When Smith is referred to as the 'founding father' of economics, what 
does it mean?

I ask that seriously, because you do not need Foucault to recognize 
that there might be ideological purposes behind labelling him as the 
'founding father'.  For instance, you might wish to be pushing some 
of his theoretical-ideological goals, like economic growth or like 
the desirability of resolving conflict in an economic marketplace 
rather than a political arena.   And what do you do with those 
(central to Smith?) elements of his thought (like the distinction 
between productive and unproductive labor, or the role of the state 
in adult education) that are not part of the contemporary economics 
that he purportedly 'founded'.

(As a current political example of my latter point: the Tea Party 
fellow travellers in the US recently engaged in reading the US 
Constitution in the House of Representatives to start the session, 
but they omitted all the parts -- agreed to by the 'founding fathers' 
and unarguable [I would have thought] part of the founding fathers' 
constitution -- that referred to slavery.)

Peter G Stillman
-- 
Peter G. Stillman
Department of Political Science
Vassar College (#463)
124 Raymond Avenue
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0463

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http://faculty.vassar.edu/stillman/