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
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Wells, Julian [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, 18 June 2015 9:32 PM
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]] On Behalf Of Steve Kates
Sent: 18 June 2015 05:33
To: [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]> 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, PhDEconomics ProgramMiddle East Technical UniversityNorthern Cyprus Campus, T-141Kalkanlı, Güzelyurt, KKTCvia Mersin 10, TurkeyTelephone: +90 392 661 3017Just published: Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire, Routledge, 2015.
--
Dr Steven Kates
Associate ProfessorSchool of Economics, Finance
and Marketing
RMIT University
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Melbourne Vic 3000
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