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Book Review: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: New Interdisciplinary Essays,

Stephen Copley and Katheryn Sutherland (eds.)

Article  in  The Journal of Economic History · August 1996

DOI: 10.1017/S0022050700017393 · Source: RePEc

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Economic History Association

Review
Author(s): R. F. Hébert
Review by: R. F. Hébert
Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 755-756
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
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 Reviews of Books 755

ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Edited by Stephen Copley
and Kathryn Sutherland. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Pp. vii, 205.
$49.95, cloth; $19.95, paper.

This brief, eclectic collection of essays from the United Kingdom was specially
commissioned as the first in a series of cross-disciplinary retrospectives on certain texts
judged to be of seminal importance to Western culture. Forthcoming targets of similar
treatments include Darwin's Origin of Species, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Simone de
Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and Machiavelli's The Prince. The premise of this "Texts in
Culture" series is that only through an understanding of the multiple meanings of such
cultural classics can we fully appreciate their importance. In keeping with this core belief,
the contributors to the present volume represent diverse fields: economics, politics, history,
sociology, and literature. Of the eight contributors, two are economists, one is a political
scientist, one a historian, one a sociologist, and three are specialists in English literature.
Stephen Copley's utilitarian guide to reading the Wealth of Nations provides an adequate
overview of the seven essays that follow, as well as a perspective and a justification for the
current assemblage. His workmanlike introduction is preceded by a useful chronology of
contexts for, and developments of, the Wealth of Nations. But the collection of essays that
follow is uneven, reminding us of certain dangers inherent to any cross-disciplinary
enterprise. Bringing different kinds of expertise to bear on a single problem is commend-
able in theory, but beset by many potential pitfalls in practice. One particularly unhappy
outcome of such efforts is a kind of intellectual mongrelization that often issues from
attempts to step outside one's discipline. The present volume provides a case in point.
The unifying theme of this collection of essays is that Smith was more than (and perhaps
not even primarily) an economist-a premise no self-respecting Smith scholar would dare
dispute; and a fact which puts us in mind of John Stuart Mill's judgment that one is not
likely to be a good economist if he is nothing else. But there are advantages to specialization
and division of labor, as Smith emphatically reminded us. When the specialists stick to their
knitting (for example, Keith Tribe and Andrew Skinner on Smith's economics; Noel Parker
on Smith's politics; and Kurt Heinzelman on Smith's rhetoric), the essays in this volume
demonstrate this time-honored fact, and the results are generally salubrious. When they
venture outside their areas of specialization, however, the results are mottled. For example,
the historian Heinz Lubasz writes as though he never heard of the public-choice paradigm.
Economists versed in that branch of economics will find nothing new or instructive in
Lubasz's essay. Indeed, his rant against economists who have bowdlerized Smith echoes
vapidly against his own bowdlerization of economists. Lubasz's indignation at those who
wore Adam Smith neckties in the 1980s is best reserved for politicians; but even then, what
would be the point? How many politicians have ever read Keynes? Or Friedman? Adam
Smith surely understood that politicians tend to be camp followers, not intellectual leaders.
Unfortunately, Lubasz's sally outside his own field is not an isolated exception. Ted
Benton, a sociologist, explores the limits to growth in Smith's thought without once
mentioning the constraint Smith himself thought worthy of emphasis, namely "the extent of
the market." Even Kathryn Sutherland's carefully researched exegesis on the role of women
in Smith's Wealth of Nations is marred by her failure to consider Smith's sleight to the
productivity of women within the larger context of his myopia regarding "unproductive
labor" in general. The problem, in other words, is not gender-specific, as Sutherland infers,
but rather stems from a failure to appreciate the true nature of services in a market
economy.
Despite the unevenness of these essays, this is a book worth reading. At its best it gives
us useful insights into Smith's multifaceted talents, and it reminds us once again of the

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 756 Reviews of Books

dangers of taking Smith's words out of their historical and sociological contexts. At its
worst, it forces us to recognize the costs as well as the benefits of interdisciplinary studies,
even of those that are well conceived. It is to be hoped that future volumes in the series can
avert the occasional shortcomings that plague their older sister.

R. F. HtBERT, Aubum University

John Bates Clark: The Making of a Neoclassical Economist. By John F. Henry. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1995. Pp. xi, 180. $59.95.

This work is of interest to economic historians because Henry puts Clark's economic
thought and theory in the setting of his time. The background, for Henry, is as follows. In
the final quarter of the nineteenth century U.S. product and factor markets were in a period
of transition. Market conditions that roughly approximated pure competition were giving
way to noncompetitive structures, with small firms replaced by large entities operating in
conjunction with one another (the phenomenon of "trusts") and workers organizing
themselves into unions. Labor was militant, populism was a strong political movement, and
socialism was feared by those in authority. Ideologically, Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution was pitted against divine law.
Of the eight chapters of the book, two are biographical, four trace the development of
Clark's economic ideas, one deals with Clark's views of various issues of the day, and one
is a conclusion. Some features of Clark's life, perhaps not well known, are revealed. He was
a teacher of Thorstein Veblen, whose economic theory was radically different from that of
Clark. As Henry comments, "it cannot be claimed that he influenced Veblen (except,
perhaps, in a negative fashion)" (p. 3). Clark was a founder of the American Economic
Association and was active in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Unlike most studies of individuals in the development of economics, Henry is not an
admirer of his subject. Among Clark's characteristics are "his racism; his acceptance of US
dominion over the 'inferior and less civilized' countries; his almost rabid defense of extant
property relations and hostility to any perceived threat to that property" (p. 145). Henry
notes that Clark did not help Edward Bemis, a University of Chicago economist losing his
job in violation of academic freedom. Also, Clark was sympathetic to big business in
opposition to the exercise of union power, even in the face of antiunion violence; and he
did work for the National Civic Foundation, a big-business organization. Ostensibly a moral
individual, Clark would have the end justify the means: he would allow the Church to accept
tainted money, on grounds that the money would be put to good use. After the Haymarket
Affair of Chicago in 1886, Clark took care to toe the conservative line of the establishment,
supporting capital over labor. Though he worked for peace up to World War I, he had no
problem shifting gears to support U.S. entry into the war. John Bates Clark, generally
regarded as the first great American economic theorist, is brought down to human size, at
least in other aspects of his life.
Part of Henry's negative attitude toward Clark is Henry's Marxist orientation. "While
Clark appears to be simply an independent-minded, detached scholar who stands above
and apart from the nitty-gritty class questions of the day, he shows himself to be overtly on
the side of capital, even to the point of developing a rationalization by which capitalists can
be let off the ethical hook" (p. 140). It is hard to accept Henry's contention that Clark
ultimately had a labor theory of value, notwithstanding some passages in Clark that suggest
such an interpretation. The argument, however, enables Henry to state: "why doesn't labor
receive the income share that is claimed by the owners of capital-the very issue that
prompted Clark's concern with distribution to begin with? And on this, Clark is silent" (p.
87).
The book is well written, excellently organized, and admirably documented. The
economist should be aware that Henry's concern is more with the thought than the theory

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