Pizhuhish nāmah-i intiqādī-i mutūn va barnāmah hā-yi ̒ulūm-i insāni (Critical Studies in Texts & Programs of Human Sciences)

The Establishment of the Market; Critique and Examination of the Idea of Market Autonomy in Adam Smith's Treatise on Moral Sentiments Based on Historical-Comparative Sociology.

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research

Authors

Hosein Kachouian 1
Masoumeh Nadiri 2

1 Iran - Tehran, University of Tehran - Faculty of Social Sciences - Department of Sociology

2 Department of Economic Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran - Tehran, Iran

10.30465/crtls.2025.53015.2963
Abstract
According to the principles of economics, the market has a well-established mechanism and any force outside this order disrupts the formation and play of the market. This ruling has its roots in Adam Smith's plan of the mechanism of human action in the Treatise on Moral Sentiments. This idea gave the science of economics the opportunity to claim to be scientific (calculation, predictability, and the freedom of its judgments from non-calculation). But on the other hand, it de humanized the scene of economic action and reduced it to a pre-programmed machine. In this plan, calculation is assumed to be inhuman. Although internal and external critics of economic science have raised numerous debates about the idea of ​​the market, because they have not been able to show how decision and will, or the non-calculation, exist at the foundation of human calculation and economic action, their criticisms have ultimately failed to show why and how the market needs politics in its formation. At best, they have only succeeded in showing that the state, devoid of politics, must take care of it according to the laws of the market, and thus the problem of the duality of economic man and social man with will remains.

Keywords

Free market mechanism
Homo economicus
national government
relationship between calculation and non-calculation
relationship between economics and politics.َ Adam Smith

Subjects

Pizhuhish nāmah-i intiqādī-i mutūn va barnāmah hā-yi ̒ulūm-i insāni (Critical Studies in Texts & Programs of Human Sciences)

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 10 January 2026

  • Receive Date 03 August 2025
  • Revise Date 19 December 2025
  • Accept Date 12 November 2025

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