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Societies for the History of Economics

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Fri Mar 31 17:19:15 2006
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----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
An earlier message said: 
 
> I also tend to view the passage from TMS that Michael Perelman quotes as  
> further evidence, together with some passages in the first few pages of WN,  
> that Smith may have thought that different social stages produce a  
> different kind of human nature.  
 
I would like to see a single passage from the WON that supports this view of Smith.  
 
For example, from Chapter II: 
 
"The division of labor, ..., is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, ...It is
the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human
nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter and
exchange one thing for another."
 
Simply, "the division of labor arises form a propensity in human nature to exchange."  
 
 He goes on also to state in this chapter that even in the most elemental stages of
economic development, that of the hunters or shepherds, the division of labor is active
there along with the propensity to exchange, all part of human nature in this most
elemental form of development.
 
Chas Anderson   
  
 
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