the classical liberal tradition, such as Adam Smith. But those arrangements are shaped by some wrongheaded policies, regulations, and special interests.

It is true that our economic arrangements occasionally serve the good of a select few at the cost of the many. But I’d like to consider a question elicited by the title of Rubio’s program: What is the relationship between capitalism and the common good? We do well to consider the harmful effects of our current complex of regulations-for example, occupational licensing restrictions, wage laws, and zoning regulations-on American opportunity before stepping towards industrial policy. Rubio’s patter touches upon important social and political issues-the collapse of traditional family structures, the changing composition of the American manufacturing sector, trade with China, and the scope of the horizon of opportunities for low-skilled workers. “Common good capitalism” echoes themes in other recent conservative thought and is not dissimilar to Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda. In a speech last November at Catholic University, 1 Marco Rubio elaborated a program of “common good capitalism.” Drawing on the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and John Paul II, Rubio presents a vision of “a system of free enterprise in which workers fulfill their obligation to work and enjoy the benefits of their work, and where businesses enjoy their right to make a profit and reinvest enough of those profits to create dignified work for Americans.” The plan to create “dignified work,” in Rubio’s estimation, calls for an active policy agenda in which government seeks to affect the level, and to some extent the composition, of business investment.

Sam smith quotes economics