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Roy Davidson wrote: 
 
> Smith's theory of value was not the same as the Ricardian or Marxist 
> "Labor theory of Value" which equates value with the socially necessary 
> labor time involved in production. Rather, it determines value in a 
> negative sense as the "toil and trouble" saved or as "command" over labor. 
> Of course, this relates to exchange value and not to use value. 
 
Or perhaps to neither.  It is a concept that predates either "use value" 
or "exchange value" with the rigid definitions attached to them in the 
nineteenth century.   
 
The nineteenth century was obsessed with THINGS, with the value of  
THINGS after the fact.  Boxes of categories, piiled up here and there. 
 
Smith was fascinated by FLOW.  By potential.  Not what had been, but 
what could be.  The "Wealth of Nations" lay not in adding up what 
the nation possessed, whether in terms of manufactures or gold or  
"labor value" defined by accountants -- but in the potential of what  
the nation could do, and what nations COULD do if they let down their  
barriers and opened themselves up to free movement. 
 
Kudos to Anthony Brewer for reminding us not to take little bits of 
Smith (or other authors) as representative -- if he wrote little about  
a subject, then the subject was not so important to him as it was to  
us, don't you think?  Now why would that have been so? 
 
Thus scholars have memorized that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was 
synonymous with the "Laissez faire" policies of hardhearted indusrial 
moguls; that what he meant by "benefits of specialization" was the 
pin factory, one tiny example (perhaps a poor one) in the midst of 
an entire book that focused on geographic specialization and trade. 
 
The genius of Smith was to blow apart the "obvious" concept that 
still haunts policymakers -- the concept that nations become rich 
by exporting manufactures and importing agriculture.  That the 
source of growth was not the savings and sacrifices of wealthy 
men, but reducing the costs of trading. 
 
In its pre-modernism, it is almost post-modern. 
 
Almost. 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History, Villanova Univ. 
(on indefinite medical leave since Jan 1995 with CFIDS/M.E.) 
mailto:[log in to unmask] 
http://pw1.netcom.com/~schweit2/history.html 
 
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