====================== HES POSTING ================ 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]