Here is my take on Steve Kate's asking whether, when "wealth" is translated as "richesse", the French would think of opulence and Versailles rather than pin factories:
In his posthumously published The Science of Political Economy (1897), Henry George reviews the definitions of wealth given by some 24 writers, from Smith to Marshall, and devoted the whole of Book II (21 chapters) to the meaning of wealth in political economy.
Henry George notes that Book III of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, was titled “Of the Different Progress of Opulence in Different Nations”. But George also noted that in both cases Smith’s emphasised "nations". His key concern was not with individual wealth or opulence but with the combined product of labour working on Land. For the individual, land was wealth, but land itself was no part of the wealth of nations. Of itself, ownership of land involved a mere transfer of ownership – a transfer payment – not an accretion of the Physiocrats’ “produit net”.
In the 1770s, France’s finance minister ARJ Turgot’s vainly advocated the “impôt unique” but his warnings of the dangers in allowing the rent of land to accrue not to producers but to a narrow landowning aristocracy, epitomised in the opulence of Versailles, went unheeded. Bloody Revolution followed.
Like the Physiocrats, Smith noted that "the landlord loves to reap where he has not sown" and saw the wealth of nations as the nation’s produit net; so it was no accident that the pin factory was introduced from the very start of his magnum opus to highlight the huge importance of the division of productive labour and exchange in advancing the wealth of nations.
But “the division of labour is limited by the size of the market”, hence the importance of free exchange. Or (since I can never refrain from citing Allyn Young on the potentially self-sustaining nature of growth): “The division of labour is limited by the division of labour… a useful truism.”
For Smith, this economic growth just as surely comes from the mutual gains in wealth arising from the free exchanges between country and town - farming and manufacturing - as discussed in WN Book III Ch. 1, “Of the natural progress of opulence”.
- Roger Sandilands
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From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Steve Kates [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2015 7:19 AM
I found Tony's discussion of Adam Smith's meaning of the word "wealth" very much in accord with what I and probably most people think Smith meant. But that is in English. What I have found so notable about the earlier postings is the way "wealth" is translated. Does someone who reads the words, "the wealth of nations", but in a different language, hear something different? Would someone who comes across the book in French (or Turkish) think it is about "the opulence of nations"? A book like Piketty's, for all its sales, does not seem to have become much of an influence in English speaking countries. What I am getting at is this: when someone reads "richesse" in French, do they think of Versailles rather than pin factories?
On 19 June 2015 at 08:48, Tony Aspromourgos <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Colleagues,
I published a very detailed interpretation of Smith's political economy and the prehistory of its fundamental concepts in 2009 - as it happens, with the title, The Science of Wealth (Routledge). One of those fundamental concepts, of course, is "wealth". An exhaustive examination of all Smith's uses of that term, in all his writings (pp. 30-35 of my book) makes it clear that wealth is not understood as a stock, but rather (in relation to nations), as the flow of annual national product. I may add that the sense in which Smith's political economy is a science of "wealth" I think also is about its materialism: Smith's science is about the production and distribution of material things (not, e.g., a science of choice, and not primarily a psychological science).
Tony Aspromourgos
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From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] on behalf of Wells, Julian [[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
Sent: Thursday, 18 June 2015 9:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] "the science of wealth (of nations)"
I don’t know to what extent the 18th century would have understood “wealth” in the sense of a particular private stock of riches but, to the extent that it did so understand it, Smith’s title could have been read as a pointed reference to the mercantilist ideas that the book is devoted to rebutting (but recall that defence is more important than opulence: WN IV.ii.30: 464-5).
Julian
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Steve Kates
Sent: 18 June 2015 05:33
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] "the science of wealth (of nations)"
It has seemed to me for a while that the title, The Wealth of Nations, is an eighteenth century use of words and is somewhat misleading as to the point that Smith was making. I have tried to find a modern phrase that would capture what he meant, and the closest I have been able to come to is: The Prosperity of Nations. "Wealth" has a kind of treasure chest notion to it (which it may not have had back then), and the word "wealthy" is tied to personal riches, which is not at all, I think, what Smith was trying to get at. So when I read that the French for "wealth" is "richesse", or that my google translator turns "The Wealth of Nations" into "la richesse des nations", I really do therefore wonder how much has been lost in translation. Because when I translate the English word "riches" into French, it gives me "richesse" once again. The alternative French to English of "richesse" are "wealth", "richness", "riches", "rich" and "affluent". And for the French word "riche" we get these English translations: "rich", "wealthy", "affluent", "opulent", "splendid" and "luxurious". Each of them seem totally inadequate to making sense of what Smith had in mind or what the book is about. This seems to me more than just a curiosity.
On 16 June 2015 at 17:58, Deniz T. Kilincoglu <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear colleagues,
I'm trying to trace the source of translating "economics" as "the science of wealth" (and sometimes "the science of the wealth of nations") in late nineteenth-century Ottoman-Turkish.
Ottoman economists most probably rendered it from French ("la science de la richesse"), from popular sources preceding the 1860s.
I could find expressions like "l'économie politique est la science de la richesse" in many economic texts from the era, but I'm trying to understand how common it was to use "la science de la richesse" instead of or interchangeably with "l’économie politique" referring to the discipline itself.
Many thanks in advance for your responses.
Best,
Deniz
--
Deniz T. Kilincoglu, PhD
Economics Program
Middle East Technical University
Northern Cyprus Campus, T-141
Kalkanlý, Güzelyurt, KKTC
via Mersin 10, Turkey
Telephone: +90 392 661 3017
Just published: Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire<http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138854062/>, Routledge, 2015.
--
Dr Steven Kates
Associate Professor
School of Economics, Finance
and Marketing
RMIT University
Building 80
Level 11 / 445 Swanston Street
Melbourne Vic 3000
Phone: (03) 9925 5878
Mobile: 042 7297 529
--
Dr Steven Kates
Associate Professor
School of Economics, Finance
and Marketing
RMIT University
Building 80
Level 11 / 445 Swanston Street
Melbourne Vic 3000
Phone: (03) 9925 5878
Mobile: 042 7297 529
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