Human beings are inherently pro-social creatures. Aristotle went so far as to refer to us as political animals, driven by our nature to create associations that culminate in the broader community of the polis. And our capacity for reciprocity, trust, and cooperation has deep evolutionary origins. These big brains of ours developed, in part, to handle the growing size and complexity of our social networks. We are wired to connect. It is no surprise, then, that research continues to demonstrate that social bonds are essential to human flourishing and well-being.1

Adam Smith seems to have tapped into this truth about human nature. While acknowledging mankind’s selfish tendencies, Smith noted that, “there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”2 This is why “man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.” Because of this natural endowment, we humans are able to expand our circle of trust and cooperation beyond our kin to a far greater extent than other animals. This has in turn helped shape our cultural institutions, including, perhaps surprisingly, commercial markets.3 Commerce, therefore, is pro-social. Markets are relational in nature.

Enlightenment Heavyweights and Others in Favor of Commerce

Historically, merchants and markets have more often than not been on the receiving end of suspicion and disrepute. But an alternative view of market exchange—doux (gentle) commerce—began to develop among various thinkers during what has become known as the Enlightenment.4 Perhaps the most well-known proponent of this “gentle commerce” was the French political philosopher Montesquieu:

  • Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores. Therefore, one should not be surprised if our mores are less fierce than they were formerly…. Commerce… polishes and softens barbarous mores, as we see every day.
  • The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace. Two nations that trade with each other become reciprocally dependent; if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling, and all unions are founded on mutual need…. The spirit of commerce produces in men a certain feeling for exact justice…. By contrast, total absence of commerce produces the banditry that Aristotle puts among the ways of acquiring.5

Other Enlightenment era thinkers (including Smith) lifted their voices in support of the gentleness and civilizing effects of markets, arguing that commerce is not just a force for economic prosperity, but a catalyst for a bundle of habits and values that lead to social cooperation. Commerce, they believed, can make friends out of enemies and build trust with those who we would otherwise view with suspicion.

Social Capital Is at the Heart of Commerce

Trust may vary from transaction to transaction, but we’re generally pretty trusting of people we do business with. Think about your own transactions. When you buy something at the store or online, how much do you actually worry over the trustworthiness of the person on the other side? Is it enough to make you not make the purchase? Better yet, what was the name of the cashier that checked you out at your last supermarket visit? Do you even know how many hands handled your last Amazon purchase? In many of these cases, you are trusting total—and sometimes faceless—strangers to come through for you without a second thought. The “commercial society”—as Adam Smith called it—is ultimately a cooperative endeavor, facilitating trust across great distances and different people. It both relies on and produces social capital. And it does so by making cooperation valuable.

For Smith, a commercial society was one in which “the division of labour has been… thoroughly established” and “it is but a very small part of a man’s wants which the produce of his own labour can supply.”6 No longer do we produce everything we need ourselves; no more isolated, atomistic self-sufficiency. Instead, we specialize, we produce, and we trade. We become economically interdependent with one another. In a commercial society, “every man… lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant,” and we prosper together through mutually beneficial trade. To even risk interdependence requires a trusting, cooperative spirit. But actually practicing interdependence can further cultivate this spirit. For Smith, the “division of labor… is not originally the effect of any human wisdom,” but instead “the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature… to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.”7 Commerce is an extension of humanity’s social nature.

The Social Nature of Business

Market exchange within a commercial society implies market competition. And many believe that cutthroat, winner-takes-all competition creates skepticism and distrust for those who participate in it. Competition fuels greed, leading to cut corners and shady business practices to get ahead. It seems only natural that this would be the outcome of a system built on the profit motive. When the bottom line is all that matters, trustworthiness goes out the window. Trust is sure to crumble under the weight of such perverse incentives. Right?

But these assumptions, like many made about the commercial society, are also mistaken. And they are mistaken because they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of market competition. What makes an entrepreneur or business competitive in a market economy is not of the might-makes-right variety. It’s not even due primarily to the lone-wolf nature of eccentric innovators (though that may play a role). And while efficiency matters, dishonest cost-cutting isn’t the way to market success either.

What makes a market actor competitive is their ability to identify and supply the wants and needs of society through persuasion. The entrepreneur’s insight, according to the late economist Don Lavoie, is not because of “his separateness from others but, indeed, to his higher degree of sensitivity to what others are looking for.” The successful entrepreneurs “are especially well plugged into the culture.” Lavoie called this the “capacity to read the conversations of mankind…. What makes entrepreneurs successful is their ability to join conversational processes and nudge them in new directions.”8

A business competes with other businesses by pitching to consumers, “I can serve you better.” A business competes by trying to out-serve its competitors. And if it doesn’t want to lose the trust of consumers, the business has to live up to its promises. This is why management expert Peter Drucker thought the “profit motive” was such an impoverished explanation for business activity:

  • Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity. If archangels instead of businessmen sat in directors’ chairs, they would still have to be concerned with profitability, despite their total lack of personal interest in making profits.9
“To be competitive in the market is to be serviceable. To be competitive in the market is to be trustworthy. The entire process is a trust-building exercise.”

So profit is a necessary signal of the success of business activity. But it is not the ultimate purpose of business activity. The “one valid definition of business purpose,” according to Drucker, is “to create a customer.” Consumers “demand that business start out with the needs, the realities, the values, of the customers” and “that business define its goal as the satisfaction of customer needs.” Creating a customer is the result of creating value and engaging in mutually-beneficial exchange. Or, as one group of business ethicists put it, “The business of business is business.”10 The entire process of market competition consists of discovering ways to serve society, persuading others to trust that you can serve them well, stewarding resources wisely in the name of that service, and then delivering satisfactory results. To be competitive in the market is to be serviceable. To be competitive in the market is to be trustworthy. The entire process is a trust-building exercise. A commercial society lowers the barriers to exchange and association. This allows people who are different from one another to engage in positive-sum interactions with each other. Value for the participants is thus created through the exchange, but value also begins to be assumed of the participants themselves. The circle of trust begins to expand. Social capital begins to grow.

Doux Commerce Has Empirical Backing

There has been an incredible amount of empirical work done on this topic. Sadly, it seems that few are aware of it. The literature is scattered across various disciplines and academic journals, typically tucked away from the average person. But even scholars may not be aware of the size of the literature.

What does the empirical literature reveal about the pro-social nature of commerce? It reveals that commercial societies are in fact more trusting and cooperative.11 Both survey data and various lab experiments demonstrate that market exposure can increase trust and stigmatize untrustworthy behavior. And despite concerns that markets erode civil society (institutions such as churches, schools, neighborhood organizations), it turns out that greater state ownership of the economy leads to repression of and lower participation in these civil society organizations. The commercial society provides space in which civil society thrives.

Commercial societies are more honest. Corruption levels are lower in more economically free countries. Factors such as economic freedom, decentralization, globalization, secure property rights, and trade openness have been shown to decrease corruption. High levels of regulations are a strong predictor of corruption. Citizens in market societies are also less likely to justify or engage in dishonest behaviors such as cheating or bribery. Even within communist countries such as modern China, more market-oriented regions are less corrupt.

Commerce promotes and is associated with a more universal outlook towards others. It leads us to treat people more fairly and equally. Experiments with small-scale agrarian societies have shown that groups who are more heavily immersed in market exchange with outsiders are more fair and generous in their treatment of fellow participants. We shouldn’t be surprised then to learn that economic freedom has a positive relationship with charitable giving, gender equality, the expansion of civil liberties, and the durability of democratic governance.12

Commerce also makes us a more tolerant bunch. Economic freedom is associated with greater tolerance towards people of another race, homosexuals, communists, and atheists. Pro-trade attitudes have been shown to be negatively associated with isolationism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, prejudice, and a high attachment to one’s neighborhood. Liberal economic institutions breed liberal attitudes.

Finally, commerce leads to less violence and more peace. Commercial societies are less likely to go to war with others or erupt into civil war. Governments within commercial societies harm their citizens less, with greater protection of political and physical integrity rights and reduced chances of genocide. Greater economic freedom is also associated with less terrorism, organized crime, and homicide.

For more on these topics, see

And all of these aspects interact with one another. Violence can be a manifestation of intolerance or perhaps a reaction to unfair treatment by corrupt systems. Unfair treatment can be a manifestation of prejudice toward certain groups. And so on. All of these are manifestations of a breakdown in trust and cooperation; a breakdown in our ability to relate to one another. “The most successful societies,” economist David Rose has written, “are those that support the greatest scale and scope of cooperation. To get the most out of large-group cooperation we have to be able to trust each other in large-group contexts.”13 The commercial society is a successful society. And it is successful because we learn how to relate a little bit better with one another through market exchange.


Footnotes

[1] See Tyler J. VanderWeele, “On the Promotion of Human Flourishing,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 31 (2017): 8148-8156; Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Fleche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee, George Ward, The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course (Princeton University Press, 2018).

[2] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Liberty Fund, 1982).

[3] For the connection between our evolutionary past and the market system, see Paul J. Zak (ed.), Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy (Princeton University Press, 2008); Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, Revised Edition (Princeton University Press, 2010); Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton University Press, 2016); Rojhat Avsar, The Evolutionary Origins of Markets: How Evolution, Psychology, and Biology Have Shaped the Economy (Routledge, 2020); Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).

[4] Albert O. Hirschman, “Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?” Journal of Economic Literature 20:4 (1982): 1463-1484; The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton University Press, 2013 [1977]). Traces of doux commerce can be found among ancient Greeks like Plutarch and the Stoics. See Douglas A. Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 1996), Ch. 1.

[5] Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 338-339.

[6] Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, ed. R.K. Campbell, A.S. Skinner (Liberty Fund, 1981).

[7] Emphasizing the very human aspect of trade, Smith noted, “Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog” (p. 26).

[8] Don Lavoie, “The Discovery and Interpretation of Profit Opportunities: Culture and the Kirznerian Entrepreneur,” in Culture and Economic Action, eds. Laura E. Grube and Virgil Henry Storr (Edward Elgar, 2015), 62-63.

[9] Peter F. Drucker, The Essential Drucker (HarperCollins, 2001), 18-19.

[10] Jason Brennan, William English, John Hasnas, and Peter Jaworksi, Business Ethics for Better Behavior (Oxford University Press, 2021), Ch. 2.

[11] See Eelke de Jong, “The influence of the market economy and economic freedom on culture,” in The Handbook of Research in Economic Freedom, (Niclas Berggren, ed.). Edward Elgar, 2024.

[12] Joseph Henrich (ed.), Robert Boyd (ed.), Samuel Bowles (ed.), Colin Camerer (ed.), Ernst Fehr (ed.), Herbert Gintis (ed.). Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small Scale Societies. Oxford University Press, 2004.

[13] David C. Rose, Why Culture Matters Most (Oxford University Press, 2018), 7.


* Walker Wright is the manager of Academic Programs for a public policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to this role, he was a program manager for Academic & Student Programs with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Walker also spent a decade in logistics, working in both operations and linehaul departments. In Winter 2025, he became an adjunct faculty member at Brigham Young University-Idaho.