Business Ethics and the Origins of Contemporary Capitalism: Economics and Ethics in the Work of Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer

TL;DR — Patricia Werhane argues that Herbert Spencer, not Adam Smith, is the true individualist and ‘night watchman’ theorist behind modern ideas of capitalism.

A Journal of Business Ethics article by Werhane, then Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Virginia’s Darden School and author of Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism.

Werhane compares the two thinkers usually lumped together as founders of free-market thinking. Smith, she argues, offered a political economy embedded in justice, sympathy and institutions, which deserves revisiting; it is Spencer who is the individualist, perhaps an egoist, who supports a minimal “night watchman” state. She also highlights Spencer’s less-remembered case for democratic workplace management as a twist on libertarianism.

What it is: a peer-reviewed philosophy-of-business article by a leading scholar in the field. In copyright (an EBSCO copy).

Where this came from

• A copy saved in October 2026.

15 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.