------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (March 2007)

Leonidas Montes and Eric Schliesser, editors, _New Voices on Adam 
Smith_. London: Routledge, 2006. xxi + 364 pp. $145 (cloth), ISBN: 
0-415-35696-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Jeffrey T. Young, Department of Economics, St. 
Lawrence University.


George Stigler began his banquet speech at the Glasgow University 
bicentennial of the publication of the _Wealth of Nations_ with the 
now frequently quoted salutation, "I bring you greetings from Adam 
Smith, who is alive and well and living in Chicago." (quoted in Meek, 
p. 3) Thirty odd years later the remark remains true, though 
ironically not in the Economics Department. Of the fourteen young 
scholars whose work is published in this book, five earned their 
Ph.D.s at the University of Chicago, none in economics. Indeed of the 
fifteen only four are economists, despite the book's placement in 
Routledge's Studies in the History of Economics series. This is 
reflective of the fact that Smith scholarship has largely moved away 
from seeing _WN_ and its seminal role in the nineteenth century 
development of economics as a discipline as Smith's crowning 
achievement. The focus today is largely on seeing Smith's system as a 
whole, of which _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_ is the foundational 
work. This is even true among economists who now trawl through _TMS_ 
in search of interesting hypotheses in the new field of behavioral 
economics (see Ashraf, Camerer, and Lowenstein, 2005). However, it is 
even more true among philosophers, who now find _TMS_ a rich vein of 
philosophical insight, whereas previously it was largely unread or 
misread.

These trends are amply on display in the present volume, as is 
Smith's healthy status among a new generation of international 
academics. Montes and Schliesser are to be commended for assembling a 
wide-ranging and stimulating set of essays from a talented group of 
scholars all of whom completed their doctorate since 2000. The book 
consists of fifteen chapters organized into four parts, which deal 
respectively with Adam Smith's sources and influence, moral theory, 
economics, and theory of knowledge. A book of this sort does not lend 
itself easily to adequate treatment in a short review. The coverage 
ranges widely over all aspects of Smith's work, with particular 
attention to the relatively neglected essays on the arts, languages, 
and the history of science.

As an historian of economics, though, I was particularly interested 
to see what the younger generation is doing with Smith's economics. 
The answer is "not much," although I do not mean this in a negative 
way at all. The economics section consists of three essays on Smith's 
relation to Mandeville, his interpretation and use of Newtonian 
method in economics, and his analysis of paper money. As the training 
of professional economists has long since separated itself from 
mastery of the classics, interest in the analytical material in _WN_ 
has waned. Leon Montes's essay on Newtonianism and general 
equilibrium theory is about the only place where this book touches on 
topics that have historically been of interest to professional 
economists. Here he advances the idea that modern general equilibrium 
theory, by which is meant the axiomatic approach to general 
equilibrium modeling, has its philosophical roots in French 
interpretations and adaptations of Newton's scientific method. Smith, 
however, absorbed a Scottish Newtonianism that was empirical, 
inductive, and, in its application to human affairs, historical. 
Therefore, associating Smith's invisible hand with the modern theory, 
say as an early statement of the theorems of welfare economics, 
reflects a fundamental philosophical misunderstanding of Smith's 
application of Newtonian science.

It is not surprising to me that British empiricists and French 
rationalists would come up with very different readings of Newton. 
However, I would like to suggest that if we take a broader 
perspective in terms of what we classify as general equilibrium 
modeling, there is more under the sun than Walrasian general 
equilibrium models. Surely Sraffa's production of commodities 
qualifies as general equilibrium modeling, as does Marx's 
transformation problem. Indeed, there is plenty of general 
equilibrium reasoning in Smith, which is expressible in simultaneous 
equations models. The famous beaver and deer case of the early and 
rude state, which introduces a labor embodied value theory, is surely 
a general equilibrium model. While I agree wholeheartedly with the 
thrust of Montes's paper, that Walrasian general equilibrium falsely 
sails under a Smithian flag, I do not think we can conclude there is 
no concept of general equilibrium to be found in Smith. Nor would I 
preclude the possibility that Smith may have inspired Walrasian 
modeling in some way, and that modern theories of the automaticity of 
the market mechanism owe at least some intellectual debt to Smith. 
After all, one does not need to have a deep understanding of the 
sources and context of Smith's book to be stimulated and taught by 
it. Misunderstanding can lead to insight also.

This book will be of interest primarily to Smith specialists, both 
economists and non-economists. I believe that essays are perhaps a 
bit too narrowly focused, and cover a wide range of interesting, but 
off-beat, topics, that the general historian of economics may not 
find much of interest here. I must confess, though, that I did not 
find the essays to be uniformly interesting to me. At times I felt 
they suffered some from the young scholar's eagerness to be original 
and provocative, perhaps stretching a point. It is good to know, 
however, that Smith is alive and well among a new generation of 
accomplished scholars. Their depth and breadth of understanding of a 
quite complex thinker, as well as their passion for Smith's unique 
body of work, is very gratifying.

References:

Nava Ashraf, Colin F. Camerer and George Lowenstein, 2005. "Adam 
Smith, Behavioral Economist," _Journal of Economic Perspectives_, 
19(3), Summer, pp. 131-146.

Ronald L. Meek, 1977. _Smith, Marx and After_, London: Chapman and Hall.


Jeffrey T. Young is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at 
St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He is the editor of _The 
Elgar Companion to Adam Smith_ (forthcoming) and his most recent 
publication is "Adam Smith and New Institutional Theories of Property 
Rights," _Adam Smith Review_ 2.

Copyright (c) 2007 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (March 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived at 
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.

-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW  --------------
EH.Net-Review mailing list
[log in to unmask]
http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo/eh.net-review