An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Posted by Amazon Deals | Posted in Rare Books, W. Strahan and T. Cadell | Posted on 15-07-2010-05-2008
75
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
|
 List Price: unavailable Sale Price: Too low to display. Availability: unspecified 
|
Product Description
No description available.
Details
No features available.
Incoming search terms for the article:
- james m rawley (1)
Rating
The book is a classic and needs no review from me. However, if you thought that you could download the book from Amazon.com quickly, you will probably be sadly mistaken. I’ve been waiting 30 minutes so far and still my order is “being processed”. No other eBook site on the internet takes more than a few seconds after entering your credit card. If you need this or any ebook in a hurry. Take a look at the other sites out there. Evidently, Amazon understands the package sending business a lot better than they do the electronic media download business!
Rating
He laid the foundation for the capitalist, free market economy and is one the founders of modern day economics. Lissez-faire and how it is accomplished. It should be required for any upper-level economics class. For this reason I gave it four stars. Not to detract from an excellent book, but you must have good working knowledge of economics before reading it.
Rating
The Kindle Modern Library ebook is messed up, unusual for Modern Library Kindles. It reproduces the Carman edition of 1904, a very thoroughly footnoted (or endnoted) version. Each footnote can be reached by clicking on the line where the note occurs — but when you get to the notes, the first ten notes of each chapter are unnumbered, and you have to count, painfully, the number of square-bracketed notes, which are not even paragraphed separately. Since some of the notes are pages long, this counting can take a while. This is by far the most expensive Kindle edition of Adam Smith, and shouldn’t have screwed up its notes — the only reason for paying five extra dollars — in this way.
Let me add that the Amazon reviewing mechanism is, as usual, inadequate for reviewing Kindle editions; my review ends up one of over fifty reviews discussing the book in general, not the Kindle edition specifically.
Rating
I am reviewing the Modern Library Classics version with an introduction by former labor secretary Robert Reich. To minimize repetition, the differences for this version: This massive book is complete and unabridged (all five books). There is a great added feature in the form of small summary notes in the margin that accompany each paragraph. Adam Smith was a masterful writer of prose and communicates some of the most important economic and philosophical ideas in the history of western civilization. Economic theory never read so beautifully.
An interesting choice for an introduction is Robert Reich. He is one of the few intellectuals from the left, and while I disagree with him more often than not, I respect his thought process. He offers his interpretation of Smith and how the ideas found in TWoN fit neatly with his positions. Selective reasoning or not, Reich does offer a nice summary line: “In these times, as when Adam Smith wrote, it is important to remind ourselves of the revolutionary notion at the heart of Smith’s opus-that the wealth of a nation is measured not by its accumulated riches, but by the productivity and living standards of all its people.” Nicely said and I agree. I just disagree with Reich and his ilk on how the “wealth” of the modern nation is achieved. Adam Smith offers the roadmap, but it is up to us to keep lawmakers in DC or [insert any central government here] from regulating and taxing us to death –relegating Smith’s work to the dust bin.
Rating
I was not impressed to find that this is an abridgement, especially considering that I found it by reading the reviews and could not discern it from the book cover at all. For this reason I have marked it down to three stars. Smith is necessary reading for anyone interested in the history of Western thought, the Enlightenment or economics, but it must be said that it is dry, if admirably clear, reading and difficult to chew and swallow. For that reason, it is disappointing to get so far in and then find that one is not getting the complete work.
There can be few books that have had such lasting influence on the cultural milieu. Unlike Marx, Smith’s ideas seem to have stood up to the tide of history without being washed away, although I write at a time when the finance system appears to have just collapsed, so who knows how a little more history will judge it. At any rate, the correctness of Smith’s ideas is perhaps of less import for the student of Western thought than its place in the emergence of a rationalist, secular culture. For Smith was part of the conscious project of the Enlightenment to introduce naturalistic models of our world in place of the magical thinking, in the form of divine providence, which preceded it. Smith was building a model of economy which did not rely on an external, disembodied agency but which emerged deterministically and reached equilibrium through the rule-based interactions of its component parts. His “invisible hand” replaced another.
At the same time, he was making a case for personal autonomy and the right of economic self-determination. As such, Smith combines the two most salient threads of the Enlightenment project – liberation from authority and liberation from magic. More than perhaps any other Enlightenment figure, Smith has shaped the way we think as a political culture today. As such, one must read this book to understand the legacy of the Enlightenment. It is hard going, as he was a very thorough worker and this is economics, the most dismal of sciences, but indispensable.
There is one misconception that this reading corrected for me which I ought to share, and that concerns Smith’s alleged scepticism about “corporations”. For Smith, and presumably for his contemporaries, this did not, as I thought, indicate opposition to public companies and multinationals in the way we would currently understand it. Rather, he referred to, and condemned, the system of closed trades and apprenticeships by which the market for certain trades was until recently widely protected from competition. I demur from taking sides in this, but it is important to mention the misunderstanding which arises out of the word “corporation”, incautiously read.
Rating
The Wealth of Nations is one of the most important books ever written. In some respects the Wealth of Nations was a tract for the times. Smith penned a crippling critique of the mercantilist `Policy of Europe’. Smith, along with David Hume and David Ricardo, refuted the mercantilist case for protectionism. Much of what we read in this book is still taught in modern economics classes. Modern day protectionists still have no answer to the principles of absolute and comparative advantage, and for the basic logic of Hume’s specie flow mechanism.
Smith was more than an ordinary economist. He was a visionary who saw some of the potential for progress through Globalization. Perhaps the most important concept of this book is the dynamics between division of labor, labor productivity, and the extent of markets. Smith conceived of Globalization as a process that would raise productivity as local markets expanded to national and then international scope. His example of division of labor in a pin factory is simple, but illustrative.
The most widely known part of this book is that part of the `invisible hand of markets’. Invisible hand reasoning still pervades modern economic theory, though there are some variations in how economists interpret this concept. Smith does differ from Modern economists on certain issues. Smith thought of competition as a process and of monopoly as a government grant of privilege. In these areas Smith was ahead of many modern economists. Smith also explained market prices in terms of labor content. Here is Smith’s great error. Labor value theory set economics on the wrong course. Labor value theory served as the basis for Marxism. This, of course, indicates the great influence of The Wealth of Nations on world history. Without labor value theory the Marxist idea of exploitation falls apart. Smith therefore played a posthumous role in twentieth century history, especially from 1918 to 1991. Of course, we cannot blame Smith for the misuse of his ideas. Smith would have surely opposed Marxism, had he been alive to do so.
What we have in this book is a tremendous effort at discovering the proper limits between private and public institutions. Better still, Smith thought about society and institutions in evolutionary terms. This is another reason why the Wealth of Nations is preferable to modern economics texts. Smith understood the dynamics of capitalism better than many modern economists- who focus on static math models. Smith also influenced Charles Darwin with his ideas of social evolution. There is much evidence indicating that Darwin got the idea for the evolution of species by reading The Wealth of Nations. Smith therefore had great influence on the biological sciences.
Modern economists reject Smith labor value theory (ever since Menger refuted it in 1870). However, there is no denying the influence of The Wealth of Nations. All members of the educated public should read at least part of this book. The question then in which edition should you buy? The Liberty Classics edition is unabridged. The Modern Library Classics edition has margin notes that could be helpful. Given the affordability of these editions, you might consider have both on your bookshelf (I do). I would avoid the Great Mind Series altogether. The Wealth of Nations should be read because it is both a book of great historical importance and a good source for understanding modern Globalization. The labor value theory part precludes a five star rating, but anything less than four stars would be absurd.
Rating
This book is so widely cited and interpreted contrary to the author’s original thought, that every economist should read it completely to avoid being misled by such incorrect interpretations.
First, let us take the “invisible hand” metaphor. When I have studied economy in the University, I was taught that almost the entire book is devoted to the “invisible hand” which means “self-corrective markets”, “liberalism”, “Laissez-faire” and “state non-intervention”. After reading this book, I have found out that Adam Smith did use the term “invisible hand” only once in the entire book, in the discussion of domestic versus foreign trade.
To illustrate the point, let me quote the text where term “invisible hand” is used: “First, every individual endeavours to employ his capital as near home as he can, and consequently as much as he can in the support of domestic industry, provided always that he can thereby obtain the ordinary, or not a great deal less than the ordinary profits of stock. Thus, upon equal, or nearly equal profits, every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home trade to the foreign trade of consumption, and the foreign trade of consumption to the carrying trade. In the home trade, his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption. [...]Secondly, every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestic industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry, that its produce may be of the greatest possible value. [...]As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it.”
After reading this book, I have found out that Adam Smith was influenced by French Physiocrats. The Physiocrats saw the true wealth of a nation as determined by the surplus of agricultural production over and above that needed to support agriculture (by feeding farm labourers and so forth). Other forms of economic activity, such as manufacturing, were viewed as taking this surplus agricultural production and transforming it into new products, by using the surplus agricultural production to feed the workers who produced the extra goods. While these manufacturers and other non agricultural workers may be useful, they were seen as ‘sterile’ in that their income derives ultimately not from their own work, but from the surplus production of the agricultural sector.
I have found out that this book is not about “invisible hand” or “Laissez-faire”. It is quite a complete study that covers almost every basic aspect of the economy, and remains an effective introduction to economics to this day.
This book is so often mischaracterized and politicized that I suggest you to read it completely by yourself. This is a must read for every economist. You can get an audio version of this book to avoid lengthy read.
Rating
For anyone coming to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations the first surprise is how readable it is. Famous classic of economic theory though it may be, this is no dry academic tome to be read only by people with a scholarly interest in economic history. There are no detailed tables of statistics of the sort one might expect to find in a modern book on the subject, and no mathematical analysis, indeed not very much quantitative information at all. Instead there is a long series of examples to explain such ideas as why it is more efficient to divide work among several specialists rather than have a complete task fulfilled by one person, or why slave labour is ultimately more expensive than paying free workers, even workers in cities like Boston or New York, where wages were far higher in Smith’s time than those in his native Scotland.
To illustrate the principle of the division of labour Smith discusses the manufacture of nails. Even a blacksmith — skilled in working with a hammer but with no special training in nail making — could not make more than a few hundred nails in a day, and those of poor quality. A specialist nail maker could make more than two thousand, but much greater improvements, both in quality and quantity, come from recognizing that even a task as apparently simple as manufacturing a nail can be broken up into smaller tasks: maintaining the fire at the right temperature, hammering the nail into the right shape, using a different tool to form the head, and so on.
A popular edition of Wealth of Nations is inevitably abridged, as one can hardly expect to buy a complete scholarly edition for a price not much more than that of a novel. Complete editions are available as well, but they are much more expensive. With sensible editing, however, an abridged version can include as much of Smith’s writing as the ordinary reader is likely to want, together with notes to explain points that will be obscure to the modern reader. In the Oxford World’s Classics edition Kathryn Sutherland has made an excellent job of this, with notes that fill around a fifth of the length of the book.
Rating
The simple points upon which this book is based might be much easier to understand today than when it was written, because a large part of the growth of the world economy has been based on the ideas about the growth of capital which this book assumed as the fundamental surplus value of economic activity. Less than a century later, Karl Marx was able to demonstrate, in his book, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, how vacuous the ideas of good and bad, as they are usually applied in political economy, turn out to be in practice. Americans have largely accepted the notion of a consumer society totally dependent on copyright and trade laws to protect the value of the entertainment and related therapeutic products which it produces. What might be most upsetting to readers of this book, that someone like myself could use it to reflect on the events of 9/11/2001 as a challenge to such modern assumptions, as if the policing powers which maintain the world financial situation of today have more to fear from an examination of how this book treats consumption than from the usual lessons based on the growth of wealth, might make this an unacceptable view of what this book actually says.
When this book was written, Adam Smith was able to combine economic ideas about the distribution and production (which he considered the highest good) of articles of commerce, in contrast to “the bad effects of the monopoly,” in a way that caused thinking people in Britain to believe that the world would be materially better off if the American colonies were free of rules which required those who produced all the tobacco from Maryland and Virginia to sell it in or through Great Britain. Adam Smith was worried that capital maintained to store this product in London was depriving England of the opportunity to produce goods that would generate more wealth. “At the port of London, indeed, it is commonly sold for ready money. The rule is, Weigh and pay. At the port of London, therefore, the final returns of the whole round-about trade are more distant than the returns from America by the time only that goods may lie unsold in the warehouse; where, however, they may sometimes lie long enough.” The American revolution was greeted by economic free traders as an event likely to cause a great increase in the wealth of nations, and the normally victorious political element maintains a strong belief in this fiscal ideology.
The current situation might be closer to “the time only which the goods may lie unsold in the warehouse.” Near the end of Book IV, “Of Systems of Political Economy,” Chapter VII, “Of Colonies,” there was a frightening example of how bad things might get to be. “In Spain and Portugal the bad effects of the monopoly, aggravated by other causes, have perhaps nearly overbalanced the natural good effects of the colony trade.” Plenty of things went wrong, causing a large portion of the population to feel that they were victims of circumstances, ” . . . but above all, that irregular and partial administration of justice, which often protects the rich and powerful debtor from the pursuit of his injured creditor, and which makes the industrious part of the nation afraid to prepare goods for consumption of those haughty and great men to whom they dare not refuse to sell upon credit, and from whom they are altogether uncertain of repayment.” Certainly, a great deal of money is in circulation today, and a tremendous amount is considered working capital, capable of producing many things that people might want, but the routine search for contraband includes cash in an amount exceeding $10,000, the amount which might be capable of buying a large amount of illegal substances. Police are actually so unfamiliar with cash transactions that large amounts might be held as evidence, until the police have been convinced that they have no reason to suspect the person who had the money of being involved in any sort of laundering activity. When Adam Smith was writing, his work was as shocking to those controlling the monopolies of his day as radical protests of today rile the police on the beat today, whose confiscation of vehicles, which are sometimes temporary, to see if they were used to transport illegal substances, is not considered in any way similar to hijacking airplanes in order to crash them into buildings which symbolize a violation of the right of the people to personal pleasure in a manner which averts the collapse of society as we know it. This hardly makes more sense than those who expected seizure of everybody’s major assets to solve society’s problems.
Rating
I was origionally reading the text version of this book on the internet until the printed version came. I was downtroden, sickened, and even frightened to find that the Great Minds Series version of The Wealth of Nations is incomplete, yet gives no indication whatsoever of being so.
The introduction and chapters 2, 3, and 4 of book 3 are simply not there. They are not even listed in the table of contents. There is no discrepency in the page numbers, or any other teletale indication that it is incomplete. It is not written anywhere that it is an abrigement.
I want to point out how careless it is and how misleading to the reader in comprehending the philosophy of Adam Smith to print an incomplete book without any warning.
Rating
I am going to refer to the original text version written by Adam Smith: This was absolutely a brutal read; however, it was more or less a paradox described as painfully interesting. The mind of Adam Smith is incredible, and I encourage an interested reader to duke it out as you’ll most certainly come out of the book more informed. I would recommend Wealth of Nations to anyone who has a mild interest in Economics. Brian Oley
Rating
When I was twenty I set out to read the seminal works of a wide range of disciplines. I read Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Plato, Aristotle, Levi-Strauss, Jung, Campbell, Freud, Frazer (abridged), Epictetus, Keynes, Adam Smith, and others I can’t remember. In most cases I was disappointed. I realised that in many cases the first exposition of an idea is difficult and obscure, and that it is the later, summarising writers who collect the best and clearest explanations of profound thoughts.
The exception was Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’. Only later did I discover that he began his amazingly varied academic career as a teacher of English prose style. It came as no surprise.
Smith’s writing is a brilliant as Gibbon, but even more lucid. His insight is profound. And his marvellous style of explanation makes the reader feel like a genius. Somewhat to my astonishment, the only part of his argument that I found at all difficult was the section on international exchange, which I had to translate from terms of flow of specie to terms of exchange rates of fiat currencies. Of all that stuff I read that year, Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ was the clearest, most persuasive, and most inspiring.
It is because of Smith that the next year I took up the study of economics at the Australian National University. I came first in my class: my prize? A copy of ‘The Wealth of Nations’, much appreciated.
Rating
They shouldn’t let you out of school unless you have this one in your head. Nice to have a copy around.
Rating
Talk about revisionist history! Adam Smith deeply suspicious of capitalism–a closet socialist? I don’t think so!
Smith argues that even the darker impulses of the human mind generate benefit in a free society. If you want to get rich in a free society, the only way to do it is to come up with something incredibly useful to humankind.
Smith wasn’t distrustful of capitalism–he was distrustful of statism and merchantalism, of government handouts and bureaucrats who know best. That was the order of the day in Smith’s time. The government regulations for the French textile industry between 1666 and 1730 took up 2,000 pages.
*That’s* what Smith was distrustful of, not capitalism!
Rating
Some books have entered so deeply into our culture that they affect the way we think whether or not we have read them. The Wealth of Nations is certainly one of these books. And like most such books – the Bible, Shakespeare, the works of Freud or Jung, the Bill of Rights – the Wealth of Nations does not say what you think it does.
The fact is, those who most earnestly revere Adam Smith are not always those who have read his works most carefully. Which is why reading The Wealth of Nations is important for those who think about the role of capitalism and free markets in our nations and in our world.
Rating
The item was exactly as described in the advertisement. The delivery time was very reasonable.
DS
Rating
A couple of years ago I went to a local bookstore determined to read ‘Capital’ as well as ‘Wealth of Nations,’ but since there wasn’t a copy of the latter available at the time, I picked up the former, waded through all three volumes (which were very hard and took me 18 months), then went back to Smith. This is a review of the Modern Library hardcover edition, which I ordered here at Amazon.com.
Let it be said right off the bat that the big thing Marx gets trashed for has roots right here in the ‘W of N:’ namely, the Labor Theory of Value. Both Volume One of ‘Capital’ and ‘W of N’ spend the first 100 pages or so going over it. Both refer back to it constantly in later pasages. And both must be taken off the table without it. The LTV boils down to this: all value is created by people working and producing goods and services that other people need and/or want. Furthermore, they must produce these goods and services at at least the average level of productivity and at the appropriate level of demand. Otherwise you’re working either harder or more easily for your cut of the national pie than you otherwise would. The LTV is so straightforward and intuitive you’d think there wouldn’t be much of an argument.
The one thing Smith stresses throughout the book is the need for what he calls ‘perfect liberty,’ where everyone is allowed to buy and sell what they want from where ever they’d like. With this, resources would be diverted to where they needed to be as quickly as possible so people would stop wasting their time WORKING (see how the LTV operates here?) on things that should be made elsewhere.
It’s important to understand that neither the words ‘capital’ nor ‘capitalist’ ever occur in this work. This is very important because both words carry baggage Smith would break no bread with. In fact, the main bad guys in this work are the very people we would call ‘capitalist’ today. They subvert Parliament through bribery and intimidation, protect their own interests at the expense of everybody else in society, and raise unholy hell when workers try to form unions. All the while, of course, they form unions amongst themselves with the express purpose of stabbing the rest of us in the back.
Sound familiar?
Let me give you a modern example of how desperately we need American economists to actually pick up and read this book, as opposed to just talking about what a good boy Adam Smith was. Contrary to the propaganda we’re getting out of our media, alternative sources of energy are now ready for prime time. There’s nothing the internal combustion engine can do that hydrogen fuel cells can’t do better. The price of solar cells has been dropping like a rock for years. And wind power is now the second cheapest source of energy after dirty coal. All we need to do is divert all that money we use to protect our oil resources into building up the economy of scale for these products (i.e. reducing the amount of WORK necessary to build each unit; this is the LTV lurking around again), and turn all these into cheap bulk commodities. We’ll also need to use this money to build up the infrastructure necessary to safely deliver and store hydrogen. Then, after these (admittedly) high entry costs (i.e. expenditures of LABOR), we’ll have access to unlimited, clean, and cheap sources of energy. The nonsense we have instead, which came to serious crises in 2001 in California with the impeachable collusion of the Bush administration, has nothing to do with Adam Smith’s great work. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of socializing the risk while privatizing the profits for this industry. Our current urge to go to war with Iraq precisely reflects the urge of 18th century statesmen to protect the interest of the mercantilist (capitalist!!) masters. This was a tragedy Smith covers quite extensively.
As an added bonus he’s a great read. After working so hard on Marx I was very happily surprised.
Karl Marx brought the LTV to a fine polish, going beyond Adam Smith and showing how it translates into the average rate of profit, interest rates, standard of living, etc. He picked up where Smith left off. Also, using the weapon of dialectical materialism (i.e. the logic of motion and change — the true heart of Marxism), Marx was able to show how capitalism, in fact, negates private property. It would have turned us all into slaves decades ago if not for the better angels or our nature.
Rating
For a third world citizen, like me, this book seems to be written a couple years ago. Their topics are present in the political agenda of our governments right today, and after all other reviewers have written, better than I would do so, i should add four key points:
- With no proper political institutions there is no possibility of creating wealth (it reminds me sad examples from today…Argentina?). Smith thinks it is very important having economic liberties, besides independent magistrates, and a national state committed to enforce the contracts privates sign up to make transactions when some party doesn’t want to comply them.
- Under the right framework of political institutions is posible to have private interests and public interest converging on the same “bargain zone”. Under Smith’s point of view is the mercantilism, as a policy of state, policy that picks up the winners since the desk of politicians instead of from the shops of every-day industry and parsimony of workers and entrepreuners what creates the conflict (even though he makes some exceptions, like the Navigation Act, but he regards the need of this monopoly of english navy by national security reasons only).
- After the short-run adjustments, the income distribution matters, that are so important for politicians, should be resolved by the market and the entrepreuners whom, by searching opportunities to make more profits, will make converging the prices of land, labour and goods.
- The accumulation of capital is the process that lowers interest rates, expands the supply of loans and suports higher degrees of division of labour in the economy. This process should let people have cheaper goods along the time and improve the wages of workers. The tax system should not stop this process, by “punishing” profits and the letting the remaining sources of rent free (wages, and rent of land).
Under Smith’s point of view scarcity and poverty are historical and social problems, and their solutions are in history and in social interaction too.There are not worlds beyond every-day reality, as socialists made us to believe some time ago…just trade and division of labour and accumulation of capital, and so on. Let history and people surprise us. They will make the wealth, not the governments. The Smith system is open to history and change, and learnship, and only requires good foundations to secure an historical outcome of wealth.
The world of today has institutions that were not in XVIIIth century: global financial institutions and spread trade agreements, that create barriers at some places and open gates at anothers. And now we have new constraints (the environment,..) and new key players (global corporations, ..). But this new scene only makes smaller the room of economic policy choices for latin american governments. At the core of the room which is remaining for them, the Smith’s suggestions still have urgent and actual importance.
Sad thing to recognize that in XXIst century latin america, we need to read a great book from XVIIIst century to find out solutions.
Rating
The greek tradition found virtue in the pursuit of rational self interest. That tradition later found expression in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” in which is posited a “rational self-interest” operating as an “invisible hand” upon “free markets”. Recent accounting crimes and corporate scandals, however, amount to enormous empirical evidence that “laissez faire” capitalism is a myth and the “invisible hand” is mere “wishful thinking”.
It is obvious that there is no “invisible hand” which militates against crooks, charlatans, and fast buck artists now seen to have firmly ensconced themselves as much in the board rooms as among sleazy fly-by-nighters.
Markets left to their own devices trend toward oligopoly in which oligarchs effect political plutocracy through the exercise of sheer political muscle, intimidation, fraud, and outright bribery.
If there is an “invisible hand”, it has never moderated the rich and powerful. If a ruling cabal is to be moderated it must be done by political action.
This is less a criticism of Smith himself than of modern economic conservatives and/or ‘supply-siders’ who find in Smith –ex post facto –a rationalization for rapacious and monopolistic behavior. Smith is no more to be faulted for this than Darwin should be faulted for the excesses of “Social Darwinism” –neither Social nor Darwin. “Social Darwinists” are most often associated with the age of the Robber Barons, providing them an ideological bias that justifies all manner of corporate crookedness and sleazy practices.
To his credit, Smith himself feared the rise of monopoly power –a fear which modern conservative commentary either does not understand or omits entirely.
The picture is complicated, however by Immanuel Kant who assailed the pursuit of self interest in favor of “good in and of itself” –a “categorical imperative”. It is a moral standard that no one, of course, can live up to. Nevertheless, Kant became the other great influence upon American conservative thought –though I cannot give most contemporary conservatives credit for having actually read Kant or, for that matter, understanding him.
Yet –Kant may be found lurking beneath the ideological surface of the extreme right-wing and the religious right which seeks to impose upon us a “transcendental” reality and morality whether we like it or not.
It is unfortunate that Kant himself defined this “transcendent reality” –which he calls the noumena –as being unknowable. If follows, by definition, that one cannot make meaningful statements about it, but that has not kept righteous ideologues from deducing from this “unknowable” value judgments and imposing those values judgments on others. By definition, nothing meaningful can be said about whatever is “unknowable”!
We are given a choice of two mutually exclusive alternatives: “selfishness” or “selfless transcendentalism”. Neither position, however, is entirely true and neither is completely understood even by the conservative mentality that espouses them. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is no more valid than Laffer’s “trickle down” theory and it is highly doubtful that even Kant lived up to his own moral dictum –though I credit Kant with sincerity but doubt it among his followers. I rather think that “mankind” is neither entirely selfish or entirely selfless.
The truth is most likely found in the middle. The work of mathematician John Nash, celebrated of late in the motion picture “A Beautiful Mind”, wrote a brilliant paper on “binding agreements” that casts grave doubts upon many “conservative” fables, shibboleths, and fairy tales –including those whose origins lie in “mutually exclusive” intellectual traditions. Like Patton surrounded on one side by Russians and the other by Nazis, it attacks in both directions at once.
Rating
I must take exception to the Amazon review: saying that Smith viewed Capitalism suspiciously is utterly untenable. From the very first chapter, Smith makes clear the genius of markets, the benefits of the division of labor, and how government intrusion upon “perfect liberty” creates economic inefficiencies. As the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy, Smith keenly perceived the theoretical framework for its future development: property rights, markets, free trade, and government non-intervention. These institutions allowed for unprecedented economic growth (there was more economic growth in the 19th century than in the preceeding 4000 years) and thus the sustainability of modern life. We cannot express enough gratitude to Dr. Smith.
Rating
Unless you’re into S&M, don’t read it. Just read the one page summary … it will be enough to pick up the most of the argument.
Then again, if you love the historiography of economic theory, as I do, you can’t miss this.
Rating
Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations(by wealth he meant the total productive capacity of a country’s skilled and educated labor force,combined with its industrial manufacturing capacity and agricultural produce)is the brilliant effort of a famous moral philosopher to extend the range of his analysis from the theoretical “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” to the practical application of political economy in a country populated by decision makers who were practicing Judeo-Christians or Deists (who attempted to put into practice the Ten Commandments in their everyday lives).The terms “self interest” and”Invisible Hand” appear in both books.It is very clear from the context in both books that Smith is referring to the enlightened self interest of moral decision makers who have had specific religious instruction,as well as a general education.Smith spends nearly 50 pages(Smith,pp.716-766) advocating the necessity of such instruction,if necessary funded by the public .Smith advocated a progressive system of taxation.Smith advocated usury laws(interest rate controls).The First Bank of the United States,set up by Alexander Hamilton,was modeled after the central bank control concepts of Adam Smith,as opposed to the free banking advocated by libertarians.Most importantly,Smith’s theory of comparative advantage opposed any offshoring of either employment and/or industrial/financial capital if the purpose of such offshoring was to supply the home market.Such foreign investment can only be made to supply the foreign market.Smith was one of the first opponents of globalization,since globalization directly conflicts with the theory of comparative advantage.Globalization advocates base their arguments on absolute advantage.Finally,Smith fully supported the use of counter tariffs if there was any probability that such a counter tariff would succeed in getting the offending nation to remove its initial tariff.Only if there was no probability of success would Smith forgo retaliation.A reader of both of Smith’s books will discover quickly that he would have no sympathy for the greedy,atheistic materialism of any variety of anarchistic libertarianism. Smith would thus have been an ardent advocate of the conservative Federalist position of Washington,Hamilton,Madison,Franklin,Jay,etc.,while opposing the libertarian views of Paine,Mason,and Henry.
Rating
Buy the Liberty Fund Glasgow edition instead of this. This, the Modern Library edition, contains an introduction and footnotes that essentially amount to Adam Smith as interpreted by 20th century socialists — placing Smith and Karl Marx at the same level in the pantheon of social thinkers. (One can imagine that the Modern Library may continue the trend and subsequently publish an edition of the Federalist Papers in which Madison is compared with Pol Pot.)
If you wish to understand Smith, avoid this edition. If, however you want to gain a muddled perspective on The Wealth of Nations, go no further.
Rating
Being called “the father of economics” is not without reason. Adam Smith demonstrated the essential principles in economics in his all-time classic “The Wealth of Nations” — a book that changes the history of economic theory development. Read this book and you’ll see the wisdom of this great old thinker, and you’ll discover that economics is MUCH more than just “supply and demand”. At the practical level, ask youself questions like “what is the real meaning of money?” and find answers in the book.
Rating
“The Wealth of Nations” is a big book of economics, history, philosophy, and social criticism. It is much more than Adam Smith neckties at GOP conventions, just as it is much than a reverential nod or two in modern textbooks. Econ students need to read it to see where their discipline came from and what it could be again. Fortunately, Dickey’s abridgment reproduces enough of the text (about 25 percent) to convey the depth of Smith’s erudition and the amazing diversity of his interests. Unfortunately, the editorial apparatus is super weak. The Comments are few in number and incredibly brief, and the short Preface fails to put the book into historical and intellectual context. Dickey does offer four appendices but these deal with relatively specialized topics rather than the big picture.
Bottom line: this edition is inexpensive but is probably not the best one for students.