Corn, Cattle, Land and Labour: Physiocratic Ideas in the Wealth of Nations

Kurz H.D.

Vaggi G.

Ross I.

Gehrke C., Kurz H.D.

Kurz H.D., Salvadori N.

The paper discusses Sraffa's consecutive attempts in the late 1920s and early 1940s to tackle a problem which endangered his objectivist, surplus-based approach to the theory of value and distribution aimed at reviving the standpoint of the classical economists. Whilst with circulating capital the value transfer to the product and the physical ‘destruction’ of the input are one and the same thing, with fixed capital this is not so. Sraffa eventually overcame the difficulty in terms of the joint products-method. This allowed him to explain relative prices and the rate of profits strictly in ‘material terms’.

Cartelier J.

The opposition between productive activity (agriculture) and unproductive ones (the others) underlies the Tableau economique. Smith borrows Quesnay's theory of production but deeply transforms it into a distinction between productive and unproductive labour. In any case, it seems quite natural to relate the increase of the wealth of a nation to the relative importance of productive activities vis-a-vis unproductive ones. Quesnay and Smith both share this view. However, if Smith is perfectly right in doing so, Quesnay has failed to prove a definite relation between the fraction of the revenue spent with respect to the productive sector, on the one hand, and the level or growth of the revenue, on the other. Differences in political philosophy may account for this unequal analytical performance.

Groenewegen P.

Skinner A.S.

Abstract Adam Smith's early writings on economics (apart from two short fragments on the division of labour) are contained in the two sets of lecture notes currently available to us and in the document first discovered by W. R. Scott and described by him as an ‘Early Draft’ of the Wealth of Nations. The account that Smith provides in the second set of lecture notes is concerned with an economic system featuring the activities of agriculture, manufacture, and commerce where these activities are characterized by a division of labour, with the patterns of exchange facilitated by the use of money. There are three main features of the central analysis: the treatment of the division of labour, the analysis of price and allocation, and the exposure of the mercantile fallacy. This chapter also discusses Smith's account of the physiocratic system, which consists of proprietors, cultivators, manufacturers, and merchants. It also considers Smith's application of the basic principles of the system to a relatively neglected area of physiocracy — international trade.

Ross I.S.

Abstract Adam Smith (1723–90) was a Scottish moral philosopher, famous for writing the Wealth of Nations (WN: 1776), widely regarded as one of the foundation works of free‐market economics. He also contributed notably to ethics with his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS: 1759, 6th edn. 1790). The Introduction summarizes the biography, which depicts the personality and experience behind these books; their origin in studies at Glasgow and Oxford; then his teaching at Edinburgh and Glasgow; and their matrix in the cultural ferment of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its attention both to moral and natural science. The era of economic growth of Britain and political revolution in America and France is sketched in the background. Smith's legacy for legislators that the establishment of perfect justice, liberty, and equality is the ‘very simple secret,’ which secures prosperity for all, is presented as an ethical as well as economic ideal.

Jeck A.

The paper is an attempt to solve - in the style of circumstantial evidence - a few riddles which concern Smith's puzzling ranking of sectors in the fifth chapter of Book II of the Wealth of Nations. In that short (15 pages) chapter ‘Of the different Employments of Capitals’ Smith presents the final element of his theoretical system. The interpretations offered by the modern secondary literature are, as far as I can see, nor correct. What is Smith's own interpretation? What is his theory behind that ranking? Do his statements really lack consistency? A solution to these riddles can help to clarify Smith's system as a whole and to reconstruct its macroeconomic structure in particular, which is based on a very special but often overlooked conception of sectoral verticality.

Meek R.L.

Faccarello G.

Kurz H.D.

Abstract The paper examines evolutionary elements in Adam Smith’s social theory, connecting them to an earlier contribution to natural history by George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. It then compares Smith’s analysis with those of Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter, who were fascinated by Darwinian evolutionary biology. This comparison demonstrates that while developing evolutionary approaches to the social sciences suitable for their respective subject matter, Marx and Schumpeter drew heavily on Smith’s insights. All three authors aimed to unveil the forces shaping the “process of civilization”, or society’s “law of motion,” along with its associated hazards. They pondered whether this process inherently led to rising living standards, along with “equality, liberty, and justice”, and whether it could derail, ending in a tailspin.