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Adam Smith

October 07, 2023

For other people named Adam Smith, see Adam Smith (disambiguation).

Adam Smith FRSA (baptised 16 June [O.S. 5 June] 1723[1] – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish[a] economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment.[3] Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"[4] or "The Father of Capitalism",[5] he wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God's will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. Among other economic theories, the work introduced Smith's idea of absolute advantage.[6]

Adam Smith

FRSA
Posthumous Muir portrait, c. 1800, at the Scottish National Gallery
Bornc. 16 June [O.S. c. 5 June] 1723[1]
Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland
Died17 July 1790(1790-07-17) (aged 67)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Alma mater
Notable work
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolClassical liberalism
Main interests
Political philosophy, ethics, economics
Notable ideas
Signature

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh,[7] leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, teaching moral philosophy and during this time, wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day.

As a reaction to the common policy of protecting national markets and merchants, what came to be known as mercantilism—nowadays often referred to as "cronyism" or "crony capitalism"[8]—Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers such as Horace Walpole.[9]

Biography Edit

Early life Edit

Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland. His father, also Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet (senior solicitor), advocate and prosecutor (judge advocate) and also served as comptroller of the customs in Kirkcaldy.[10] Smith's mother was born Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry, also in Fife; she married Smith's father in 1720. Two months before Smith was born, his father died, leaving his mother a widow.[11] The date of Smith's baptism into the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723[12] and this has often been treated as if it were also his date of birth,[10] which is unknown.

Although few events in Smith's early childhood are known, the Scottish journalist John Rae, Smith's biographer, recorded that Smith was abducted by Romani at the age of three and released when others went to rescue him.[b][14] Smith was close to his mother, who probably encouraged him to pursue his scholarly ambitions.[15] He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy—characterised by Rae as "one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period"[13]—from 1729 to 1737, he learned Latin, mathematics, history, and writing.[15]

Formal education Edit

Smith entered the University of Glasgow at age 14 and studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson.[15] Here he developed his passion for the philosophical concepts of reason, civilian liberties, and free speech. In 1740, he was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under the Snell Exhibition.[16]

Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, which he found intellectually stifling.[17] In Book V, Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations, he wrote: "In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it.[13][18][19] According to William Robert Scott, "The Oxford of [Smith's] time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework."[20] Nevertheless, he took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library.[21] When Smith was not studying on his own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, according to his letters.[22] Near the end of his time there, he began suffering from shaking fits, probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown.[23] He left Oxford University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.[23][24]

In Book V of The Wealth of Nations, Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager intellectual activity at English universities, when compared to their Scottish counterparts. He attributes this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which made the income of professors independent of their ability to attract students, and to the fact that distinguished men of letters could make an even more comfortable living as ministers of the Church of England.[19]

Smith's discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson, who was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents with the fervor and earnestness of his orations (which he sometimes opened to the public). His lectures endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy, but also to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives, appropriately acquiring the epithet, the preacher of philosophy. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder; rather, his magnetic personality and method of lecturing so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson"—a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume and influential mentor Francis Hutcheson.[25]

 
Portrait of Smith's mother, Margaret Douglas

Teaching career Edit

Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 at the University of Edinburgh,[26] sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames.[27] His lecture topics included rhetoric and belles-lettres,[28] and later the subject of "the progress of opulence". On this latter topic, he first expounded his economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty". While Smith was not adept at public speaking, his lectures met with success.[29]

In 1750, Smith met the philosopher David Hume, who was his senior by more than a decade. In their writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion, Smith and Hume shared closer intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.[30]

In 1751, Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching logic courses, and in 1752, he was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, having been introduced to the society by Lord Kames. When the head of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow died the next year, Smith took over the position.[29] He worked as an academic for the next 13 years, which he characterised as "by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period [of his life]".[31]

Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work was concerned with how human morality depends on sympathy between agent and spectator, or the individual and other members of society. Smith defined "mutual sympathy" as the basis of moral sentiments. He based his explanation, not on a special "moral sense" as the Third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, nor on utility as Hume did, but on mutual sympathy, a term best captured in modern parlance by the 20th-century concept of empathy, the capacity to recognise feelings that are being experienced by another being.

 
François Quesnay, one of the leaders of the physiocratic school of thought

Following the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith became so popular that many wealthy students left their schools in other countries to enroll at Glasgow to learn under Smith.[32] At this time, Smith began to give more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lectures and less to his theories of morals.[33] For example, Smith lectured that the cause of increase in national wealth is labour, rather than the nation's quantity of gold or silver, which is the basis for mercantilism, the economic theory that dominated Western European economic policies at the time.[34]

In 1762, the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.).[35] At the end of 1763, he obtained an offer from British chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend—who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume—to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch as preparation for a career in international politics. Smith resigned from his professorship in 1764 to take the tutoring position. He subsequently attempted to return the fees he had collected from his students because he had resigned partway through the term, but his students refused.[36]

Tutoring, travels, European intellectuals Edit

Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, during which time he educated Scott on a variety of subjects. He was paid £300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300 per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher.[36] Smith first travelled as a tutor to Toulouse, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. According to his own account, he found Toulouse to be somewhat boring, having written to Hume that he "had begun to write a book to pass away the time".[36] After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva, where Smith met with the philosopher Voltaire.[37]

 
David Hume was a friend and contemporary of Smith's.

From Geneva, the party moved to Paris. Here, Smith met American publisher and diplomat Benjamin Franklin, who a few years later would lead the opposition in the American colonies against four British resolutions from Charles Townshend (in history known as the Townshend Acts), which threatened American colonial self-government and imposed revenue duties on a number of items necessary to the colonies. Smith discovered the Physiocracy school founded by François Quesnay and discussed with their intellectuals.[38] Physiocrats were opposed to mercantilism, the dominating economic theory of the time, illustrated in their motto Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même! (Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself!).

The wealth of France had been virtually depleted by Louis XIV[c] and Louis XV in ruinous wars,[d] and was further exhausted in aiding the American revolutionary soldiers, against the British. Given that the British economy of the day yielded an income distribution that stood in contrast to that which existed in France, Smith concluded that "with all its imperfections, [the Physiocratic school] is perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy."[39] The distinction between productive versus unproductive labour—the physiocratic classe steril—was a predominant issue in the development and understanding of what would become classical economic theory.

Later years Edit

In 1766, Henry Scott's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter.[40] Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy, and he devoted much of the next decade to writing his magnum opus.[41] There, he befriended Henry Moyes, a young blind man who showed precocious aptitude. Smith secured the patronage of David Hume and Thomas Reid in the young man's education.[42] In May 1773, Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London,[43] and was elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and was an instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.[44]

In 1778, Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother (who died in 1784)[45] in Panmure House in Edinburgh's Canongate.[46] Five years later, as a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter, he automatically became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[47] From 1787 to 1789, he occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.[48]

Death Edit

 
A commemorative plaque for Smith is located in Smith's home town of Kirkcaldy.

Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness. His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.[49] On his deathbed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more.[50]

Smith's literary executors were two friends from the Scottish academic world: the physicist and chemist Joseph Black and the pioneering geologist James Hutton.[51] Smith left behind many notes and some unpublished material, but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication.[52] He mentioned an early unpublished History of Astronomy as probably suitable, and it duly appeared in 1795, along with other material such as Essays on Philosophical Subjects.[51]

Smith's library went by his will to David Douglas, Lord Reston (son of his cousin Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry, Fife), who lived with Smith.[53] It was eventually divided between his two surviving children, Cecilia Margaret (Mrs. Cunningham) and David Anne (Mrs. Bannerman). On the death in 1878 of her husband, the Reverend W. B. Cunningham of Prestonpans, Mrs. Cunningham sold some of the books. The remainder passed to her son, Professor Robert Oliver Cunningham of Queen's College, Belfast, who presented a part to the library of Queen's College. After his death, the remaining books were sold. On the death of Mrs. Bannerman in 1879, her portion of the library went intact to the New College (of the Free Church) in Edinburgh and the collection was transferred to the University of Edinburgh Main Library in 1972.

Personality and beliefs Edit

Character Edit

 
Portrait of Smith by John Kay, 1790

Not much is known about Smith's personal views beyond what can be deduced from his published articles. His personal papers were destroyed after his death, per his request.[52] He never married,[54] and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before him.[55]

Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".[56] He was known to talk to himself,[50] a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions.[57] He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness,[50] and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study.[57] According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he needed help to escape.[58] He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24 km) outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality.[57][58]

James Boswell, who was a student of Smith's at Glasgow University, and later knew him at the Literary Club, says that Smith thought that speaking about his ideas in conversation might reduce the sale of his books, so his conversation was unimpressive. According to Boswell, he once told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "he made it a rule when in company never to talk of what he understood".[59]

Smith has been alternatively described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment" and one whose "countenance was manly and agreeable".[19][60] Smith is said to have acknowledged his looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books."[19] Smith rarely sat for portraits,[61] so almost all depictions of him created during his lifetime were drawn from memory. The best-known portraits of Smith are the profile by James Tassie and two etchings by John Kay.[62] The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th-century reprints of The Wealth of Nations were based largely on Tassie's medallion.[63]

Religious views Edit

Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Smith's religious views. His father had shown a strong interest in Christianity and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland,[64] and the fact he received the Snell Exhibition suggests that he may have gone to Oxford with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church of England.[65]

Anglo-American economist Ronald Coase has challenged the view that Smith was a deist, based on the fact that Smith's writings never explicitly invoke God as an explanation of the harmonies of the natural or the human worlds.[66] According to Coase, though Smith does sometimes refer to the "Great Architect of the Universe", later scholars such as Jacob Viner have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God",[67] a belief for which Coase finds little evidence in passages such as the one in the Wealth of Nations in which Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the "great phenomena of nature", such as "the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals", has led men to "enquire into their causes", and that "superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them, from more familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with than the agency of the gods".[67] Some authors argue that Smith's social and economic philosophy is inherently theological and that his entire model of social order is logically dependent on the notion of God's action in nature.[68] Brendan Long argues that Smith was a theist,[69] whereas according to professor Gavin Kennedy, Smith was "in some sense" a Christian.[70]

Smith was also a close friend of David Hume, who, despite debate about his religious views in modern scholarship, was commonly characterised in his own time as an atheist.[71] The publication in 1777 of Smith's letter to William Strahan, in which he described Hume's courage in the face of death in spite of his irreligiosity, attracted considerable controversy.[72]

Published works Edit

The Theory of Moral Sentiments Edit

Main article: The Theory of Moral Sentiments

In 1759, Smith published his first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, sold by co-publishers Andrew Millar of London and Alexander Kincaid of Edinburgh.[73] Smith continued making extensive revisions to the book until his death.[e] Although The Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as Smith's most influential work, Smith himself is believed to have considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be a superior work.[75]

In the work, Smith critically examines the moral thinking of his time, and suggests that conscience arises from dynamic and interactive social relationships through which people seek "mutual sympathy of sentiments."[76] His goal in writing the work was to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral judgment, given that people begin life with no moral sentiments at all. Smith proposes a theory of sympathy, in which the act of observing others and seeing the judgments they form of both others and oneself makes people aware of themselves and how others perceive their behaviour. The feedback we receive from perceiving (or imagining) others' judgment creates an incentive to achieve "mutual sympathy of sentiments" with them and leads people to develop habits, and then principles, of behaviour, which come to constitute one's conscience.[77]

Some scholars have perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; the former emphasises sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-interest.[78] In recent years, however, some scholars[79][80][81] of Smith's work have argued that no contradiction exists. They contend that in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith develops a theory of psychology in which individuals seek the approval of the "impartial spectator" as a result of a natural desire to have outside observers sympathise with their sentiments. Rather than viewing The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations as presenting incompatible views of human nature, some Smith scholars regard the works as emphasising different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation. In the first part – The Theory of Moral Sentiments – he laid down the foundation of his vision of humanity and society. In the second – The Wealth of Nations – he elaborated on the virtue of prudence, which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy. It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book.[82] Otteson argues that both books are Newtonian in their methodology and deploy a similar "market model" for explaining the creation and development of large-scale human social orders, including morality, economics, as well as language.[83] Ekelund and Hebert offer a differing view, observing that self-interest is present in both works and that "in the former, sympathy is the moral faculty that holds self-interest in check, whereas in the latter, competition is the economic faculty that restrains self-interest."[84]

The Wealth of Nations Edit

Main article: The Wealth of Nations

Disagreement exists between classical and neoclassical economists about the central message of Smith's most influential work: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Neoclassical economists emphasise Smith's invisible hand,[85] a concept mentioned in the middle of his work – Book IV, Chapter II – and classical economists believe that Smith stated his programme for promoting the "wealth of nations" in the first sentences, which attributes the growth of wealth and prosperity to the division of labour. He elaborated on the virtue of prudence, which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy. It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book.[82]

Smith used the term "the invisible hand" in "History of Astronomy"[86] referring to "the invisible hand of Jupiter", and once in each of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments[87] (1759) and The Wealth of Nations[88] (1776). This last statement about "an invisible hand" has been interpreted in numerous ways.

 
Later building on the site where Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations

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 may be 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. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

Those who regard that statement as Smith's central message also quote frequently Smith's dictum:[89]

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

However, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he had a more sceptical approach to self-interest as driver of behaviour:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, 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.

 
The first page of The Wealth of Nations, 1776 London edition

In relation to Mandeville's contention that "Private Vices ... may be turned into Public Benefits",[90] Smith's belief that when an individual pursues his self-interest under conditions of justice, he unintentionally promotes the good of society. Self-interested competition in the free market, he argued, would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices."[91] Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the highest price "which can be squeezed out of the buyers."[92] Smith also warned that a business-dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith states that the interest of manufacturers and merchants "in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention."[93] Thus Smith's chief worry seems to be when business is given special protections or privileges from government; by contrast, in the absence of such special political favours, he believed that business activities were generally beneficial to the whole society:

It is the great multiplication of the production of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of society. (The Wealth of Nations, I.i.10)

The neoclassical interest in Smith's statement about "an invisible hand" originates in the possibility of seeing it as a precursor of neoclassical economics and its concept of general equilibrium; Samuelson's "Economics" refers six times to Smith's "invisible hand". To emphasise this connection, Samuelson[94] quotes Smith's "invisible hand" statement substituting "general interest" for "public interest". Samuelson[95] concludes: "Smith was unable to prove the essence of his invisible-hand doctrine. Indeed, until the 1940s, no one knew how to prove, even to state properly, the kernel of truth in this proposition about perfectly competitive market."

 
1922 printing of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Edwin Cannan

Very differently, classical economists see in Smith's first sentences his programme to promote "The Wealth of Nations". Using the physiocratical concept of the economy as a circular process, to secure growth the inputs of Period 2 must exceed the inputs of Period 1. Therefore, those outputs of Period 1 which are not used or usable as inputs of Period 2 are regarded as unproductive labour, as they do not contribute to growth. This is what Smith had heard in France from, among others, François Quesnay, whose ideas Smith was so impressed by that he might have dedicated The Wealth of Nations to him had he not died beforehand.[96][97] To this French insight that unproductive labour should be reduced to use labour more productively, Smith added his own proposal, that productive labour should be made even more productive by deepening the division of labour.[98] Smith argued that deepening the division of labour under competition leads to greater productivity, which leads to lower prices and thus an increasing standard of living—"general plenty" and "universal opulence"—for all. Extended markets and increased production lead to the continuous reorganisation of production and the invention of new ways of producing, which in turn lead to further increased production, lower prices, and improved standards of living. Smith's central message is, therefore, that under dynamic competition, a growth machine secures "The Wealth of Nations". Smith's argument predicted Britain's evolution as the workshop of the world, underselling and outproducing all its competitors. The opening sentences of the "Wealth of Nations" summarise this policy:

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes ... . [T]his produce ... bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it ... .[B]ut this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances;

  • first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and,
  • secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed [emphasis added].[99]

However, Smith added that the "abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter."[100]

Other works Edit

 
Smith's burial place in Canongate Kirkyard

Shortly before his death, Smith had nearly all his manuscripts destroyed. In his last years, he seemed to have been planning two major treatises, one on the theory and history of law and one on the sciences and arts. The posthumously published Essays on Philosophical Subjects, a history of astronomy down to Smith's own era, plus some thoughts on ancient physics and metaphysics, probably contain parts of what would have been the latter treatise. Lectures on Jurisprudence were notes taken from Smith's early lectures, plus an early draft of The Wealth of Nations, published as part of the 1976 Glasgow Edition of the works and correspondence of Smith. Other works, including some published posthumously, include Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms (1763) (first published in 1896); and Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795).[101]

Legacy Edit

In economics and moral philosophy Edit

The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, Smith expounded how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of Hogarth and Swift, as a discussion at the University of Winchester suggests.[102] In 2005, The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time.[103]

In light of the arguments put forward by Smith and other economic theorists in Britain, academic belief in mercantilism began to decline in Britain in the late 18th century. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain embraced free trade and Smith's laissez-faire economics, and via the British Empire, used its power to spread a broadly liberal economic model around the world, characterised by open markets, and relatively barrier-free domestic and international trade.[104]

George Stigler attributes to Smith "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics". It is that, under competition, owners of resources (for example labour, land, and capital) will use them most profitably, resulting in an equal rate of return in equilibrium for all uses, adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training, trust, hardship, and unemployment.[105]

Paul Samuelson finds in Smith's pluralist use of supply and demand as applied to wages, rents, and profit a valid and valuable anticipation of the general equilibrium modelling of Walras a century later. Smith's allowance for wage increases in the short and intermediate term from capital accumulation and invention contrasted with Malthus, Ricardo, and Karl Marx in their propounding a rigid subsistence–wage theory of labour supply.[106]

Joseph Schumpeter criticised Smith for a lack of technical rigour, yet he argued that this enabled Smith's writings to appeal to wider audiences: "His very limitation made for success. Had he been more brilliant, he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite truth, had he used more difficult and ingenious methods, he would not have been understood. But he had no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along."[107]

Classical economists presented competing theories to those of Smith, termed the "labour theory of value". Later Marxian economics descending from classical economics also use Smith's labour theories, in part. The first volume of Karl Marx's major work, Das Kapital, was published in German in 1867. In it, Marx focused on the labour theory of value and what he considered to be the exploitation of labour by capital.[108][109] The labour theory of value held that the value of a thing was determined by the labour that went into its production. This contrasts with the modern contention of neoclassical economics, that the value of a thing is determined by what one is willing to give up to obtain the thing.

 
The Adam Smith Theatre in Kirkcaldy

The body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" or "marginalism" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier, broader term "political economy" used by Smith.[110][111] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[112] Neoclassical economics systematised supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value of which Smith was most famously identified with in classical economics, in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[113]

The bicentennial anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations was celebrated in 1976, resulting in increased interest for The Theory of Moral Sentiments and his other works throughout academia. After 1976, Smith was more likely to be represented as the author of both The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and thereby as the founder of a moral philosophy and the science of economics. His homo economicus or "economic man" was also more often represented as a moral person. Additionally, economists David Levy and Sandra Peart in "The Secret History of the Dismal Science" point to his opposition to hierarchy and beliefs in inequality, including racial inequality, and provide additional support for those who point to Smith's opposition to slavery, colonialism, and empire. Emphasised also are Smith's statements of the need for high wages for the poor, and the efforts to keep wages low. In The "Vanity of the Philosopher: From Equality to Hierarchy in Postclassical Economics", Peart and Levy also cite Smith's view that a common street porter was not intellectually inferior to a philosopher,[114] and point to the need for greater appreciation of the public views in discussions of science and other subjects now considered to be technical. They also cite Smith's opposition to the often expressed view that science is superior to common sense.[115]

Smith also explained the relationship between growth of private property and civil government:

Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, civil government is not so necessary. Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property. (...) Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs. All the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel that the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority. Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.[116]

In British imperial debates Edit

Smith opposed empire. He challenged ideas that colonies were key to British prosperity and power. He rejected that other cultures, such as China and India, were culturally and developmentally inferior to Europe. While he favoured "commercial society", he did not support radical social change and the imposition of commercial society on other societies. He proposed that colonies be given independence or that full political rights be extended to colonial subjects.[117]

Smith's chapter on colonies, in turn, would help shape British imperial debates from the mid-19th century onward. The Wealth of Nations would become an ambiguous text regarding the imperial question. In his chapter on colonies, Smith pondered how to solve the crisis developing across the Atlantic among the empire's 13 American colonies. He offered two different proposals for easing tensions. The first proposal called for giving the colonies their independence, and by thus parting on a friendly basis, Britain would be able to develop and maintain a free-trade relationship with them, and possibly even an informal military alliance. Smith's second proposal called for a theoretical imperial federation that would bring the colonies and the metropole closer together through an imperial parliamentary system and imperial free trade.[118]

Smith's most prominent disciple in 19th-century Britain, peace advocate Richard Cobden, preferred the first proposal. Cobden would lead the Anti-Corn Law League in overturning the Corn Laws in 1846, shifting Britain to a policy of free trade and empire "on the cheap" for decades to come. This hands-off approach toward the British Empire would become known as Cobdenism or the Manchester School.[119] By the turn of the century, however, advocates of Smith's second proposal such as Joseph Shield Nicholson would become ever more vocal in opposing Cobdenism, calling instead for imperial federation.[120] As Marc-William Palen notes: "On the one hand, Adam Smith's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Cobdenite adherents used his theories to argue for gradual imperial devolution and empire 'on the cheap'. On the other, various proponents of imperial federation throughout the British World sought to use Smith's theories to overturn the predominant Cobdenite hands-off imperial approach and instead, with a firm grip, bring the empire closer than ever before."[121] Smith's ideas thus played an important part in subsequent debates over the British Empire.

Portraits, monuments, and banknotes Edit

 
A statue of Smith in Edinburgh's High Street, erected through private donations organised by the Adam Smith Institute

Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks; his portrait has appeared since 1981 on the £50 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in Scotland,[122][123] and in March 2007 Smith's image also appeared on the new series of £20 notes issued by the Bank of England, making him the first Scotsman to feature on an English banknote.[124]

 
Statue of Smith built in 1867–1870 at the old headquarters of the University of London, 6 Burlington Gardens

A large-scale memorial of Smith by Alexander Stoddart was unveiled on 4 July 2008 in Edinburgh. It is a 10-foot (3.0 m)-tall bronze sculpture and it stands above the Royal Mile outside St Giles' Cathedral in Parliament Square, near the Mercat cross.[125] 20th-century sculptor Jim Sanborn (best known for the Kryptos sculpture at the United States Central Intelligence Agency) has created multiple pieces which feature Smith's work. At Central Connecticut State University is Circulating Capital, a tall cylinder which features an extract from The Wealth of Nations on the lower half, and on the upper half, some of the same text, but represented in binary code.[126] At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, outside the Belk College of Business Administration, is Adam Smith's Spinning Top.[127][128] Another Smith sculpture is at Cleveland State University.[129] He also appears as the narrator in the 2013 play The Low Road, centred on a proponent on laissez-faire economics in the late 18th century, but dealing obliquely with the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the recession which followed; in the premiere production, he was portrayed by Bill Paterson.

A bust of Smith is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.

Residence Edit

Adam Smith resided at Panmure House from 1778 to 1790. This residence has now been purchased by the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University and fundraising has begun to restore it.[130][131] Part of the Northern end of the original building appears to have been demolished in the 19th century to make way for an iron foundry.

As a symbol of free-market economics Edit

Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free-market policies as the founder of free-market economics, a view reflected in the naming of bodies such as the Adam Smith Institute in London, multiple entities known as the "Adam Smith Society", including an historical Italian organisation,[132] and the U.S.-based Adam Smith Society,[133][134] and the Australian Adam Smith Club,[135] and in terms such as the Adam Smith necktie.[136]

Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argues that, while Smith did not coin the term laissez-faire, "it was left to Adam Smith to identify the more-general set of principles that brought conceptual clarity to the seeming chaos of market transactions." Greenspan continues that The Wealth of Nations was "one of the great achievements in human intellectual history."[137] P.J. O'Rourke describes Smith as the "founder of free market economics."[138]

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman believed in 1976, 200 years after the publishing of The Wealth of Nations, that the work of Adam Smith was, "...far more immediately relevant today than he was at the Centennial of The Wealth of Nations in 1876."[139]

Other writers have argued that Smith's support for laissez-faire (which in French means leave alone) has been overstated. Herbert Stein wrote that the people who "wear an Adam Smith necktie" do it to "make a statement of their devotion to the idea of free markets and limited government", and that this misrepresents Smith's ideas. Stein writes that Smith "was not pure or doctrinaire about this idea. He viewed government intervention in the market with great skepticism...yet he was prepared to accept or propose qualifications to that policy in the specific cases where he judged that their net effect would be beneficial and would not undermine the basically free character of the system. He did not wear the Adam Smith necktie." In Stein's reading, The Wealth of Nations could justify the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, mandatory employer health benefits, environmentalism, and "discriminatory taxation to deter improper or luxurious behavior".[140]

Similarly, Vivienne Brown stated in The Economic Journal that in the 20th-century United States, Reaganomics supporters, The Wall Street Journal, and other similar sources have spread among the general public a partial and misleading vision of Smith, portraying him as an "extreme dogmatic defender of laissez-faire capitalism and supply-side economics".[141] In fact, The Wealth of Nations includes the following statement on the payment of taxes:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.[142]

Some commentators have argued that Smith's works show support for a progressive, not flat, income tax and that he specifically named taxes that he thought should be required by the state, among them luxury-goods taxes and tax on rent.[143] Yet Smith argued for the "impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion to their economic revenue, by any capitation".[144] Smith argued that taxes should principally go toward protecting "justice" and "certain publick institutions" that were necessary for the benefit of all of society, but that could not be provided by private enterprise.[145]

Additionally, Smith outlined the proper expenses of the government in The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch. I. Included in his requirements of a government is to enforce contracts and provide justice system, grant patents and copy rights, provide public goods such as infrastructure, provide national defence, and regulate banking. The role of the government was to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual" such as roads, bridges, canals, and harbours. He also encouraged invention and new ideas through his patent enforcement and support of infant industry monopolies. He supported partial public subsidies for elementary education, and he believed that competition among religious institutions would provide general benefit to the society. In such cases, however, Smith argued for local rather than centralised control: "Even those publick works which are of such a nature that they cannot afford any revenue for maintaining themselves ... are always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the management of a local and provincial administration, than by the general revenue of the state" (Wealth of Nations, V.i.d.18). Finally, he outlined how the government should support the dignity of the monarch or chief magistrate, such that they are equal or above the public in fashion. He even states that monarchs should be provided for in a greater fashion than magistrates of a republic because "we naturally expect more splendor in the court of a king than in the mansion-house of a doge".[146] In addition, he allowed that in some specific circumstances, retaliatory tariffs may be beneficial:

The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconvenience of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods.[147]

However, he added that in general, a retaliatory tariff "seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes of them".[148]

Economic historians such as Jacob Viner regard Smith as a strong advocate of free markets and limited government (what Smith called "natural liberty"), but not as a dogmatic supporter of laissez-faire.[149]

Economist Daniel Klein believes using the term "free-market economics" or "free-market economist" to identify the ideas of Smith is too general and slightly misleading. Klein offers six characteristics central to the identity of Smith's economic thought and argues that a new name is needed to give a more accurate depiction of the "Smithian" identity.[150][151] Economist David Ricardo set straight some of the misunderstandings about Smith's thoughts on free market. Many continue to fall victim to the thinking that Smith was a free-market economist without exception, though he was not. Ricardo pointed out that Smith was in support of helping infant industries. Smith believed that the government should subsidise newly formed industry, but he did fear that when the infant industry grew into adulthood, it would be unwilling to surrender the government help.[152] Smith also supported tariffs on imported goods to counteract an internal tax on the same good. Smith also fell to pressure in supporting some tariffs in support for national defence.[152]

Some have also claimed, Emma Rothschild among them, that Smith would have supported a minimum wage,[153] although no direct textual evidence supports the claim. Indeed, Smith wrote:

The price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the workmen, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do so. (The Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 8)

However, Smith also noted, to the contrary, the existence of an imbalanced, inequality of bargaining power:[154]

A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

See also Edit

References Edit

Informational notes Edit

  1. ^ Smith was described as a North Briton and Scot.[2]
  2. ^ In Life of Adam Smith, Rae writes: "In his fourth year, while on a visit to his grandfather's house at Strathendry on the banks of the Leven, [Smith] was stolen by a passing band of gypsies, and for a time could not be found. But presently a gentleman arrived who had met a Romani woman a few miles down the road carrying a child that was crying piteously. Scouts were immediately dispatched in the direction indicated, and they came upon the woman in Leslie wood. As soon as she saw them she threw her burden down and escaped, and the child was brought back to his mother. [Smith] would have made, I fear, a poor gypsy."[13]
  3. ^ During the reign of Louis XIV, the population shrunk by 4 million and agricultural productivity was reduced by one-third while the taxes had increased. Cusminsky, Rosa, de Cendrero, 1967, Los Fisiócratas, Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, p. 6
  4. ^ 1701–1714 War of the Spanish Succession, 1688–1697 War of the Grand Alliance, 1672–1678 Franco-Dutch War, 1667–1668 War of Devolution, 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War
  5. ^ The 6 editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments were published in 1759, 1761, 1767, 1774, 1781, and 1790, respectively.[74]

Citations Edit

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  3. ^ "BBC – History – Scottish History". www.bbc.co.uk. from the original on 10 April 2001. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  4. ^ —Brown, Vivienne (5 December 2008). "Mere Inventions of the Imagination': A Survey of Recent Literature on Adam Smith". Cambridge University Press. 13 (2): 281–312. doi:10.1017/S0266267100004521. S2CID 145093382. from the original on 21 July 2020. Retrieved 20 July 2020.
    —Berry, Christopher J. (2018). Adam Smith Very Short Introductions Series. Oxford University Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-19-878445-6. from the original on 19 July 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
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Bibliography Edit

  • Benians, E. A. (1925). "II. Adam Smith's Project of an Empire". Cambridge Historical Journal. 1 (3): 249–283. doi:10.1017/S1474691300001062.
  • Bonar, James, ed. (1894). A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith. London: Macmillan. OCLC 2320634 – via Internet Archive.
  • Buchan, James (2006). The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-06121-3.
  • Buchholz, Todd (1999). New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-028313-7.
  • Bussing-Burks, Marie (2003). Influential Economists. Minneapolis: The Oliver Press. ISBN 1-881508-72-2.
  • Campbell, R.H.; Skinner, Andrew S. (1985). Adam Smith. Routledge. ISBN 0-7099-3473-4.
  • Coase, R.H. (October 1976). "Adam Smith's View of Man". The Journal of Law and Economics. 19 (3): 529–546. doi:10.1086/466886. S2CID 145363933.
  • Helbroner, Robert L. The Essential Adam Smith. ISBN 0-393-95530-3
  • Nicholson, J. Shield (1909). A project of empire;a critical study of the economics of imperialism, with special reference to the ideas of Adam Smith. Macmillan and co., limited. hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t4th8nc9p.
  • Otteson, James R. (2002). Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01656-8
  • Palen, Marc-William (2014). (PDF). The Historical Journal. 57: 179–198. doi:10.1017/S0018246X13000101. S2CID 159524069. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2020.
  • Rae, John (1895). Life of Adam Smith. London & New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-7222-2658-6. Retrieved 14 May 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  • Ross, Ian Simpson (1995). The Life of Adam Smith. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-828821-2.
  • Ross, Ian Simpson (2010). The Life of Adam Smith (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
  • Skousen, Mark (2001). The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of Great Thinkers. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0480-9.
  • Smith, Adam (1977) [1776]. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76374-9.
  • Smith, Adam (1982) [1759]. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (ed.). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund. ISBN 0-86597-012-2.
  • Smith, Adam (2002) [1759]. Knud Haakonssen (ed.). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59847-8.
  • Smith, Vernon L. (July 1998). "The Two Faces of Adam Smith". Southern Economic Journal. 65 (1): 2–19. doi:10.2307/1061349. JSTOR 1061349. S2CID 154002759.
  • Tribe, Keith; Mizuta, Hiroshi (2002). A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith. Pickering & Chatto. ISBN 978-1-85196-741-4.
  • Viner, Jacob (1991). Douglas A. Irwin (ed.). Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04266-7.

Further reading Edit

 
Wikisource has the text of A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature's article about Smith, Adam.
External video
  Q&A interview with Glory Liu on Adam Smith's America, December 4, 2022, C-SPAN
External video
  Presentation by Jesse Norman on Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters, September 19, 2018, C-SPAN
  • Norman, Jesse (2018). Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters. Allen Lane.
  • O'Rourke, P.J. (2006). On The Wealth of Nations. Grove/Atlantic Inc. ISBN 0-87113-949-9.
  • Otteson, James (2002). Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01656-8.
  • Otteson, James (2013). Adam Smith. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4411-9013-0.
  • Phillipson, Nicholas (2010). Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-16927-0, 352 pages; scholarly biography
  • Pichet, Éric (2004). Adam Smith, je connais !, French biography. ISBN 978-2843720406
  • Vianello, F. (1999). "Social accounting in Adam Smith", in: Mongiovi, G. and Petri F. (eds.), Value, Distribution and capital. Essays in honour of Pierangelo Garegnani, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-14277-6.
  • Winch, Donald (2007) [2004]. "Smith, Adam". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25767. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Wolloch, N. (2015). "Symposium on Jack Russell Weinstein's Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education and the Moral Sentiments". Cosmos + Taxis
  • "Adam Smith and Empire: A New Talking Empire Podcast," Imperial & Global Forum, 12 March 2014.

External links Edit

 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Adam Smith
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Adam Smith.
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adam Smith (philosopher).

October 07, 2023
adam, smith, other, people, named, disambiguation, frsa, baptised, june, june, 1723, july, 1790, scottish, economist, philosopher, pioneer, thinking, political, economy, figure, during, scottish, enlightenment, seen, some, father, economics, father, capitalism. For other people named Adam Smith see Adam Smith disambiguation Adam Smith FRSA baptised 16 June O S 5 June 1723 1 17 July 1790 was a Scottish a economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment 3 Seen by some as The Father of Economics 4 or The Father of Capitalism 5 he wrote two classic works The Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759 and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations 1776 The latter often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God s will and instead appeals to natural political social economic and technological factors and the interactions between them Among other economic theories the work introduced Smith s idea of absolute advantage 6 Adam SmithFRSAPosthumous Muir portrait c 1800 at the Scottish National GalleryBornc 16 June O S c 5 June 1723 1 Kirkcaldy Fife ScotlandDied17 July 1790 1790 07 17 aged 67 Edinburgh ScotlandAlma materUniversity of Glasgow Balliol College OxfordNotable workThe Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759 The Wealth of Nations 1776 RegionWestern philosophySchoolClassical liberalismMain interestsPolitical philosophy ethics economicsNotable ideasClassical economics Free market Economic liberalism Division of labour Absolute advantage Invisible handSignatureSmith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College Oxford where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell After graduating he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh 7 leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy and during this time wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments In his later life he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe where he met other intellectual leaders of his day As a reaction to the common policy of protecting national markets and merchants what came to be known as mercantilism nowadays often referred to as cronyism or crony capitalism 8 Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics In this and other works he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers such as Horace Walpole 9 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early life 1 2 Formal education 1 3 Teaching career 1 4 Tutoring travels European intellectuals 1 5 Later years 1 6 Death 2 Personality and beliefs 2 1 Character 2 2 Religious views 3 Published works 3 1 The Theory of Moral Sentiments 3 2 The Wealth of Nations 3 3 Other works 4 Legacy 4 1 In economics and moral philosophy 4 2 In British imperial debates 4 3 Portraits monuments and banknotes 4 4 Residence 4 5 As a symbol of free market economics 5 See also 6 References 6 1 Informational notes 6 2 Citations 6 3 Bibliography 7 Further reading 8 External linksBiography EditEarly life Edit Smith was born in Kirkcaldy in Fife Scotland His father also Adam Smith was a Scottish Writer to the Signet senior solicitor advocate and prosecutor judge advocate and also served as comptroller of the customs in Kirkcaldy 10 Smith s mother was born Margaret Douglas daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry also in Fife she married Smith s father in 1720 Two months before Smith was born his father died leaving his mother a widow 11 The date of Smith s baptism into the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723 12 and this has often been treated as if it were also his date of birth 10 which is unknown Although few events in Smith s early childhood are known the Scottish journalist John Rae Smith s biographer recorded that Smith was abducted by Romani at the age of three and released when others went to rescue him b 14 Smith was close to his mother who probably encouraged him to pursue his scholarly ambitions 15 He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy characterised by Rae as one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period 13 from 1729 to 1737 he learned Latin mathematics history and writing 15 Formal education Edit Smith entered the University of Glasgow at age 14 and studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson 15 Here he developed his passion for the philosophical concepts of reason civilian liberties and free speech In 1740 he was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College Oxford under the Snell Exhibition 16 Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford which he found intellectually stifling 17 In Book V Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations he wrote In the University of Oxford the greater part of the public professors have for these many years given up altogether even the pretence of teaching Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of David Hume s A Treatise of Human Nature and they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it 13 18 19 According to William Robert Scott The Oxford of Smith s time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework 20 Nevertheless he took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library 21 When Smith was not studying on his own his time at Oxford was not a happy one according to his letters 22 Near the end of his time there he began suffering from shaking fits probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown 23 He left Oxford University in 1746 before his scholarship ended 23 24 In Book V of The Wealth of Nations Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager intellectual activity at English universities when compared to their Scottish counterparts He attributes this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge which made the income of professors independent of their ability to attract students and to the fact that distinguished men of letters could make an even more comfortable living as ministers of the Church of England 19 Smith s discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow Francis Hutcheson who was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students colleagues and even ordinary residents with the fervor and earnestness of his orations which he sometimes opened to the public His lectures endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy but also to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives appropriately acquiring the epithet the preacher of philosophy Unlike Smith Hutcheson was not a system builder rather his magnetic personality and method of lecturing so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as the never to be forgotten Hutcheson a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people his good friend David Hume and influential mentor Francis Hutcheson 25 nbsp Portrait of Smith s mother Margaret DouglasTeaching career Edit Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 at the University of Edinburgh 26 sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames 27 His lecture topics included rhetoric and belles lettres 28 and later the subject of the progress of opulence On this latter topic he first expounded his economic philosophy of the obvious and simple system of natural liberty While Smith was not adept at public speaking his lectures met with success 29 In 1750 Smith met the philosopher David Hume who was his senior by more than a decade In their writings covering history politics philosophy economics and religion Smith and Hume shared closer intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment 30 In 1751 Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching logic courses and in 1752 he was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh having been introduced to the society by Lord Kames When the head of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow died the next year Smith took over the position 29 He worked as an academic for the next 13 years which he characterised as by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period of his life 31 Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 embodying some of his Glasgow lectures This work was concerned with how human morality depends on sympathy between agent and spectator or the individual and other members of society Smith defined mutual sympathy as the basis of moral sentiments He based his explanation not on a special moral sense as the Third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done nor on utility as Hume did but on mutual sympathy a term best captured in modern parlance by the 20th century concept of empathy the capacity to recognise feelings that are being experienced by another being nbsp Francois Quesnay one of the leaders of the physiocratic school of thoughtFollowing the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith became so popular that many wealthy students left their schools in other countries to enroll at Glasgow to learn under Smith 32 At this time Smith began to give more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lectures and less to his theories of morals 33 For example Smith lectured that the cause of increase in national wealth is labour rather than the nation s quantity of gold or silver which is the basis for mercantilism the economic theory that dominated Western European economic policies at the time 34 In 1762 the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of Laws LL D 35 At the end of 1763 he obtained an offer from British chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume to tutor his stepson Henry Scott the young Duke of Buccleuch as preparation for a career in international politics Smith resigned from his professorship in 1764 to take the tutoring position He subsequently attempted to return the fees he had collected from his students because he had resigned partway through the term but his students refused 36 Tutoring travels European intellectuals Edit Smith s tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott during which time he educated Scott on a variety of subjects He was paid 300 per year plus expenses along with a 300 per year pension roughly twice his former income as a teacher 36 Smith first travelled as a tutor to Toulouse France where he stayed for a year and a half According to his own account he found Toulouse to be somewhat boring having written to Hume that he had begun to write a book to pass away the time 36 After touring the south of France the group moved to Geneva where Smith met with the philosopher Voltaire 37 nbsp David Hume was a friend and contemporary of Smith s From Geneva the party moved to Paris Here Smith met American publisher and diplomat Benjamin Franklin who a few years later would lead the opposition in the American colonies against four British resolutions from Charles Townshend in history known as the Townshend Acts which threatened American colonial self government and imposed revenue duties on a number of items necessary to the colonies Smith discovered the Physiocracy school founded by Francois Quesnay and discussed with their intellectuals 38 Physiocrats were opposed to mercantilism the dominating economic theory of the time illustrated in their motto Laissez faire et laissez passer le monde va de lui meme Let do and let pass the world goes on by itself The wealth of France had been virtually depleted by Louis XIV c and Louis XV in ruinous wars d and was further exhausted in aiding the American revolutionary soldiers against the British Given that the British economy of the day yielded an income distribution that stood in contrast to that which existed in France Smith concluded that with all its imperfections the Physiocratic school is perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy 39 The distinction between productive versus unproductive labour the physiocratic classe steril was a predominant issue in the development and understanding of what would become classical economic theory Later years Edit In 1766 Henry Scott s younger brother died in Paris and Smith s tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter 40 Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy and he devoted much of the next decade to writing his magnum opus 41 There he befriended Henry Moyes a young blind man who showed precocious aptitude Smith secured the patronage of David Hume and Thomas Reid in the young man s education 42 In May 1773 Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London 43 and was elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775 The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and was an instant success selling out its first edition in only six months 44 In 1778 Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother who died in 1784 45 in Panmure House in Edinburgh s Canongate 46 Five years later as a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter he automatically became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 47 From 1787 to 1789 he occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow 48 Death Edit nbsp A commemorative plaque for Smith is located in Smith s home town of Kirkcaldy Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard 49 On his deathbed Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more 50 Smith s literary executors were two friends from the Scottish academic world the physicist and chemist Joseph Black and the pioneering geologist James Hutton 51 Smith left behind many notes and some unpublished material but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication 52 He mentioned an early unpublished History of Astronomy as probably suitable and it duly appeared in 1795 along with other material such as Essays on Philosophical Subjects 51 Smith s library went by his will to David Douglas Lord Reston son of his cousin Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry Fife who lived with Smith 53 It was eventually divided between his two surviving children Cecilia Margaret Mrs Cunningham and David Anne Mrs Bannerman On the death in 1878 of her husband the Reverend W B Cunningham of Prestonpans Mrs Cunningham sold some of the books The remainder passed to her son Professor Robert Oliver Cunningham of Queen s College Belfast who presented a part to the library of Queen s College After his death the remaining books were sold On the death of Mrs Bannerman in 1879 her portion of the library went intact to the New College of the Free Church in Edinburgh and the collection was transferred to the University of Edinburgh Main Library in 1972 Personality and beliefs EditCharacter Edit nbsp Portrait of Smith by John Kay 1790Not much is known about Smith s personal views beyond what can be deduced from his published articles His personal papers were destroyed after his death per his request 52 He never married 54 and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before him 55 Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent minded with peculiar habits of speech and gait and a smile of inexpressible benignity 56 He was known to talk to himself 50 a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions 57 He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness 50 and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study 57 According to one story Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory and while discussing free trade Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he needed help to escape 58 He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot drunk the concoction and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had According to another account Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles 24 km outside of town before nearby church bells brought him back to reality 57 58 James Boswell who was a student of Smith s at Glasgow University and later knew him at the Literary Club says that Smith thought that speaking about his ideas in conversation might reduce the sale of his books so his conversation was unimpressive According to Boswell he once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he made it a rule when in company never to talk of what he understood 59 Smith has been alternatively described as someone who had a large nose bulging eyes a protruding lower lip a nervous twitch and a speech impediment and one whose countenance was manly and agreeable 19 60 Smith is said to have acknowledged his looks at one point saying I am a beau in nothing but my books 19 Smith rarely sat for portraits 61 so almost all depictions of him created during his lifetime were drawn from memory The best known portraits of Smith are the profile by James Tassie and two etchings by John Kay 62 The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th century reprints of The Wealth of Nations were based largely on Tassie s medallion 63 Religious views Edit Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Smith s religious views His father had shown a strong interest in Christianity and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland 64 and the fact he received the Snell Exhibition suggests that he may have gone to Oxford with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church of England 65 Anglo American economist Ronald Coase has challenged the view that Smith was a deist based on the fact that Smith s writings never explicitly invoke God as an explanation of the harmonies of the natural or the human worlds 66 According to Coase though Smith does sometimes refer to the Great Architect of the Universe later scholars such as Jacob Viner have very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God 67 a belief for which Coase finds little evidence in passages such as the one in the Wealth of Nations in which Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the great phenomena of nature such as the generation the life growth and dissolution of plants and animals has led men to enquire into their causes and that superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more familiar causes or from such as mankind were better acquainted with than the agency of the gods 67 Some authors argue that Smith s social and economic philosophy is inherently theological and that his entire model of social order is logically dependent on the notion of God s action in nature 68 Brendan Long argues that Smith was a theist 69 whereas according to professor Gavin Kennedy Smith was in some sense a Christian 70 Smith was also a close friend of David Hume who despite debate about his religious views in modern scholarship was commonly characterised in his own time as an atheist 71 The publication in 1777 of Smith s letter to William Strahan in which he described Hume s courage in the face of death in spite of his irreligiosity attracted considerable controversy 72 Published works EditThe Theory of Moral Sentiments Edit Main article The Theory of Moral Sentiments In 1759 Smith published his first work The Theory of Moral Sentiments sold by co publishers Andrew Millar of London and Alexander Kincaid of Edinburgh 73 Smith continued making extensive revisions to the book until his death e Although The Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as Smith s most influential work Smith himself is believed to have considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be a superior work 75 In the work Smith critically examines the moral thinking of his time and suggests that conscience arises from dynamic and interactive social relationships through which people seek mutual sympathy of sentiments 76 His goal in writing the work was to explain the source of mankind s ability to form moral judgment given that people begin life with no moral sentiments at all Smith proposes a theory of sympathy in which the act of observing others and seeing the judgments they form of both others and oneself makes people aware of themselves and how others perceive their behaviour The feedback we receive from perceiving or imagining others judgment creates an incentive to achieve mutual sympathy of sentiments with them and leads people to develop habits and then principles of behaviour which come to constitute one s conscience 77 Some scholars have perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations the former emphasises sympathy for others while the latter focuses on the role of self interest 78 In recent years however some scholars 79 80 81 of Smith s work have argued that no contradiction exists They contend that in The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith develops a theory of psychology in which individuals seek the approval of the impartial spectator as a result of a natural desire to have outside observers sympathise with their sentiments Rather than viewing The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations as presenting incompatible views of human nature some Smith scholars regard the works as emphasising different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation In the first part The Theory of Moral Sentiments he laid down the foundation of his vision of humanity and society In the second The Wealth of Nations he elaborated on the virtue of prudence which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book 82 Otteson argues that both books are Newtonian in their methodology and deploy a similar market model for explaining the creation and development of large scale human social orders including morality economics as well as language 83 Ekelund and Hebert offer a differing view observing that self interest is present in both works and that in the former sympathy is the moral faculty that holds self interest in check whereas in the latter competition is the economic faculty that restrains self interest 84 The Wealth of Nations Edit Main article The Wealth of Nations Disagreement exists between classical and neoclassical economists about the central message of Smith s most influential work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations 1776 Neoclassical economists emphasise Smith s invisible hand 85 a concept mentioned in the middle of his work Book IV Chapter II and classical economists believe that Smith stated his programme for promoting the wealth of nations in the first sentences which attributes the growth of wealth and prosperity to the division of labour He elaborated on the virtue of prudence which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book 82 Smith used the term the invisible hand in History of Astronomy 86 referring to the invisible hand of Jupiter and once in each of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments 87 1759 and The Wealth of Nations 88 1776 This last statement about an invisible hand has been interpreted in numerous ways nbsp Later building on the site where Smith wrote The Wealth of NationsAs 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 may be 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 By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good It is an affectation indeed not very common among merchants and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it Those who regard that statement as Smith s central message also quote frequently Smith s dictum 89 It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages However in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he had a more sceptical approach to self interest as driver of behaviour How selfish soever man may be supposed 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 nbsp The first page of The Wealth of Nations 1776 London editionIn relation to Mandeville s contention that Private Vices may be turned into Public Benefits 90 Smith s belief that when an individual pursues his self interest under conditions of justice he unintentionally promotes the good of society Self interested competition in the free market he argued would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services Nevertheless he was wary of businessmen and warned of their conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices 91 Again and again Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests which may form cabals or monopolies fixing the highest price which can be squeezed out of the buyers 92 Smith also warned that a business dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation Smith states that the interest of manufacturers and merchants in any particular branch of trade or manufactures is always in some respects different from and even opposite to that of the public The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined not only with the most scrupulous but with the most suspicious attention 93 Thus Smith s chief worry seems to be when business is given special protections or privileges from government by contrast in the absence of such special political favours he believed that business activities were generally beneficial to the whole society It is the great multiplication of the production of all the different arts in consequence of the division of labour which occasions in a well governed society that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for and every other workman being exactly in the same situation he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity or what comes to the same thing for the price of a great quantity of theirs He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of society The Wealth of Nations I i 10 The neoclassical interest in Smith s statement about an invisible hand originates in the possibility of seeing it as a precursor of neoclassical economics and its concept of general equilibrium Samuelson s Economics refers six times to Smith s invisible hand To emphasise this connection Samuelson 94 quotes Smith s invisible hand statement substituting general interest for public interest Samuelson 95 concludes Smith was unable to prove the essence of his invisible hand doctrine Indeed until the 1940s no one knew how to prove even to state properly the kernel of truth in this proposition about perfectly competitive market nbsp 1922 printing of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations edited by Edwin CannanVery differently classical economists see in Smith s first sentences his programme to promote The Wealth of Nations Using the physiocratical concept of the economy as a circular process to secure growth the inputs of Period 2 must exceed the inputs of Period 1 Therefore those outputs of Period 1 which are not used or usable as inputs of Period 2 are regarded as unproductive labour as they do not contribute to growth This is what Smith had heard in France from among others Francois Quesnay whose ideas Smith was so impressed by that he might have dedicated The Wealth of Nations to him had he not died beforehand 96 97 To this French insight that unproductive labour should be reduced to use labour more productively Smith added his own proposal that productive labour should be made even more productive by deepening the division of labour 98 Smith argued that deepening the division of labour under competition leads to greater productivity which leads to lower prices and thus an increasing standard of living general plenty and universal opulence for all Extended markets and increased production lead to the continuous reorganisation of production and the invention of new ways of producing which in turn lead to further increased production lower prices and improved standards of living Smith s central message is therefore that under dynamic competition a growth machine secures The Wealth of Nations Smith s argument predicted Britain s evolution as the workshop of the world underselling and outproducing all its competitors The opening sentences of the Wealth of Nations summarise this policy The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes T his produce bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it B ut this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances first by the skill dexterity and judgment with which its labour is generally applied and secondly by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour and that of those who are not so employed emphasis added 99 However Smith added that the abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter 100 Other works Edit nbsp Smith s burial place in Canongate KirkyardShortly before his death Smith had nearly all his manuscripts destroyed In his last years he seemed to have been planning two major treatises one on the theory and history of law and one on the sciences and arts The posthumously published Essays on Philosophical Subjects a history of astronomy down to Smith s own era plus some thoughts on ancient physics and metaphysics probably contain parts of what would have been the latter treatise Lectures on Jurisprudence were notes taken from Smith s early lectures plus an early draft of The Wealth of Nations published as part of the 1976 Glasgow Edition of the works and correspondence of Smith Other works including some published posthumously include Lectures on Justice Police Revenue and Arms 1763 first published in 1896 and Essays on Philosophical Subjects 1795 101 Legacy EditIn economics and moral philosophy Edit The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics In this and other works Smith expounded how rational self interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of Hogarth and Swift as a discussion at the University of Winchester suggests 102 In 2005 The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time 103 In light of the arguments put forward by Smith and other economic theorists in Britain academic belief in mercantilism began to decline in Britain in the late 18th century During the Industrial Revolution Britain embraced free trade and Smith s laissez faire economics and via the British Empire used its power to spread a broadly liberal economic model around the world characterised by open markets and relatively barrier free domestic and international trade 104 George Stigler attributes to Smith the most important substantive proposition in all of economics It is that under competition owners of resources for example labour land and capital will use them most profitably resulting in an equal rate of return in equilibrium for all uses adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training trust hardship and unemployment 105 Paul Samuelson finds in Smith s pluralist use of supply and demand as applied to wages rents and profit a valid and valuable anticipation of the general equilibrium modelling of Walras a century later Smith s allowance for wage increases in the short and intermediate term from capital accumulation and invention contrasted with Malthus Ricardo and Karl Marx in their propounding a rigid subsistence wage theory of labour supply 106 Joseph Schumpeter criticised Smith for a lack of technical rigour yet he argued that this enabled Smith s writings to appeal to wider audiences His very limitation made for success Had he been more brilliant he would not have been taken so seriously Had he dug more deeply had he unearthed more recondite truth had he used more difficult and ingenious methods he would not have been understood But he had no such ambitions in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers He led them on gently encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations making them feel comfortable all along 107 Classical economists presented competing theories to those of Smith termed the labour theory of value Later Marxian economics descending from classical economics also use Smith s labour theories in part The first volume of Karl Marx s major work Das Kapital was published in German in 1867 In it Marx focused on the labour theory of value and what he considered to be the exploitation of labour by capital 108 109 The labour theory of value held that the value of a thing was determined by the labour that went into its production This contrasts with the modern contention of neoclassical economics that the value of a thing is determined by what one is willing to give up to obtain the thing nbsp The Adam Smith Theatre in KirkcaldyThe body of theory later termed neoclassical economics or marginalism formed from about 1870 to 1910 The term economics was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for economic science and a substitute for the earlier broader term political economy used by Smith 110 111 This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences 112 Neoclassical economics systematised supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of income It dispensed with the labour theory of value of which Smith was most famously identified with in classical economics in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side 113 The bicentennial anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations was celebrated in 1976 resulting in increased interest for The Theory of Moral Sentiments and his other works throughout academia After 1976 Smith was more likely to be represented as the author of both The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments and thereby as the founder of a moral philosophy and the science of economics His homo economicus or economic man was also more often represented as a moral person Additionally economists David Levy and Sandra Peart in The Secret History of the Dismal Science point to his opposition to hierarchy and beliefs in inequality including racial inequality and provide additional support for those who point to Smith s opposition to slavery colonialism and empire Emphasised also are Smith s statements of the need for high wages for the poor and the efforts to keep wages low In The Vanity of the Philosopher From Equality to Hierarchy in Postclassical Economics Peart and Levy also cite Smith s view that a common street porter was not intellectually inferior to a philosopher 114 and point to the need for greater appreciation of the public views in discussions of science and other subjects now considered to be technical They also cite Smith s opposition to the often expressed view that science is superior to common sense 115 Smith also explained the relationship between growth of private property and civil government Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions But avarice and ambition in the rich in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment are the passions which prompt to invade property passions much more steady in their operation and much more universal in their influence Wherever there is great property there is great inequality For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor who are often both driven by want and prompted by envy to invade his possessions It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property which is acquired by the labour of many years or perhaps of many successive generations can sleep a single night in security He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies whom though he never provoked he can never appease and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it The acquisition of valuable and extensive property therefore necessarily requires the establishment of civil government Where there is no property or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour civil government is not so necessary Civil government supposes a certain subordination But as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs All the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel that the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of those of the great shepherd or herdsman that the maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them They constitute a sort of little nobility who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority Civil government so far as it is instituted for the security of property is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor or of those who have some property against those who have none at all 116 In British imperial debates Edit Smith opposed empire He challenged ideas that colonies were key to British prosperity and power He rejected that other cultures such as China and India were culturally and developmentally inferior to Europe While he favoured commercial society he did not support radical social change and the imposition of commercial society on other societies He proposed that colonies be given independence or that full political rights be extended to colonial subjects 117 Smith s chapter on colonies in turn would help shape British imperial debates from the mid 19th century onward The Wealth of Nations would become an ambiguous text regarding the imperial question In his chapter on colonies Smith pondered how to solve the crisis developing across the Atlantic among the empire s 13 American colonies He offered two different proposals for easing tensions The first proposal called for giving the colonies their independence and by thus parting on a friendly basis Britain would be able to develop and maintain a free trade relationship with them and possibly even an informal military alliance Smith s second proposal called for a theoretical imperial federation that would bring the colonies and the metropole closer together through an imperial parliamentary system and imperial free trade 118 Smith s most prominent disciple in 19th century Britain peace advocate Richard Cobden preferred the first proposal Cobden would lead the Anti Corn Law League in overturning the Corn Laws in 1846 shifting Britain to a policy of free trade and empire on the cheap for decades to come This hands off approach toward the British Empire would become known as Cobdenism or the Manchester School 119 By the turn of the century however advocates of Smith s second proposal such as Joseph Shield Nicholson would become ever more vocal in opposing Cobdenism calling instead for imperial federation 120 As Marc William Palen notes On the one hand Adam Smith s late nineteenth and early twentieth century Cobdenite adherents used his theories to argue for gradual imperial devolution and empire on the cheap On the other various proponents of imperial federation throughout the British World sought to use Smith s theories to overturn the predominant Cobdenite hands off imperial approach and instead with a firm grip bring the empire closer than ever before 121 Smith s ideas thus played an important part in subsequent debates over the British Empire Portraits monuments and banknotes Edit nbsp A statue of Smith in Edinburgh s High Street erected through private donations organised by the Adam Smith InstituteSmith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks his portrait has appeared since 1981 on the 50 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in Scotland 122 123 and in March 2007 Smith s image also appeared on the new series of 20 notes issued by the Bank of England making him the first Scotsman to feature on an English banknote 124 nbsp Statue of Smith built in 1867 1870 at the old headquarters of the University of London 6 Burlington GardensA large scale memorial of Smith by Alexander Stoddart was unveiled on 4 July 2008 in Edinburgh It is a 10 foot 3 0 m tall bronze sculpture and it stands above the Royal Mile outside St Giles Cathedral in Parliament Square near the Mercat cross 125 20th century sculptor Jim Sanborn best known for the Kryptos sculpture at the United States Central Intelligence Agency has created multiple pieces which feature Smith s work At Central Connecticut State University is Circulating Capital a tall cylinder which features an extract from The Wealth of Nations on the lower half and on the upper half some of the same text but represented in binary code 126 At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte outside the Belk College of Business Administration is Adam Smith s Spinning Top 127 128 Another Smith sculpture is at Cleveland State University 129 He also appears as the narrator in the 2013 play The Low Road centred on a proponent on laissez faire economics in the late 18th century but dealing obliquely with the financial crisis of 2007 2008 and the recession which followed in the premiere production he was portrayed by Bill Paterson A bust of Smith is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling Residence Edit Adam Smith resided at Panmure House from 1778 to 1790 This residence has now been purchased by the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot Watt University and fundraising has begun to restore it 130 131 Part of the Northern end of the original building appears to have been demolished in the 19th century to make way for an iron foundry As a symbol of free market economics Edit Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free market policies as the founder of free market economics a view reflected in the naming of bodies such as the Adam Smith Institute in London multiple entities known as the Adam Smith Society including an historical Italian organisation 132 and the U S based Adam Smith Society 133 134 and the Australian Adam Smith Club 135 and in terms such as the Adam Smith necktie 136 Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argues that while Smith did not coin the term laissez faire it was left to Adam Smith to identify the more general set of principles that brought conceptual clarity to the seeming chaos of market transactions Greenspan continues that The Wealth of Nations was one of the great achievements in human intellectual history 137 P J O Rourke describes Smith as the founder of free market economics 138 Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman believed in 1976 200 years after the publishing of The Wealth of Nations that the work of Adam Smith was far more immediately relevant today than he was at the Centennial of The Wealth of Nations in 1876 139 Other writers have argued that Smith s support for laissez faire which in French means leave alone has been overstated Herbert Stein wrote that the people who wear an Adam Smith necktie do it to make a statement of their devotion to the idea of free markets and limited government and that this misrepresents Smith s ideas Stein writes that Smith was not pure or doctrinaire about this idea He viewed government intervention in the market with great skepticism yet he was prepared to accept or propose qualifications to that policy in the specific cases where he judged that their net effect would be beneficial and would not undermine the basically free character of the system He did not wear the Adam Smith necktie In Stein s reading The Wealth of Nations could justify the Food and Drug Administration the Consumer Product Safety Commission mandatory employer health benefits environmentalism and discriminatory taxation to deter improper or luxurious behavior 140 Similarly Vivienne Brown stated in The Economic Journal that in the 20th century United States Reaganomics supporters The Wall Street Journal and other similar sources have spread among the general public a partial and misleading vision of Smith portraying him as an extreme dogmatic defender of laissez faire capitalism and supply side economics 141 In fact The Wealth of Nations includes the following statement on the payment of taxes The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities that is in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state 142 Some commentators have argued that Smith s works show support for a progressive not flat income tax and that he specifically named taxes that he thought should be required by the state among them luxury goods taxes and tax on rent 143 Yet Smith argued for the impossibility of taxing the people in proportion to their economic revenue by any capitation 144 Smith argued that taxes should principally go toward protecting justice and certain publick institutions that were necessary for the benefit of all of society but that could not be provided by private enterprise 145 Additionally Smith outlined the proper expenses of the government in The Wealth of Nations Book V Ch I Included in his requirements of a government is to enforce contracts and provide justice system grant patents and copy rights provide public goods such as infrastructure provide national defence and regulate banking The role of the government was to provide goods of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual such as roads bridges canals and harbours He also encouraged invention and new ideas through his patent enforcement and support of infant industry monopolies He supported partial public subsidies for elementary education and he believed that competition among religious institutions would provide general benefit to the society In such cases however Smith argued for local rather than centralised control Even those publick works which are of such a nature that they cannot afford any revenue for maintaining themselves are always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue under the management of a local and provincial administration than by the general revenue of the state Wealth of Nations V i d 18 Finally he outlined how the government should support the dignity of the monarch or chief magistrate such that they are equal or above the public in fashion He even states that monarchs should be provided for in a greater fashion than magistrates of a republic because we naturally expect more splendor in the court of a king than in the mansion house of a doge 146 In addition he allowed that in some specific circumstances retaliatory tariffs may be beneficial The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconvenience of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods 147 However he added that in general a retaliatory tariff seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people to do another injury ourselves not only to those classes but to almost all the other classes of them 148 Economic historians such as Jacob Viner regard Smith as a strong advocate of free markets and limited government what Smith called natural liberty but not as a dogmatic supporter of laissez faire 149 Economist Daniel Klein believes using the term free market economics or free market economist to identify the ideas of Smith is too general and slightly misleading Klein offers six characteristics central to the identity of Smith s economic thought and argues that a new name is needed to give a more accurate depiction of the Smithian identity 150 151 Economist David Ricardo set straight some of the misunderstandings about Smith s thoughts on free market Many continue to fall victim to the thinking that Smith was a free market economist without exception though he was not Ricardo pointed out that Smith was in support of helping infant industries Smith believed that the government should subsidise newly formed industry but he did fear that when the infant industry grew into adulthood it would be unwilling to surrender the government help 152 Smith also supported tariffs on imported goods to counteract an internal tax on the same good Smith also fell to pressure in supporting some tariffs in support for national defence 152 Some have also claimed Emma Rothschild among them that Smith would have supported a minimum wage 153 although no direct textual evidence supports the claim Indeed Smith wrote The price of labour it must be observed cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour not only according to the different abilities of the workmen but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters Where wages are not regulated by law all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly though it has often pretended to do so The Wealth of Nations Book 1 Chapter 8 However Smith also noted to the contrary the existence of an imbalanced inequality of bargaining power 154 A landlord a farmer a master manufacturer a merchant though they did not employ a single workman could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired Many workmen could not subsist a week few could subsist a month and scarce any a year without employment In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him but the necessity is not so immediate See also Edit nbsp Economics portal nbsp Liberalism portal nbsp Libertarianism portal nbsp Philosophy portal nbsp Politics portalCritique of political economy Organizational capital List of abolitionist forerunners List of Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts People on Scottish banknotes Adam Smith s AmericaReferences EditInformational notes Edit Smith was described as a North Briton and Scot 2 In Life of Adam Smith Rae writes In his fourth year while on a visit to his grandfather s house at Strathendry on the banks of the Leven Smith was stolen by a passing band of gypsies and for a time could not be found But presently a gentleman arrived who had met a Romani woman a few miles down the road carrying a child that was crying piteously Scouts were immediately dispatched in the direction indicated and they came upon the woman in Leslie wood As soon as she saw them she threw her burden down and escaped and the child was brought back to his mother Smith would have made I fear a poor gypsy 13 During the reign of Louis XIV the population shrunk by 4 million and agricultural productivity was reduced by one third while the taxes had increased Cusminsky Rosa de Cendrero 1967 Los Fisiocratas Buenos Aires Centro Editor de America Latina p 6 1701 1714 War of the Spanish Succession 1688 1697 War of the Grand Alliance 1672 1678 Franco Dutch War 1667 1668 War of Devolution 1618 1648 Thirty Years War The 6 editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments were published in 1759 1761 1767 1774 1781 and 1790 respectively 74 Citations Edit a b Adam Smith 1723 1790 BBC Archived from the original on 15 March 2007 Retrieved 20 December 2019 Adam Smith s exact date of birth is unknown but he was baptised on 5 June 1723 Williams Gwydion M 2000 Adam Smith Wealth Without Nations London Athol Books p 59 ISBN 978 0 85034 084 6 Archived from the original on 19 July 2021 Retrieved 24 August 2020 BBC History Scottish History www bbc co uk Archived from the original on 10 April 2001 Retrieved 20 December 2019 Brown Vivienne 5 December 2008 Mere Inventions of the Imagination A Survey of Recent Literature on Adam Smith Cambridge University Press 13 2 281 312 doi 10 1017 S0266267100004521 S2CID 145093382 Archived from the original on 21 July 2020 Retrieved 20 July 2020 Berry Christopher J 2018 Adam Smith Very Short Introductions Series Oxford University Press p 101 ISBN 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Journal of Political Economy 84 6 pp 1199 1213 1202 Also published as Selected Papers No 50 PDF permanent dead link Graduate School of Business University of Chicago Samuelson Paul A 1977 A Modern Theorist s Vindication of Adam Smith American Economic Review 67 1 p 42 Reprinted in J C Wood ed Adam Smith Critical Assessments pp 498 509 Preview Archived 19 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine Schumpeter History of Economic Analysis New York Oxford University Press p 185 Roemer J E 1987 Marxian Value Analysis The New Palgrave A Dictionary of Economics v 3 383 Mandel Ernest 1987 Marx Karl Heinrich The New Palgrave A Dictionary of Economics v 3 pp 372 376 Marshall Alfred Marshall Mary Paley 1879 The Economics of Industry Macmillan p 2 ISBN 978 1855065475 Archived from the original on 13 June 2020 Retrieved 13 May 2020 Jevons W Stanley 1879 The Theory of Political Economy 2nd ed p xiv Archived from the original on 13 June 2020 Retrieved 13 May 2020 Clark B 1998 Political economy A comparative approach 2nd ed Westport CT Praeger p 32 Campus Antonietta 1987 Marginalist Economics The New Palgrave A Dictionary of Economics v 3 p 320 Smith 1977 Book I Chapter 2 The Vanity of the Philosopher From Equality to Hierarchy in Postclassical Economics 2 Archived 4 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine The Wealth of Nations Book 5 Chapter 1 Part 2 Pitts Jennifer 2005 A Turn to Empire The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France Princeton University Press pp 39 58 ISBN 978 1 4008 2663 6 E A Benians Adam Smith s project of an empire Cambridge Historical Journal 1 1925 249 283 Anthony Howe Free trade and liberal England 1846 1946 Oxford 1997 J Shield Nicholson A project of empire a critical study of the economics of imperialism with special reference to the ideas of Adam Smith London 1909 Marc William Palen Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire c 1870 1932 Archived 22 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine Historical Journal 57 1 March 2014 179 198 Clydesdale 50 Pounds 1981 Ron Wise s Banknoteworld Archived from the original on 30 October 2008 Retrieved 15 October 2008 Current Banknotes Clydesdale Bank The Committee of Scottish Clearing Bankers Archived from the original on 3 October 2008 Retrieved 15 October 2008 Smith replaces Elgar on 20 note BBC 29 October 2006 Archived from the original on 24 March 2007 Retrieved 14 May 2008 Blackley Michael 26 September 2007 Adam Smith sculpture to tower over Royal Mile Edinburgh Evening News Fillo Maryellen 13 March 2001 CCSU welcomes a new kid on the block The Hartford Courant Kelley Pam 20 May 1997 Piece at UNCC is a puzzle for Charlotte artist says The Charlotte Observer Shaw Eagle Joanna 1 June 1997 Artist sheds new light on sculpture The Washington Times Adam Smith s Spinning Top Ohio Outdoor Sculpture Inventory Archived from the original on 5 February 2005 Retrieved 24 May 2008 The restoration of Panmure House Archived from the original on 22 January 2012 Adam Smith s Home Gets Business School Revival Bloomberg Archived from the original on 24 June 2013 Retrieved 5 March 2017 The Adam Smith Society The Adam Smith Society Archived from the original on 21 July 2007 Retrieved 24 May 2008 Choi Amy 4 March 2014 Defying Skeptics Some Business Schools Double Down on Capitalism Bloomberg Business News Archived from the original on 26 February 2015 Retrieved 24 February 2015 Who We Are The Adam Smith Society April 2016 Archived from the original on 9 February 2019 Retrieved 2 February 2019 The Australian Adam Smith Club Adam Smith Club Archived from the original on 9 May 2010 Retrieved 12 October 2008 Levy David June 1992 Interview with Milton Friedman Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Archived from the original on 3 September 2009 Retrieved 1 September 2008 FRB Speech Greenspan Adam Smith 6 February 2005 Archived from the original on 12 May 2008 Retrieved 31 May 2008 Adam Smith Web Junkie Forbes 5 July 2007 Archived from the original on 20 May 2008 Retrieved 10 June 2008 From 1976 Adam Smith s Relevance for 1976 The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Retrieved 24 August 2023 Stein Herbert 6 April 1994 Board of Contributors Remembering Adam Smith The Wall Street Journal Asia A14 Brown Vivienne Pack Spencer J Werhane Patricia H January 1993 Untitled review of Capitalism as a Moral System Adam Smith s Critique of the Free Market Economy and Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism The Economic Journal 103 416 230 232 doi 10 2307 2234351 JSTOR 2234351 Smith 1977 bk V ch 2 Market Man The New Yorker 18 October 2010 Archived from the original on 28 May 2014 Retrieved 20 February 2020 The Wealth of Nations V ii k 1 The Wealth of Nations IV ix 51 Smith 1977 bk V Smith A 1976 The Glasgow edition vol 2a p 468 The Wealth of Nations IV ii 39 Viner Jacob April 1927 Adam Smith and Laissez faire The Journal of Political Economy 35 2 198 232 doi 10 1086 253837 JSTOR 1823421 S2CID 154539413 Klein Daniel B 2008 Toward a Public and Professional Identity for Our Economics Econ Journal Watch 5 3 358 372 Archived from the original on 28 December 2013 Retrieved 10 February 2010 Klein Daniel B 2009 Desperately Seeking Smithians Responses to the Questionnaire about Building an Identity Econ Journal Watch 6 1 113 180 Archived from the original on 28 December 2013 Retrieved 10 February 2010 a b Buchholz Todd December 1990 pp 38 39 Martin Christopher Adam Smith and Liberal Economics Reading the Minimum Wage Debate of 1795 96 Econ Journal Watch 8 2 110 125 May 2011 3 Archived 28 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine A Smith Wealth of Nations 1776 Book I ch 8 Bibliography Edit Benians E A 1925 II Adam Smith s Project of an Empire Cambridge Historical Journal 1 3 249 283 doi 10 1017 S1474691300001062 Bonar James ed 1894 A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith London Macmillan OCLC 2320634 via Internet Archive Buchan James 2006 The Authentic Adam Smith His Life and Ideas W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 393 06121 3 Buchholz Todd 1999 New Ideas from Dead Economists An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought Penguin Books ISBN 0 14 028313 7 Bussing Burks Marie 2003 Influential Economists Minneapolis The Oliver Press ISBN 1 881508 72 2 Campbell R H Skinner Andrew S 1985 Adam Smith Routledge ISBN 0 7099 3473 4 Coase R H October 1976 Adam Smith s View of Man The Journal of Law and Economics 19 3 529 546 doi 10 1086 466886 S2CID 145363933 Helbroner Robert L The Essential Adam Smith ISBN 0 393 95530 3 Nicholson J Shield 1909 A project of empire a critical study of the economics of imperialism with special reference to the ideas of Adam Smith Macmillan and co limited hdl 2027 uc2 ark 13960 t4th8nc9p Otteson James R 2002 Adam Smith s Marketplace of Life Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 01656 8 Palen Marc William 2014 Adam Smith as Advocate of Empire c 1870 1932 PDF The Historical Journal 57 179 198 doi 10 1017 S0018246X13000101 S2CID 159524069 Archived from the original PDF on 18 February 2020 Rae John 1895 Life of Adam Smith London amp New York Macmillan ISBN 0 7222 2658 6 Retrieved 14 May 2018 via Internet Archive Ross Ian Simpson 1995 The Life of Adam Smith Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 828821 2 Ross Ian Simpson 2010 The Life of Adam Smith 2nd ed Oxford University Press Skousen Mark 2001 The Making of Modern Economics The Lives and Ideas of Great Thinkers M E Sharpe ISBN 0 7656 0480 9 Smith Adam 1977 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 76374 9 Smith Adam 1982 1759 D D Raphael and A L Macfie ed The Theory of Moral Sentiments Liberty Fund ISBN 0 86597 012 2 Smith Adam 2002 1759 Knud Haakonssen ed The Theory of Moral Sentiments Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 59847 8 Smith Vernon L July 1998 The Two Faces of Adam Smith Southern Economic Journal 65 1 2 19 doi 10 2307 1061349 JSTOR 1061349 S2CID 154002759 Tribe Keith Mizuta Hiroshi 2002 A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith Pickering amp Chatto ISBN 978 1 85196 741 4 Viner Jacob 1991 Douglas A Irwin ed Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 04266 7 Further reading Edit nbsp Wikisource has the text of A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature s article about Smith Adam Butler Eamonn 2007 Adam Smith A Primer Institute of Economic Affairs ISBN 978 0 255 36608 3 Cook Simon J 2012 Culture amp Political Economy Adam Smith amp Alfred Marshall Tabur Copley Stephen 1995 Adam Smith s Wealth of Nations New Interdisciplinary Essays Manchester University Press ISBN 0 7190 3943 6 Glahe F 1977 Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations 1776 1976 University Press of Colorado ISBN 0 87081 082 0 Haakonssen Knud 2006 The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 77924 3 Hamowy Ronald 2008 Smith Adam 1723 1790 The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism Thousand Oaks CA Sage Cato Institute pp 470 472 doi 10 4135 9781412965811 n287 ISBN 978 1412965804 LCCN 2008009151 OCLC 750831024 Hardwick D and Marsh L 2014 Propriety and Prosperity New Studies on the Philosophy of Adam Smith Palgrave Macmillan Hollander Samuel 1973 Economics of Adam Smith University of Toronto Press ISBN 0 8020 6302 0 External video nbsp Q amp A interview with Glory Liu on Adam Smith s America December 4 2022 C SPANLiu Glory M 2022 Adam Smith s America How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0691240879 McLean Iain 2006 Adam Smith Radical and Egalitarian An Interpretation for the 21st Century Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0 7486 2352 3 Milgate Murray amp Stimson Shannon 2009 After Adam Smith A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 14037 7 Muller Jerry Z 1995 Adam Smith in His Time and Ours Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 00161 8 External video nbsp Presentation by Jesse Norman on Adam Smith What He Thought and Why It Matters September 19 2018 C SPANNorman Jesse 2018 Adam Smith What He Thought and Why It Matters Allen Lane O Rourke P J 2006 On The Wealth of Nations Grove Atlantic Inc ISBN 0 87113 949 9 Otteson James 2002 Adam Smith s Marketplace of Life Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 01656 8 Otteson James 2013 Adam Smith Bloomsbury ISBN 978 1 4411 9013 0 Phillipson Nicholas 2010 Adam Smith An Enlightened Life Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 16927 0 352 pages scholarly biography Pichet Eric 2004 Adam Smith je connais French biography ISBN 978 2843720406 Vianello F 1999 Social accounting in Adam Smith in Mongiovi G and Petri F eds Value Distribution and capital Essays in honour of Pierangelo Garegnani London Routledge ISBN 0 415 14277 6 Winch Donald 2007 2004 Smith Adam Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 25767 Subscription or UK public library membership required Wolloch N 2015 Symposium on Jack Russell Weinstein s Adam Smith s Pluralism Rationality Education and the Moral Sentiments Cosmos Taxis Adam Smith and Empire A New Talking Empire Podcast Imperial amp Global Forum 12 March 2014 External links Edit nbsp Wikisource has original works by or about Adam Smith nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Adam Smith nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adam Smith philosopher Adam Smith at Standard Ebooks Works by Adam Smith at Open Library nbsp Works by Adam Smith at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Adam Smith at Internet Archive Works by Adam Smith at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp References to Adam Smith in historic European newspapers Adam Smith Archived from the original on 17 May 2009 Retrieved 17 May 2009 at the Adam Smith InstituteAcademic officesPreceded byRobert Cunninghame Graham of Gartmore Rector of the University of Glasgow1787 1789 Succeeded byWalter Campbell of Shawfield Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Adam Smith amp oldid 1177518448, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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