Reclaim Smith to Bury Marx

István Hont contends that 'burying' Marx is not merely refuting him but reconstructing an alternative intellectual lineage: recover the natural‑law and Scottish Enlightenment synthesis (Hume and Smith) to provide a historically grounded theory that links politics, property, and markets. The collected unpublished essays show this project as an explicit post‑Communist strategy to supply a richer theory of market society than nineteenth‑century political economy or Marxism can offer. — If adopted, this framing would shift debates about capitalism and socialism from partisan refutations to reintroducing deep historical theory into policy and education, altering how policymakers and publics justify economic institutions.