In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith starts his chapter on the ‘origin of money,’ as follows:
Where the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society. (WN 1.4.1, p. 37)
Having so introduced ‘commercial society’ in a seminal chapter of the book, Smith then proceeds to ignore the term. He only uses the phrase, ‘commercial society’ hundreds of pages later, when discussing the public’s role in (regulating) education of the lower classes , and then he uses it to accompany a term (‘civilized’) he uses much more frequently: “The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the publick more than that of people of some rank and fortune.” (WN 5.1.f.52, p. 784)
In chapter 1 of his (2022) book, Adam Smith Reconsidered, Paul Sagar argues that ‘commercial society’ is a technical term in Smith. On Sagar’s view, the term is
“restricted…to the analysis of internal relations of members of a community, with regard to how those members attain their ‘wants’, in the context of increasingly widespread and advanced realisation of the division of labour. In Smith’s technical usage…commercial society denotes how ‘every many [sic] becomes in some measure a merchant’ because the division of labour means that in order to survive, and indeed prosper, individuals for the most part enter into the exchange of goods and/of services via market mechanisms so as to satisfy needs and wants. What is ‘properly’ called commercial society is advanced stage of economic interdependence where direct personal toil on the products of subsistence (e.g., hunting, pastorage, tillage) has been superseded by exchanges in webs of market relations. It is thus a term used to denote the internal relations of individuals to each other when it comes to the securing of both the necessities and luxuries of life. (p. 13)
I suspect Sagar is right that ‘commercial society’ was intended as a technical term, although I suspect it didn’t end up playing the role Smith planned when he wrote the book. About that some other time more.
In Smith (and Sagar) commercial society is itself the outcome or effect of a long historical process (“once thoroughly established”) or, as Sagar notes, development (“advanced stage of economic interdependence”). But despite his own description of Smith’s use of commercial society — which to repeat is “advanced stage of economic interdependence where direct personal toil on the products of subsistence (e.g., hunting, pastorage, tillage) has been superseded,” — Sagar wants to deny that ‘commercial society’ is the fourth stage in a four-stage stadial model often attributed by scholars to Smith (p. 16ff). Rather, in so far as Smith is a stadial theorist at all according to Sagar, the fourth stage is not commercial society, but a ‘commercial age.’ (p. 16) I have been critical (recall) of Sagar’s treatment of the stadial theory before so will not repeat that here.
Sagar also wants to argue that for Smith there are different “kinds” of commercial societies (p. 49). This may well be true (and worth further reflection). But this also leads him to make a rather odd claim that on “Smith’s analysis, “advanced and powerful ancient city-states, like Athens and later Rome, qualify as commercial societies in terms of how the division of labour determines that most members of such economically advanced communities live by some sort of exchange.” (pp. 49-50)
I call this an odd claim because Smith recognized (and was also rather critical of the fact) that Athens and Rome were slave-owning societies. At the young scholars session of the International Adam Smith Society Tokyo Conference, Zack Rauwald also made this point in discussion during the Q&A after his talk. I quote the crucial passage from Wealth of Nations:
The policy of the antient republicks of Greece, and that of Rome, though it honoured agriculture more than manufactures or foreign trade, yet seems rather to have discouraged the latter employments, than to have given any direct or intentional encouragement to the former. In several of the ancient states of Greece, foreign trade was prohibited altogether; and in several others the employments of artificers and manufacturers were considered as hurtful to the strength and agility of the human body, as rendering it incapable of those habits which their military and gymnastic exercises endeavoured to form in it, and as thereby disqualifying it more or less or undergoing the fatigues and encountering the dangers of war. Such occupations were considered as fit only for slaves, and the free citizens of the state were prohibited from exercising them. (WN 4.9.47, p. 683.)
As an aside, I suspect this passage partially (alongside Spirit of the Laws) inspired Benjamin Constant’s famous lecture (1814) “The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.” Be that as it may, I would argue that for Smith Athens and Rome are not “properly” commercial societies because the state clearly prevents “every man” to live “by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant” and explicitly looks down on merchants and trade. If Zack and I are right about this, then, given the slave-holding practices of the Europeans, a true commercial society was, for Smith, an ideal to be pursued.
Constant's essay must just about mark the end of Ancients vs Moderns as a set piece. I guess it must have been some time in C17 that (some) Moderns started to think of themselves as having surpassed the Ancients, rather than thinking of a lost golden age. Doubtless you will have a more accurate read on this.