histofthought1

Bibliographical essay 529The celebrated Adam SmithThe writings on Adam Smith stretch almost to infinity, and so we can only tryto make a brief and judicious selection here. The definitive collection of all ofSmith's writings is now available in the handsome six-volume bicentennialGlasgow edition. The 1976 Glasgow edition of the Wealth ofNations, ed. byR.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner and W.B. Todd, published by the Oxford UniversityPress, has been reprinted in a two-volume soft-cover set by theLiberty Press (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981). The Campbell-SkinnerGeneral Introduction presents the latest scholarship in the field. But theprevious state-of-the-art Cannan edition should also be consulted, if only forthe healthily critical approach that the great Cannan dares to take towardAdam Smith. (Smith, Wealth ofNations, ed. E. Cannan, New York: ModernLibrary, 1937.)Still the most lucid and penetrating critique of Adam Smith's confusedtheories of value and distribution can be found in Paul Douglas, 'Smith'sTheory of Value and Distribution', in J.M. Clark et aI., Adam Smith, 1776­1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928), pp. 78-115; reprinted inH.W. Spiegel (ed.), The Development ofEconomic Thought (New York: JohnWiley, 1964), pp. 73-102. On the search for an invariable measure of valueby Smith and Ricardo, see Richard H. Timberlake, Jr, 'The Classical Searchfor an Invariable Measure of Value', Quarterly Review of Economics andBusiness, 6 (Spring 1966), pp. 37-44. Edwin Cannan's critique of the classicaleconomics of Smith and Ricardo is subtle and important: Edwin Cannan,A History ofthe Theories ofProduction & Distribution in English PoliticalEconomy (3rd ed. 1917, London: Staples Press, 1953). Cannan's adroit andimplicit put-down can be seen in his sesquicentennial summation of Smith'saccomplishments: 'Adam Smith as an Economist', Economica, 6 (June 1926),pp. 123-34. See also the similar and equally subtle as well as witty put-downby the Scottish historian of economic thought, Alexander Gray, Adam Smith(London: The Historical Association, 1948).Despite these dissenting voices, the hagiographic attitude towards AdamSmith remained generally unbroken until the demolition in the monumentalwork of Joseph Schumpeter, History ofEconomic Analysis (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1954), especially pages 181-94, 323-5, and 557-9.Also see the splendid article by Emil Kauder, 'Genesis of the MarginalUtility Theory', Economic Journal (Sept. 1953), pp.638-50, reprinted inSpengler and Allen, Essays, pp. 277-87. Robertson and Taylor, in their commenton Kauder, are more favourable to Smith but fundamentally concedehis criticisms: H.M. Robertson and W.L. Taylor, 'Adam Smith's Approach tothe Theory of Value', in Spengler and Allen, Essays, pp. 288-304.Unfortunately, the clear-eyed attitude towards Smith engendered bySchumpeterian revisionism has been largely rolled back since the mid-1970s.