The Books of Economics
R. M.
classical economists to modern free market economists and the like. I
suppose the rule is one book per author (but it can be in multiple volumes),
and having that one book be the most exemplary of that author's/school's
work. Examples would be:
Wealth of Nations by Smith
Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
Principles of Political Economy by Mill
Principles of Economics by Marshall
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes
Capital (3 Volumes) by Marx
I'm just looking for the essential original texts rather than introductory
interpretations and the like. I'm looking to build up a decent economics
library. I'm not sure what works of the Austrian, Chicago, and Public Choice
schools are essential, etc. Will appreciate any help you folks can provide.
I'm a linguistics guy and I've only recently started to get really
interested in economics.
- R. Eugene Mayes
Michael L. Coburn
Any good Superman Comic book would do for the Austrian,
"school", or perhaps, a book about Davy Crockett or Napoleon.
--
Mike Coburn
"It's the tax system, stupid. No, it's the ludicrous
banking system. Well, actually, its both. With proper
consideration we find these injustices are made
possible by the lack of representation of The People
in their government". -- http://GreaterVoice.org
Robert Vienneau
<albe...@cox.net> wrote:
> I'm attempting to compile a list of economics books ranging from the
> classical economists to modern free market economists and the like. I
> suppose the rule is one book per author (but it can be in multiple
> volumes),
> and having that one book be the most exemplary of that author's/school's
> work. Examples would be:
> Wealth of Nations by Smith
> Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
> Principles of Political Economy by Mill
(I've only begun this.)
> Principles of Economics by Marshall
> General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes
> Capital (3 Volumes) by Marx
Tableau Economique, by Quesnay
The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen
Elements of Pure Economics, by Walras (Jaffe translation)
Either
The Economics of Imperfect Competition, by Joan Robinson
(I've only begun this.)
Or
The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, by E. H. Chamberlin
Individualism and Economic Order, by F. Hayek
Value and Capital, by J. R. Hicks
Foundations of Economic Analysis, by Paul A. Samuelson
(This one I haven't read.)
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, by Von Neumann and Morgenstern
(I suppose, but contempory economists often ignore this.)
Theory of Value, by Debreu
Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, by P. Sraffa
New Industrial State, by John Kenneth Galbraith
> I'm just looking for the essential original texts rather than
> introductory
> interpretations and the like. I'm looking to build up a decent economics
> library.
With more recent stuff, it is more difficult to find books under
that criteria. You'll find mostly papers, textbooks, or popularizations.
Various publishers have put out collections over the last few
decades, arranged by theme or school.
> I'm not sure what works of the Austrian, Chicago, and Public
> Choice schools are essential, etc.
--
Try http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/pktauthors/Vienneau.Robert/Bukharin.html
To solve Linear Programs: .../LPSolver.html
r c A game: .../Keynes.html
v s a Whether strength of body or of mind, or wisdom, or
i m p virtue, are found in proportion to the power or wealth
e a e of a man is a question fit perhaps to be discussed by
n e . slaves in the hearing of their masters, but highly
@ r c m unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search of
d o the truth. -- Rousseau
Rickster
A Treatise on the Family by Gary S. Becker
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
news:rvien-5B0941....@news.dreamscape.com...
deren
"Rickster" <ricke...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<ambeau$pv...@imsp212.netvigator.com>...
ro...@telus.net
>I'm attempting to compile a list of economics books ranging from the
>classical economists to modern free market economists and the like. I
>suppose the rule is one book per author (but it can be in multiple volumes),
>and having that one book be the most exemplary of that author's/school's
>work. Examples would be:
>Wealth of Nations by Smith
>Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
>Principles of Political Economy by Mill
>Principles of Economics by Marshall
>General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes
>Capital (3 Volumes) by Marx
The latter is more of a religious work. Reading it would be a chore
comparable to plowing through the Old Testament, but longer and less
interesting. It has little to say about economics as we understand it
today.
Progress and Poverty by Henry George is the founding work of the
georgist or geonomic school. Although all but unknown today, at the
end of the 19th C it was the most popular and influential book ever
written by an American author, and a powerful formative influence on
many eminent thinkers, reformers and leaders of the early 20th C,
including Winston Churchill. Its core argument -- that a large
fraction of GDP is effectively given to landowners for nothing, and
should be recovered and applied to public purposes in place of
destructive and unjust taxes -- has never been refuted, only ignored.
In public debates on this issue, George defeated all comers, including
eminent professors of economics.
-- Roy L
David Friedman
susupply
"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-B6C510.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net...
> _The Calculus of Consent_ by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock
Which is available online at:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv3Contents.html
But probably is a difficult read for someone unfamiliar with economics. I'd
suggest the first six chapters of Sowell's "Knowledge and Decisions" be read
first.
Burkhard C. Schipper
Researches into the mathematical prinicples of the theory of wealth by
Cournot
Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fliessenden
Regeln fuer menschliches Handeln by Gossen
The Theory of Political Economy by Jevons
Die Grundsaetze der Volkswirtschaftslehre by Menger
Mathematical Psychics by Edgeworth
Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
Marktform und Gleichgewicht by von Stackelberg
The Foundations of Statistics by Savage
The Strategy of Conflict by Schelling
Evolution and the Theory of Games by Maynard Smith
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change by Nelson and Winter
Theory of Social Situations by Greenberg
A Theory of Case-Based Decisions by Gilboa and Schmeidler
and, because you are a linguist, Economics and Language by Rubinstein
The list is to be considered incomplete.
One problem is that today many original work is getting published in
journals rather than in books.
"susupply" <susu...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:amd7fi$rkh$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
Mason Clark
>I'm attempting to compile a list of economics books ranging from the
>classical economists to modern free market economists and the like. I
>suppose the rule is one book per author (but it can be in multiple volumes),
>and having that one book be the most exemplary of that author's/school's
>work. Examples would be:
>Wealth of Nations by Smith
>Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
>Principles of Political Economy by Mill
>Principles of Economics by Marshall
>General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes
>Capital (3 Volumes) by Marx
I'm surprised at not seeing Malthus among these suggestions.
Much of economics is of Ricardoan origin, but Keynes considered
his General Theory to trace its descent not from Ricardo but from Malthus:
"The recent praiseworthy enterprise on the part of the International Economic
Circle of Tokyo in reprinting Malthus's 'Principles of Political Economy' as the
first volume in the Tokyo Series of Reprints encourages me to think that a
book which traces its descent from Malthus rather than Ricardo may be
received with sympathy in some quarters at least."
(in the Prelude to the Japanese edition of GT)
Mason C (but it's good to know that Marx can be easily dismissed
as simply a religion)
Robert Vienneau
<bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> some additional suggestions (cronological order):
>
> Researches into the mathematical prinicples of the theory of wealth by
> Cournot
> Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus
> fliessenden
> Regeln fuer menschliches Handeln by Gossen
> The Theory of Political Economy by Jevons
> Die Grundsaetze der Volkswirtschaftslehre by Menger
> Mathematical Psychics by Edgeworth
For early neoclassical theory, I thought Wicksteed's The Common
Sense of Plotical Economy, or something like that, was good.
> Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
Is the English translation The Theory of Economic Development?
> Marktform und Gleichgewicht by von Stackelberg
> The Foundations of Statistics by Savage
> The Strategy of Conflict by Schelling
> Evolution and the Theory of Games by Maynard Smith
> An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change by Nelson and Winter
> Theory of Social Situations by Greenberg
> A Theory of Case-Based Decisions by Gilboa and Schmeidler
>
> and, because you are a linguist, Economics and Language by Rubinstein
>
> The list is to be considered incomplete.
If we are to have only one work per author, I replace my Joan Robinson
suggestion by
Joan Robinson, Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth, 1962.
Another classic exposition of the Post Keynesian theory of income
distribution is in:
Luigi Pasinetti, _Growth and Income Distribution: Essays in Economic
Theory_, Cambridge University Press, 1974.
> One problem is that today many original work is getting published in
> journals rather than in books.
> > "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote in message
> > news:ddfr-B6C510.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net...
> > > _The Calculus of Consent_ by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock
--
R. M.
in no real order (I'll rework it by school eventually):
Wealth of Nations by Smith
Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
Principles of Political Economy by Mill
Principles of Economics by Marshall
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes
The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen
Elements of Pure Economics, by Walras (Jaffe translation)
Individualism and Economic Order, by F. Hayek
Value and Capital, by J. R. Hicks
Foundations of Economic Analysis, by Paul A. Samuelson
Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, by P. Sraffa
New Industrial State, by John Kenneth Galbraith
The Calculus of Consent by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock
Researches into the mathematical prinicples of the theory of wealth by
Cournot
The Foundations of Statistics by Savage
The Strategy of Conflict by Schelling
Evolution and the Theory of Games by Maynard Smith
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change by Nelson and Winter
Theory of Social Situations by Greenberg
A Theory of Case-Based Decisions by Gilboa and Schmeidler
Economics and Language by Rubinstein
Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth by Joan Robinson
Growth and Income Distribution: Essays in Economic Theory by Luigi Pasinetti
Progress and Poverty by Henry George
German, could someone provide me with the common translations of the titles
of these works, if available?):
Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fliessenden
Regeln fuer menschliches Handeln by Gossen
Robert Vienneau
<albe...@cox.net> wrote:
> Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I suppose this is the final
> list
> in no real order (I'll rework it by school eventually):
> Wealth of Nations by Smith
> Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by Ricardo
> Principles of Political Economy by Malthus
I think Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population is more
well-known. His Principles is probably more relevant to Keynes
point about Malthus' dispute with Ricardo over the possibility
of general gluts.
> Principles of Political Economy by Mill
> Principles of Economics by Marshall
> Capital (3 Vol) by Marx (scratch it out if you want to)
No, you should not scratch it out. At least the first volume of
Capital definitely belongs in this sort of list.
--
Burkhard C. Schipper
>
> > Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
>
> Is the English translation The Theory of Economic Development?
Yes, but I prefer originals. I think there are also translations of the book
in other languages such as Japanese.
ro...@telus.net
<rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>In article <N4pj9.17079$IL6.8...@news2.east.cox.net>, "R. M."
><albe...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I suppose this is the final
>> list
>> in no real order (I'll rework it by school eventually):
>
>> Capital (3 Vol) by Marx (scratch it out if you want to)
>
>No, you should not scratch it out. At least the first volume of
>Capital definitely belongs in this sort of list.
I agree. V. I is good for historical perspective. It's the other two
volumes -- esp V. III -- that are worthless and all but unreadable. I
doubt one person in 1M has actually read them through. Certainly few
economists have.
A good (and ambitious) list. And as an antidote to a non-trivial
fraction of it, Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat.
-- Roy L
Robert Vienneau
> On Sun, 22 Sep 2002 16:12:31 -0400, Robert Vienneau
> <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <N4pj9.17079$IL6.8...@news2.east.cox.net>, "R. M."
> ><albe...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> Capital (3 Vol) by Marx (scratch it out if you want to)
> >No, you should not scratch it out. At least the first volume of
> >Capital definitely belongs in this sort of list.
> I agree. V. I is good for historical perspective. It's the other two
> volumes -- esp V. III -- that are worthless and all but unreadable. I
> doubt one person in 1M has actually read them through. Certainly few
> economists have.
I think V. III is more often read than V. II. In fact, the most
debated points of mathematical economics associated with Marx are
treated in V. III.
<http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/pktauthors/Vienneau.Robert/LTV-FAQ.html>
I haven't read all of V. III myself. On the other hand, I've read Vols
I, II, and IV, as well as other stuff by Marx.
Jon Elster once described V. II as the most boring major work
by an economist.
Most economists at leading American economics departments seem to
be encouraged to be ignorant of economic history and the history
of economics. They hardly read harldly anything on R. M.'s list.
> A good (and ambitious) list. And as an antidote to a non-trivial
> fraction of it, Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat.
Bastiat isn't all that important.
Robert Vienneau
<bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
> news:rvien-213F6B....@news.dreamscape.com...
> > > Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
> > Is the English translation The Theory of Economic Development?
> Yes, but I prefer originals.
I am handicapped by language limitations.
ro...@telus.net
<rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>I haven't read all of V. III myself. On the other hand, I've read Vols
>I, II, and IV, as well as other stuff by Marx.
Um... why? I read V. I many years ago, and found it difficult to
understand how anyone of above average IQ could take it seriously.
>> A good (and ambitious) list. And as an antidote to a non-trivial
>> fraction of it, Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat.
>
>Bastiat isn't all that important.
True, he didn't really contribute much; but he has a wonderfully deft
way of cutting bafflegab away to expose the underlying fallacies.
-- Roy L
Burkhard C. Schipper
> In article <ammmue$57g$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>, "Burkhard C. Schipper"
> <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
> > news:rvien-213F6B....@news.dreamscape.com...
>
> > > > Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
>
> > > Is the English translation The Theory of Economic Development?
>
> > Yes, but I prefer originals.
>
> I am handicapped by language limitations.
Some economist once answered to this: "You are a scholar! Why don't you
learn it?" Since my language capabilities are limited too, I refrain from
giving the same answer although I certainly believe that it is beneficiary
to overcome this limitations.
David Friedman
"Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I am handicapped by language limitations.
>
> Some economist once answered to this: "You are a scholar! Why don't you
> learn it?" Since my language capabilities are limited too, I refrain from
> giving the same answer although I certainly believe that it is beneficiary
> to overcome this limitations.
But an economist should ask, not only whether reading other languages
well enough to read the classics of his field in the original is
valuable, but whether the ability is worth as much as it costs. For most
English speakers at present the answer is probably no.
Consider that it isn't enough to read the language well enough to make
out more or less what the author is saying. You have to read it well
enough to understand it better than you would from a translation by a
translator who is fluent in both languages.
Robert Vienneau
> On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:15:02 -0400, Robert Vienneau
> <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> >I haven't read all of V. III myself. On the other hand, I've read Vols
> >I, II, and IV, as well as other stuff by Marx.
> Um... why? I read V. I many years ago, and found it difficult to
> understand how anyone of above average IQ could take it seriously.
Doubtless Roy has sometime met some guy successful at seducing
women and wondered what women see in him.
> >> A good (and ambitious) list. And as an antidote to a non-trivial
> >> fraction of it, Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat.
> >Bastiat isn't all that important.
> True, he didn't really contribute much; but he has a wonderfully deft
> way of cutting bafflegab away to expose the underlying fallacies.
That must be in some work of Bastiat which I have never seen. That
which I have seen is mostly stupid.
Burkhard C. Schipper
> In article <amrue3$7oh$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>,
> "Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I am handicapped by language limitations.
> >
> > Some economist once answered to this: "You are a scholar! Why don't you
> > learn it?" Since my language capabilities are limited too, I refrain
from
> > giving the same answer although I certainly believe that it is
> > to overcome this limitations.
>
> But an economist should ask, not only whether reading other languages
> well enough to read the classics of his field in the original is
> valuable, but whether the ability is worth as much as it costs. For most
> English speakers at present the answer is probably no.
>
> Consider that it isn't enough to read the language well enough to make
> out more or less what the author is saying. You have to read it well
> enough to understand it better than you would from a translation by a
> translator who is fluent in both languages.
I certainly agree that one should look at the costs and benefits. I always
tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy. I
can not imagine how to translate Hegel for example. On the hand, I never
regret to have learned some foreign languages (although I am not good in
languages).
You asserted that for English speakers it is probably less worth to read the
classics in original than as it cost. This perhaps reflects also the current
economists' valuation of the classics. However, this valuation might be
endogeneous. More use of the classics would make them also more valuable.
David Friedman
You might also consider that sizable fraction, perhaps a majority, of
the classics of economics were written in English. The situation might
be different in another field.
I do think it is worth the trouble of learning to be comfortable with
late 18th/early 19th century English, in order to be able to read Smith
and Ricardo--but that's pretty easy for a native speaker, since the
language hasn't changed much.
I'm not arguing against learning languages, I'm arguing against learning
languages for the purpose of being able to read classics of economics in
the original. The only scholarly use I have made of the various
languages I have studied is to go over and correct translations of my
own work. And that requires a much lower level of fluency than reading
someone else's work and undrstanding it better than you would understand
a translation--I know what my books are supposed to say.
John F. Opie
<bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>
>I certainly agree that one should look at the costs and benefits. I always
>tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy. I
>can not imagine how to translate Hegel for example. On the hand, I never
>regret to have learned some foreign languages (although I am not good in
>languages).
Salut Burkhard -
Oddly enough, that is exactly the reason that I learned German. You
cannot seriously study Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Husserl and
Heidegger if you can't seriously work on their texts in the original,
and indeed if you know anything of phenomenological hermeneutics, you
know that it is an absolute prerequisite.
I only really understood Descartes when I read him in Latin. (Großes
Latinum und kleines Graecum war sowieso Voraussetzung, um weiter zu
studieren...).
John "in res dubitans, dubitato est" Opie
<snip>
ro...@telus.net
<bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I always
>tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy.
"I speak English to men, French to women, Spanish to God, and German
to my horse." -- Philip II, King of Spain
"Only God has time to learn German." -- Mark Twain
>I can not imagine how to translate Hegel for example.
Or Nietzsche, perhaps even worse.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>In article <3d909e86...@news.telus.net>, ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:15:02 -0400, Robert Vienneau
>> <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>
>> >I haven't read all of V. III myself. On the other hand, I've read Vols
>> >I, II, and IV, as well as other stuff by Marx.
>
>> Um... why? I read V. I many years ago, and found it difficult to
>> understand how anyone of above average IQ could take it seriously.
>
>Doubtless Roy has sometime met some guy successful at seducing
>women and wondered what women see in him.
Too, too true...
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
And afterwards, the women wonder, too.
-- Roy L
Burkhard C. Schipper
> In article <amul7i$bjm$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>,
> "Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I certainly agree that one should look at the costs and benefits. I
always
> > tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy.
I
> > can not imagine how to translate Hegel for example. On the hand, I never
> > regret to have learned some foreign languages (although I am not good in
> > languages).
>
> > You asserted that for English speakers it is probably less worth to read
the
> > classics in original than as it cost. This perhaps reflects also the
current
> > economists' valuation of the classics. However, this valuation might be
> > endogeneous. More use of the classics would make them also more
valuable.
>
> You might also consider that sizable fraction, perhaps a majority, of
> the classics of economics were written in English. The situation might
> be different in another field.
I do not dispute that there is a sizable fraction of classics of economics
written in English (Hume, Smith, Mill, Malthus, Jevons, Edgeworth, Marshall
etc.). However, economics in the late 19th and early 20th was rather
European with the Austrian School, the German Historical School, the French
speaking Lausanne School, the Italians, some Scandinavians (Cassel,
Wicksell, Frisch), the Vienna Circle (Menger junior, Schlesinger, Wald, von
Neumann) etc., each of them writing with some exceptions (e.g. Cassel's
major work is written in German) in their native language. American
economists, apart from Irvin Fisher (and perhaps also Taussig), did not play
a major role but took off once Schumpeter left Bonn for Harvard (and others
followed from Europe - Leontief, Haberler, von Neumann, Wald, Morgenstern
etc.).
> I do think it is worth the trouble of learning to be comfortable with
> late 18th/early 19th century English, in order to be able to read Smith
> and Ricardo--but that's pretty easy for a native speaker, since the
> language hasn't changed much.
Sometimes I feel more comforable reading 18th/19th century English than
listening to modern English. I feel that it is more close to the German
style of writing. There is quite some English vocabulary originating in
roman or indogermano languages, which was commonely used then but is hardly
used today.
> I'm not arguing against learning languages, I'm arguing against learning
> languages for the purpose of being able to read classics of economics in
> the original. The only scholarly use I have made of the various
> languages I have studied is to go over and correct translations of my
> own work. And that requires a much lower level of fluency than reading
> someone else's work and undrstanding it better than you would understand
> a translation--I know what my books are supposed to say.
I don't argue against translations. They are often very good interpretations
of the originals. However, one should keep in mind that they are
interpretations and not originals.
Burkhard C. Schipper
<ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:3d9386ee...@news.telus.net...
> On Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:49:30 +0200, "Burkhard C. Schipper"
> <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I always
> >tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy.
>
> "I speak English to men, French to women, Spanish to God, and German
> to my horse." -- Philip II, King of Spain
You see, German is easy to learn. Even horses understand German.
> "Only God has time to learn German." -- Mark Twain
That's not true. You gave a counter-example. Spanish horses and kings must
have had the time too (assuming that they are not God).
> >I can not imagine how to translate Hegel for example.
>
> Or Nietzsche, perhaps even worse.
The best German edition of Nietzsche is edited by some Italian fellows.
David Friedman
"Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Sometimes I feel more comforable reading 18th/19th century English than
> listening to modern English. I feel that it is more close to the German
> style of writing. There is quite some English vocabulary originating in
> roman or indogermano languages, which was commonely used then but is hardly
> used today.
Smith writes better than most moderns. But I'm not sure I understand
your final point. Almost all English vocabularly originates in either
Romance or Germanic languages. And what are "indogerman" languages? Both
Germanic and Romance languages (and English) are Indoeuropean languages,
related to Sanskrit.
Burkhard C. Schipper
It is true that Germanic, Celtic, Italic etc. languages are Intoeuropean
languages. Since Indoaryan languages are Indoeuropean languages, and
Sanskrit is an artificially constructed Indoaryan language, Germanic and
Roman languages are related to Sanskrit but not in a way that they originate
from Sanskrit.
My final point is that classic English writers used a rich language with
lots of nice vocabulary often forgotten today in our writing that aims to be
lean and efficient. An average English speaker uses less words than an
average German speaker. Since languages are related, it might be easier for
a non-native English speaker to read classics in English than for some
native speakers. Sometimes I just make up words in English by using the
root of a roman word. It happens often that some of my native English
speaking friends do not know this word. When we check the dictionary to
settle the dispute (take a big dictionary), we can find most of the time the
"English" word made up by me, which is apparently not used (anymore)
commonly.
Language is an evolving convention to communicate. An outsider to the
convention (foreign speaker) may have less trouble with slight deviations to
today's convention (classic English) than an insider (today's native
speaker).
Mark Patrick Witte
actually read the Wealth of Nations in its entirety.
"Once upon a time there was a man who read the Wealth of Nations; not
a summary, nor a volume of selected passages, but the Wealth of Nations
itself. He began with the Introduction, he read the famous first chapter on
the division of labour, the chapters on the origin and use of money, the
prices of commodities, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rent
of land, and all the other well-known economic portions of the first book,
not omitting the long digression on the fluctuation in the value of silver
during the last four centuries and the statistical tables at the end.
Having completed the first book he went on to the second, not deterred by
the fact that it is supposed to contain an erroneous theory of capital and
an untenable distinction between productive and unproductive labour. In
Book III he found an account of the economic development of Europe since the
fall of the Roman Empire, with digressions upon the various phases of
medieval life and civilization. In the fourth book he came upon extended
analyses and criticisms of the commercial and colonial policies of European
nations, and a whole battery of free trade arguments. Finally, he attacked
the long concluding book on the revenue of the sovereign Here he found even
more varied and unexpected matters: an account of the different methods of
defense and of administering justice in primitive education in the Middle
Ages and a criticism of eighteenth-century universities; a history of the
temporal power of the church, of the growth of public debts in modern
nations, of the mode of electing bishops in the ancient church; reflections
as to the disadvantages of the division of labour, and -- what is the main
purpose of the book -- an examination of principles of taxation and of
systems of public revenue. Time is too short to enumerate all that he found
here before he finally came to the concluding paragraphs, written during the
opening events of the American Revolution, concerning the duty of colonies
to contribute towards the expenses of the mother country.
Now, of course I may have exaggerated somewhat. There
probably never was any such man."
Mark Patrick Witte
Burkhard C. Schipper <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >I always
>> >tell people not to learn German except if they want to study philosophy.
>>
>> "I speak English to men, French to women, Spanish to God, and German
>> to my horse." -- Philip II, King of Spain
>
>You see, German is easy to learn. Even horses understand German.
>
>> "Only God has time to learn German." -- Mark Twain
>
>That's not true. You gave a counter-example. Spanish horses and kings must
>have had the time too (assuming that they are not God).
Wow, is my German reading ability low, I thought I'd read that God
was dead.
"A German joke is no laughing matter." -- Mark Twain
Burkhard C. Schipper
"Mark Patrick Witte" <mwi...@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote in message
news:an51q0$cdj$1...@news.acns.nwu.edu...
Well, since God can be everything, I guess he can be dead too. Moreover, he
can be dead and learn German.
> "A German joke is no laughing matter." -- Mark Twain
Did you never hear a horse laughing?
Burkhard C. Schipper
Usually, if you write something then you read it at the same time. Now,
since the Wealth of Nation was written, it must have been read too by the
writer. Hence there was such man.
To be honest, I skipped some pages when reading it.
David Friedman
mwi...@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Mark Patrick Witte) wrote:
> >That's not true. You gave a counter-example. Spanish horses and kings must
> >have had the time too (assuming that they are not God).
>
> Wow, is my German reading ability low, I thought I'd read that God
> was dead.
So are both the king and the horse in question.
David Friedman
"Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> To be honest, I skipped some pages when reading it.
I skipped the numerical tables, but not much else. Much of it is
actually fun.
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <an5b53$jku$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>,
> "Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > To be honest, I skipped some pages when reading it.
> I skipped the numerical tables, but not much else. Much of it is
> actually fun.
I didn't necessarily study the tables, but I don't think I skipped
anything.
Burkhard C. Schipper
Why? He said that only God has time to learn German. I pointed to the horse
and king as counter example. Now, assume God is dead. We still can not
conclude that horse and king did not speak German. Nor can we conclude that
God didn't learn German (before and even after he died.) What do I miss?
David Friedman
"Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Someone's response to "Spanish horses and kings must have had the time
too (assuming that they are not God)."
included the statement "I thought I'd read that God was dead."
I chose to interpret that as "therefore they are not God," and pointed
out that that particular King of Spain, and the horse to which he spoke
German, are also both dead, hence either (or both) might be God--at
least so far as the characteristic of being dead was concerned.
If they are God, then their ability to learn German is not inconsistent
with the claim that only God has time to learn German.
Besides, we don't actually know that the horse knew German, only that
the King spoke German to him. Lots of people speak to their cars, even
though very few cars understand human speech.
Burkhard C. Schipper
If they are not God then they are a counter-example. The fact that they are
dead too does not imply that they are God (that's where I got lost
previously), since I know of a counter-example: My grandfathers are dead,
and both were not God (I swear) (they were neither King nor horse too).
Besides, God can do everything, so he can also learn German while being
dead.
> If they are God, then their ability to learn German is not inconsistent
> with the claim that only God has time to learn German.
Well, then the students of the Goethe-Institutes must be God. However, the
current students are alive.
> Besides, we don't actually know that the horse knew German, only that
> the King spoke German to him. Lots of people speak to their cars, even
> though very few cars understand human speech.
Well, we do not need to claim that the horse knew German. We claim that the
horse learned German, or at least was forced to learn German from the King.
We do not claim that it succeeded in learning German.
There are quite a few cars which navigation systems that do speak German
(the radio too if you wish). Moreover, there is an commonly known
relationship between "German" and "car".
Paul Zrimsek
In the end will be the Verb.
Paul Zrimsek pzri...@earthlink.net
-----------------------------------------------------------
Alarmism is dooming our society!
David Friedman
pzri...@earthlink.net (Paul Zrimsek) wrote:
> In the beginning was the Word.
> In the end will be the Verb.
>
>
> Paul Zrimsek pzri...@earthlink.net
"How was that German novel you were reading?"
"I don't know. The last three pages were missing and they had all the
verbs."
David Friedman
"Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I chose to interpret that as "therefore they are not God," and pointed
> > out that that particular King of Spain, and the horse to which he spoke
> > German, are also both dead, hence either (or both) might be God--at
> > least so far as the characteristic of being dead was concerned.
>
> If they are not God then they are a counter-example. The fact that they are
> dead too does not imply that they are God (that's where I got lost
> previously), since I know of a counter-example: My grandfathers are dead,
> and both were not God (I swear) (they were neither King nor horse too).
My point was not that their being dead demonstrated that they were God
but that it refuted the argument "God is dead so they cannot be God."
...
> > Besides, we don't actually know that the horse knew German, only that
> > the King spoke German to him. Lots of people speak to their cars, even
> > though very few cars understand human speech.
> Well, we do not need to claim that the horse knew German. We claim that the
> horse learned German, or at least was forced to learn German from the King.
> We do not claim that it succeeded in learning German.
>
> There are quite a few cars which navigation systems that do speak German
> (the radio too if you wish). Moreover, there is an commonly known
> relationship between "German" and "car".
I did say "very few" not "no."
Mason Clark
>At a conference on the work of Smith, Glenn Morrow once told of someone who
>actually read the Wealth of Nations in its entirety.
Modesty compels a response. The unruly sci.econ gang got me
re-started on economics, having had my last course in the spring
of 1941. The re-inspiration led me to read it from cover to cover.
I expected to learn about the mystical magic hand that guided the
individual capitalist to act for the public good.
I confess astonishment upon realizing that it was quite critical of
capitalism, with its warnings about the conduct of capitalists.
Warnings which should have been heeded by the California
legislators and governor who got suckered by the energy capitalists.
But not *one* of them read the book! Which shows....
Mason C
ro...@telus.net
<dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>In article <an5b53$jku$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>,
> "Burkhard C. Schipper" <bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> To be honest, I skipped some pages when reading it.
>
>I skipped the numerical tables, but not much else. Much of it is
>actually fun.
Yes, the moral philosopher comes through loud and clear...
-- Roy L
David Friedman
Mason Clark <masonc...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> I confess astonishment upon realizing that it was quite critical of
> capitalism, with its warnings about the conduct of capitalists.
Perhaps more precisely, it was quite critical about capitalists using
government to benefit themselves, and spends a lot of time arguing
against letting them do so. That's a position he shares with his modern
admirers, at least the ones who are economists and/or libertarians.
Smith also discusses the possibility of capitalists conspiring to try to
raise prices, but concludes that there is nothing much government can or
should do about it other than refraining from helping them.
There are lots of interesting things in the book, and of course most
people who regard themselves as either supporters or opponents of Smith
haven't read it. As you may have noticed, Smith argues that neither an
income tax nor a sales tax is a practical option, since both involve
violations of individual privacy that no free people would put up with.
And he has a wonderful discussion of what's wrong with modern education,
in the course of which he rejects compulsory attendance in class for
anyone more than twelve years old (he's uncertain about people younger
than that).
And lots more good stuff.
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <6vsfpugh3cut1h8i7...@4ax.com>,
> Mason Clark <masonc...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > I confess astonishment upon realizing that it was quite critical of
> > capitalism, with its warnings about the conduct of capitalists.
> Perhaps more precisely, it was quite critical about capitalists using
> government to benefit themselves, and spends a lot of time arguing
> against letting them do so. That's a position he shares with his modern
> admirers, at least the ones who are economists and/or libertarians.
Smith arguing that the source of profits is the exploitation of
workers:
"As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order
to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
advanced."
-- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
Engels comments on this observation of Smith, and points out
Marx's comments on the same. He argues Ricardo extended this theme,
and that the so-called Ricardian socialists constructed an
anti-capitalist critique on these grounds. This is all in Engel's
preface to the second volume of Marx's Capital.
"The next writer of this little group, and one of the most original,
is Thomas Hodgskin... He quotes throughout from the best authorities
on economics and social philosophy; especially from Locke, Adam
Smith, and Millar. To Adam Smith he constantly refers; and he
never tires of contrasting Smith's 'natural system' with the
'political economy' of the contemporary school...
...It would appear that Hodgskin was mainly inspired in this attack
by the teaching of the Wealth of Nations, for whose author he had
a profound respect. Both here and in his Popular Political Economy
he quotes Adam Smith copiously, and he is greatly impressed by
Smith's well-known distinction in Book III, between 'human
institutions' and 'the natural order of things.' 'That great man.'
he says, 'carefully distinguished the natural distribution of
wealth from the distribution which is derived from our artificial
right of property. His successors, on the contrary, make no such
distinction, and in theri writings the consequences of this right
are stated to be the laws of Nature.'"
-- H. S. Foxwell, 1899.
"One point which emerges from out analysis of the classical exchange
value and real value theory is that Marx's theory of surplus value is
not the result of a 'gross misunderstanding.'...Marx was right in
saying that his surplus value theory follows from the classical theory
of real value...Moreover, Marx was not the first to draw radical
conclusions from it. All pre-Marxist British socialists derived their
arguments from Adam Smith and later from Ricardo. Economists did not
welcome these inevitable conclusions...He thus touched upon a
sore point of economic theory and, probably for this reason, caused
so much irritation amonst economists. They often tried not so much
to prove him wrong, which would not have been too difficult, as to
show that he was an utter fool, a bungler, misguided by those
despised German philosophers...The classical theory of value leads
inevitably to a rationalist radicalism, if not necessarily in Marx's
formulation, at any rate in that direction. For the historian of
thought the real puzzle is why the classics did *not* draw these
radical conclusions."
-- Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of
Economic Theory, 1953.
Noel W. Thompson, "The People's Science: The Popular Political
Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816-34.
Book Description:
The work details the emergence, in the post-Napoleonic War period,
of a growing popular interest in the critical potentialities of
political economy. It considers why this occurred and discusses how
the conceptual and analytical tools of political economy were
utilised to formulate a critique of early industrial capitalism.
The book examines the theories of labour exploitation and capitalist
crisis which represented the essence of that critique both as they
were elaborated by early-nineteenth-century British anti-capitalist
and socialist writers and as they were popularised by writers in the
working-class press of the period 1816-34. The book argues that by
1834 in consequence of the efforts of writers such as Hodgskin,
Thompson, Gray, Owen and their popularisers the foundations of a
distinctively anti-capitalist and socialist political economy had
been established and widely disseminated...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521893429/qid=1033418895/s
r=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-1931013-2952716?v=glance
"For someone who used Smith's name to argue in favour of merchantile
rule, see Stigler (1988). This truly disheartening misuse of Smith's
name by someone who clearly knew better was peddled to the
apparently unsuspecting philistines in the National Association of
Business Economists. As Galbraith (1992) has pointed out, Smith was
'deeply averse to joint stock companies, now called corporations...
Modern advocates of free enterprise would find Smith's attack on
corporations deeply disconcerting.'"
-- Spencer J. Pack, "Adam Smith's Unnaturally Natural (Yet
Naturally Unnatural) Use of the Word 'Natural'". in
The Classical Tradition in Economic Thought, 1995.
"If one accepts the hierarchy of virtues argument, however, this
explains how Smith could have been regarded by some readers as
having abandoned the economic sphere which is the subject of WN to
the unbridled rule of greed and selfishness, when in fact he was
simply not regarding that public arena as the proper concern for
the private inward debate concerning the most elevated and austere
of the personal virtues. None of this need conflict with his
continuing to see the public world of economic affairs as being
capable of being moulded by just laws, and the pursuit of long-term
enlightened self-interest properly restrained by prudence, into
what he regarded as the desirable state, and which he approvingly
referred to as the system of natural liberty.
This in no way licenses the vulgarizers of Smith, who try to
interpret his system of natural liberty as a free-for-all of
unbridled greed and swindling - a paradise for projectors, inside
traders, take-over artists, and barrow boys. Nor does it condone
squandering the surplus - always the cardinal sin for the
classics. Happily, however, reinterpretations of Smith which
do justice to the subtlety and depth of his moral distinctions
are appearing today with increasing frequency."
-- Vivian Walsh, "Recent Interpretations of Adam Smith". The
Elgar Companion to Classical Economics, 1998.
Burkhard C. Schipper
and after him Ricardo, Marx, Engels etc.) was a proponent of what we call in
German "objektive Wertlehre" (objective theory of value) versus today's
dominant "subjektive Wertlehre" (subjective theory of value). However, I can
not recall that he spoke explicitly of workers' exploitation or saw it as
something morally questionable.
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
news:rvien-F0707E....@news.dreamscape.com...
susupply
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com>
perhaps thinking he's become so boring no one reads his posts,
wrote in message news:rvien-F0707E....@news.dreamscape.com...
> Smith arguing that the source of profits is the exploitation of
> workers:
>
> "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
> some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
> people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order
> to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
> adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
> to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
> parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
> employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
> advanced."
> -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
First, note the absence of of anything about ANYONE being
"exploited" in the above.
Second, Smith is merely illustrating what is usually accepted as the major
insight of WoN; that people will only enter into a transaction (bargain,
trade, contract, call it what you like) if they believe it will benefit
them.
Third, take special note of Smith's: "materials and wages which he
advanced", and that Smith makes no claim about profits being "advanced".
Since wages are almost always paid shortly after the labor has performed,
and "profits" are often a negative number, I'm going to ask Robert (for
about the ten thousandth time) why Smith's paragraph is not better described
as the exploitation of capital by labor.
And I fully expect that question to be ignored again.
Robert Vienneau
<bcsch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
> news:rvien-F0707E....@news.dreamscape.com...
> > Smith arguing that the source of profits is the exploitation of
> > workers:
> > "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
> > some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
> > people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in
> > order
> > to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
> > adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
> > to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
> > parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
> > employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
> > advanced."
> > -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
> Yes, it is true that Smith (and before him a couple of Greek Philosophers
> and after him Ricardo, Marx, Engels etc.) was a proponent of what we call
> in
> German "objektive Wertlehre" (objective theory of value) versus today's
> dominant "subjektive Wertlehre" (subjective theory of value). However, I
> can
> not recall that he spoke explicitly of workers' exploitation or saw it as
> something morally questionable.
I do not say that when Smith described the exploitation of the workers,
he used the term "exploitation". Nor do I say that he said it was
morally questionable. However, the above passage from the Wealth
explicitly describes what many (e.g., Engels) later called exploitation.
I say that many 19th century writers built socialist arguments on Smith.
And, as I pointed out, the scholarly literature agrees.
Furthermore, there are other anti-"libertarian" readings of Smith, as
some of my quotes show.
Burkhard, what am I to make of how so many here refuse to engage the
scholarly literature that I point out? And to pretend that I say things
I don't?
susupply
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com>
unmasked as Robert Torricelli's speech writer,
wrote in message news:rvien-69323D....@news.dreamscape.com...
> I do not say that when Smith described the exploitation of the workers,
> he used the term "exploitation". Nor do I say that he said it was
> morally questionable. However, the above passage from the Wealth
> explicitly describes what many (e.g., Engels) later called exploitation.
So Smith didn't call it exploitation, and he had no moral objections (in
fact, he seemed to approve of it as superior to competing arrangements) to
it, but Robert feels it's okay to misrepresent Smith as thinking it
exploitation.
[snip]
> Burkhard, what am I to make of how so many here refuse to engage the
> scholarly literature that I point out? And to pretend that I say things
> I don't?
"When did we become such an unforgiving people?" When a sci.econ poster
who has spent years developing his credibility, can't even get away with
saying Adam Smith said something he didn't?
Peter Lawrence
Apocryphal story. One day a UN simultaneous translator from the German fell
silent during a speech. He was asked what was wrong. "Nothing," he replied,
"only he's still on the first sentence and all the verbs are at the end."
Aside. One Korean contributor to arcane software stated that he found Forth
congenial because in Forth, as in Korean, verbs followed nouns (Reverse
Polish Notation, or RPN). This one is not apocryphal; do a search on Hforth.
PML.
--
GST+NPT=JOBS
I.e., a Goods and Services Tax (or almost any other broad based production
tax), with a Negative Payroll Tax, promotes employment.
See http://users.netlink.com.au/~peterl/publicns.html#AFRLET2 and the other
items on that page for some reasons why.
Burkhard C. Schipper
I do not refuse to engage the scholarly literature that you point. I also do
not pretend that you say things that you don't. I just pointed out (and you
obviously got the message) that what we understand as exploitation today
(with a questionable moral connotation) is probably not what Smith meant.
However, I agree that today's understanding of exploitation and Smith
description refers to the same fact.
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
I think I'll give David Friedman another chance to acknowledge a
certain anticapitalist reading of certain pssages in the Wealth of
Nations.
"As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order
to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
advanced."
-- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
1.
2.
These two parts are two parts of what?
Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
Smith supportive of his position?
Consider the following passage:
"The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages
of labour.
In that original state of things, which precedes both the
appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole
produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither
landlord nor master to share with him...
But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed
the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the
first introduction of the appropriation of land and the
accumulation of stock...
As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a
share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either
raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction
from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has
wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest. His
maintenance is generally advanced to him from the stock of a
master, the farmer who employs him, and who would have no
interest to employ him, unless he was to share in the produce
of his labour, or unless his stock was to be replaced to him
with a profit. This profit makes a second deduction from the
produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
The produce of almost all other labour is liable to the like
deduction of profit. In all the arts and manufactures the
greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance
them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance
till it be compleated. He shares in the produce of their
labour, or in the value which it adds to the materials upon
which it is bestowed; and in this share consists his profit."
-- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VIII
How many parts does Smith divide the same quantity into in that
passage?
Bonus question: Did anybody in the 19th century offer an
anticapitalist interpretation of these passages? Where would you
look to document your answer?
David Friedman
Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> In article <ddfr-6D6338.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>
> I think I'll give David Friedman another chance to acknowledge a
> certain anticapitalist reading of certain pssages in the Wealth of
> Nations.
I didn't see anything that needed responding to. I still don't.
> "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
> some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
> people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order
> to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
> adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
> to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
> parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
> employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
> advanced."
> -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
>
> Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
> 1.
Payment to labor
> 2.
Payment to capital.
> These two parts are two parts of what?
Total output of the firm.
> Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
> Smith supportive of his position?
Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
3: Wages, rent, profit. But a decent theory of rent had to wait a while
to be invented.
> Bonus question: Did anybody in the 19th century offer an
> anticapitalist interpretation of these passages? Where would you
> look to document your answer?
I didn't memorize your cites, but I would certainly expect that some
people did. Marx was pretty dismissive of Smith, but he still might have
cited him for his own purposes, and I expect other people who thought
more highly of Smith would have done so. People today still sometimes
cite Smith in support of anti-market arguments, although much of the
time they are misunderstanding him--as in the commonly made claim that
he was in favor of public schooling. But he clearly was not an
anarchist, and he believed in some government interventions that the
more extreme supporters of free markets--myself, for example--would
oppose.
Why do you think this is interesting? If your point is that opponent of
capitalism sometimes cited with approval writings by the classical
economists, it is of course true, but hardly surprising.
susupply
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com>
Man of a Thousand Chances,
wrote in message news:rvien-B7FA6F....@news.dreamscape.com...
> I think I'll give David Friedman another chance to acknowledge a
> certain anticapitalist reading of certain pssages in the Wealth of
> Nations.
Of course, the original claim was that Adam Smith had written about the
exploitation of workers, not that some dolts read him incorrectly.
Let's see how stupid one would have to be to make that mistake:
[snip]
> It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has
> wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest.
Meaning he is lacking something it would be to his advantage to have.
> His
> maintenance is generally advanced to him....
Meaning someone (for convenience we'll call him a capitalist) provides the
laborer something of value, thus increasing the laborer's welfare. Thus the
exploitation of labor by capital is a negative number.
However, it far from clear that the exploitation potential of capital by
labor is negative. At this point in the bargain that is unknown, and the
capitalist is at risk of being exploited.
> from the stock of a
> master, the farmer who employs him, and who would have no
> interest to employ him, unless he was to share in the produce
> of his labour, or unless his stock was to be replaced to him
> with a profit. This profit makes a second deduction from the
> produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
Except that this is not the case until we know the outcome of the sale in
the market of the combined production of capital and labor and land. In
which case it may be the deduction is a negative number, thus a positive to
the already compensated labor.
> The produce of almost all other labour is liable to the like
> deduction of profit. In all the arts and manufactures the
> greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance
> them the materials of their work,
That is, "the master" is making them better off, and not, as Marx would
define it, using them only for his own selfish benefit to their detriment.
But, since the capitalist doesn't have any such guarantee he could, and
often is, exploited by labor.
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <rvien-B7FA6F....@news.dreamscape.com>,
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> > In article <ddfr-6D6338.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
> > Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> > I think I'll give David Friedman another chance to acknowledge a
> > certain anticapitalist reading of certain pssages in the Wealth of
> > Nations.
> I didn't see anything that needed responding to. I still don't.
> > "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
> > some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious
> > people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order
> > to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour
> > adds to the value of the materials...The value which the workmen add
> > to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two
> > parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their
> > employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he
> > advanced."
> > -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
> > Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
> Payment to labor
> Payment to capital.
> > These two parts are two parts of what?
> Total output of the firm.
This answer seems to range from wrong to disingenuous to me. (Doesn't
the value of total output of the firm include the value of the stock
of materials carried over into output? And that value is not one
of the two parts mentioned above.)
Perhaps I should have phrased my question as:
Smith says these two parts sum up to what?
Anyway, the next suggests David understands the point of the question.
> > Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
> > Smith supportive of his position?
> Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
That answer begs a whole lot of matters, matters discussed in a lot
of modern literature, for example. I refer to the failure of
marginalist supply-and-demand explanations of the return to capital.
But let's avoid certain modern controversies over the last century,
controversies which David has never addressed, as far as I know.
Let me stick to a historical question. I assume David is aware of
Quesnay's Tableau and the physicratic distinction between sterile
advances (in manufacture) and productive advances (in agriculture).
Would you like to moderate your claim that Smith does not think
capital is productive, if I recontextualize the topic to be
contrasting Smith with Quesnay?
And do you think you can make sense of Book II, Chapter V, "Of the
Different Employment of Capitals"? That's the one where Smith talks
about the different value-added by investment in producing "rude
produce", in manufacturing, in transportation, and in commerce and
final sales. It seems to me that this is a chapter that has
occasioned a lot of controversy. I don't have any definite
opinion on it.
> > Consider the following passage:
> > -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VIII
> > How many parts does Smith divide the same quantity into in that
> > passage?
> 3: Wages, rent, profit. But a decent theory of rent had to wait a while
> to be invented.
Presumably, David is referring to a theory put forward by West, Malthus,
and Ricardo. If so, I agree.
Do you know of Anderson?
> > Bonus question: Did anybody in the 19th century offer an
> > anticapitalist interpretation of these passages? Where would you
> > look to document your answer?
> I didn't memorize your cites, but I would certainly expect that some
> people did. Marx was pretty dismissive of Smith, but he still might have
> cited him for his own purposes, and I expect other people who thought
> more highly of Smith would have done so.
Marx cited Smith a lot. Marx thought highly of Smith. Do you think
(incorrectly) that Marx was dismissive of Ricardo too?
Marx was not original in his reading of Smith, though. See below.
> People today still sometimes
> cite Smith in support of anti-market arguments, although much of the
> time they are misunderstanding him--as in the commonly made claim that
> he was in favor of public schooling. But he clearly was not an
> anarchist, and he believed in some government interventions that the
> more extreme supporters of free markets--myself, for example--would
> oppose.
> Why do you think this is interesting? If your point is that opponent of
> capitalism sometimes cited with approval writings by the classical
> economists, it is of course true, but hardly surprising.
I think you are missing the point. Smith talked about instances of
businessmen doing things he thought bad - whenever they get together,
they conspire against the public. And he talked about specific
institutions dominated by capitalists he did not like - you probably
remember stuff about India better than I do. And he talked about
specific policy recommendations that involve government interference
in markets - I mentioned an upper limit on interest rates in an
earlier interchange.
If you concentrate on those passages, you can treat them as isolated
incidents. You can argue he is not critical of capitalism as such,
but only of, say, "capitalists using government to benefit themselves".
It seems to me that I am concentrating on a more central element of
Smith's theory - not that I think Smith has one worked out theory
for his whole book. (Since Smith is a different sort of stylist than,
say, Ricardo, that's not a severe criticism.)
And this leads to another question that David avoids - the continuity
in the development of economic thought either from the Classicals
through Marx or, in contrast, from the Classicals through Marshall.
For example, David has never commented, as far as I know, on debates
between Hollander and the Sraffians. This has been a major focus of
secondary literature on Classical economics over, say, the last
quarter century. (It is my impression that David's approach to the
history of economic thought is to ignore huge tracts of secondary
literature, read the great books, and give his reactions.) If
David does not want to comment on Hollander, perhaps he can tell
us whether he agrees with my opinion that Marshall's Appendix I is
highly misleading.
When I argue that 19th century socialists drew on Smith, I am not
referring exclusively to Marx and those who built on Marx. Nor am
I saying they exclusively took isolated observations from Smith (e.g.,
about how the division of labor under capitalism will lead to citizens
being as stupid as possible). I am saying that they built on the
theoretical edifice of the classical economists. In some sense, many
19th century socialists were moving into the same building.
Once again, this thesis is not original with me. This book argues
that the so-called Ricardian socialists should be more properly
called Smithian socialists:
Noel W. Thompson, "The People's Science: The Popular Political
Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816-34".
The phrase "Ricardian socialists" comes, as far as I know, from
Foxwell's introduction to a translation of Anton Menger's
"The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour: The Origin and
Development of the Theory of Labour's Claim to the Whole Product
of Industry". I haven't read more than Foxwell's intro, as yet.
But I used the index to find this passage:
"We recognize at once, in these opinions of [William] Thompson's,
the train of thought, and even the mode of expression, which
reappear later on in the works of so many socialists, especially
of Marx and Rodbertus. This view, held by Thompson and many
other socialists, that rent and interest are deductions made by
the owners of land and capital from the full produce of labour,
is by no means peculiar to socialists, for many of the
representatives of the classical school, for instance Adam Smith,
start from the same idea. Thompson and his followers are only
original in so far as they consider rent and interest to be
UNJUST deductions, which violate the right of the labourer to
the whole produce of labour. So that here, again, the difference
between the two views is rather juridical than economic."
-- Anton Menger (translated in 1899)
As I mentioned, Engels talks about these precursors to Marx in
his preface to volume 2 of Capital.
And here's Myrdal - no Marxist he - asserting the continuity
that I am pointing out:
"One point which emerges from out analysis of the classical exchange
value and real value theory is that Marx's theory of surplus value is
not the result of a 'gross misunderstanding.'...Marx was right in
saying that his surplus value theory follows from the classical theory
of real value...Moreover, Marx was not the first to draw radical
conclusions from it. All pre-Marxist British socialists derived their
arguments from Adam Smith and later from Ricardo. Economists did not
welcome these inevitable conclusions...He thus touched upon a
sore point of economic theory and, probably for this reason, caused
so much irritation amonst economists. They often tried not so much
to prove him wrong, which would not have been too difficult, as to
show that he was an utter fool, a bungler, misguided by those
despised German philosophers...The classical theory of value leads
inevitably to a rationalist radicalism, if not necessarily in Marx's
formulation, at any rate in that direction. For the historian of
thought the real puzzle is why the classics did *not* draw these
radical conclusions."
-- Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of
Economic Theory, 1953.
--
David Friedman
Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> In article <ddfr-BFB775.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> > > Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
> > > Smith supportive of his position?
>
> > Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
...
> Would you like to moderate your claim that Smith does not think
> capital is productive, if I recontextualize the topic to be
> contrasting Smith with Quesnay?
I made no such claim. My "him" referred to your "somebody," not to
Smith, as I thought was obvious from the context.
> > 3: Wages, rent, profit. But a decent theory of rent had to wait a while
> > to be invented.
>
> Presumably, David is referring to a theory put forward by West, Malthus,
> and Ricardo. If so, I agree.
Correct.
> Do you know of Anderson?
I don't know what Anderson you are referring to.
>
> > > Bonus question: Did anybody in the 19th century offer an
> > > anticapitalist interpretation of these passages? Where would you
> > > look to document your answer?
>
> > I didn't memorize your cites, but I would certainly expect that some
> > people did. Marx was pretty dismissive of Smith, but he still might have
> > cited him for his own purposes, and I expect other people who thought
> > more highly of Smith would have done so.
>
> Marx cited Smith a lot. Marx thought highly of Smith. Do you think
> (incorrectly) that Marx was dismissive of Ricardo too?
On the contrary. I would have said that Ricardo and Aristotle were
practically the only people Marx was not dismissive of.
...
> I think you are missing the point. Smith talked about instances of
> businessmen doing things he thought bad - whenever they get together,
> they conspire against the public. And he talked about specific
> institutions dominated by capitalists he did not like - you probably
> remember stuff about India better than I do. And he talked about
> specific policy recommendations that involve government interference
> in markets - I mentioned an upper limit on interest rates in an
> earlier interchange.
And he thought there ought to be a bottom limit on the denomination of
bank issued paper money, and perhaps a subsidy to the merchant marine.
> For example, David has never commented, as far as I know, on debates
> between Hollander and the Sraffians.
So far as I know too. There are lots of things in the world that I have
never commented on.
> (It is my impression that David's approach to the
> history of economic thought is to ignore huge tracts of secondary
> literature, read the great books, and give his reactions.)
Mostly correct. I find Smith, Ricardo, Marshall, et. al. generally more
interesting than the people who write about them.
If
> David does not want to comment on Hollander, perhaps he can tell
> us whether he agrees with my opinion that Marshall's Appendix I is
> highly misleading.
But not tonight, since my good copy of Marshall is in the office and the
Prometheus paperback doesn't have the appendices.
> When I argue that 19th century socialists drew on Smith, I am not
> referring exclusively to Marx and those who built on Marx. Nor am
> I saying they exclusively took isolated observations from Smith (e.g.,
> about how the division of labor under capitalism will lead to citizens
> being as stupid as possible). I am saying that they built on the
> theoretical edifice of the classical economists. In some sense, many
> 19th century socialists were moving into the same building.
Sounds plausible enough. I'm afraid Marx is the only one of them I have
read, and while he seemed less wrong in the "final hour" controversy
than his opponent, he also appeared to me to have a less coherent
overall theory than Ricardo.
susupply
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com>
thinking Adam Smith is as poor a reader as he,
wrote in message news:rvien-F89F99....@news.dreamscape.com...
> In article <ddfr-BFB775.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> > > Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
> > > Smith supportive of his position?
>
> > Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
[snip]
> Would you like to moderate your claim that Smith does not think
> capital is productive,
David Friedman's claim was that certain nincompoop readers of Smith don't
understand that Smith understands that capital is productive. Which is why
they claim Smith wrote about the "exploitation" of labor.
susupply
"Robert Vienneau" <rv...@see.sig.com>
who is now all for competition,
wrote in message news:rvien-F89F99....@news.dreamscape.com...
> I think you are missing the point. Smith talked about instances of
> businessmen doing things he thought bad - whenever they get together,
> they conspire against the public.
Well the ILWU hadn't been organized yet, so Smith couldn't have known about
this:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134547470_porttech0
3.html
<<-----------------quote-------------------
Technology has been marching into West Coast ports at a much slower pace
than in the rest of the world, and now it is driving the ports' biggest
labor dispute in 30 years.
Engineers who design ports to improve efficiency say West Coast ports are
far behind the state of the art. It is common in Singapore and Rotterdam,
The Netherlands, for shipping containers to be tracked by a network of
electronic tags, scanners and global positioning systems as they shuttle
between truck, storage yard and boat. Robotic cranes work almost
independently, moving cargo around terminals.
Some of this technology has made its way to the West Coast, but with limited
benefit.
Because of the labor contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union, workers must retype the same computerized information at several
points as containers move around the waterfront.
The union says it is willing to embrace technological advancements, but
wants union workers to handle the data. It hasn't been able to agree on
terms with employers.
"The West Coast of the United States is one of only a handful of places in
the world where this kind of technology can't go in," said Tom Ward, a
principal engineer with JWD Group in Oakland, Calif., a port designer and
consultant to the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). "There is no other
place in the world where there is so much resistance."
[snip]
In Rotterdam, for example, several cranes - each with a crew of fewer than
six people - can unload a ship full of containers. On West Coast ports, it
typically can take 18 to 25 people per crane, Ward said.
In Hamburg, Germany, a single person can run up to four storage-yard cranes
remotely by looking at a video screen. On the West Coast, up to four people
are required to run a storage-yard crane, said Larry Nye, a vice president a
Moffatt and Nichol Engineers in Long Beach, Calif.
Even in West Coast ports with computerized tickets that tell truckers where
to pick up a container, union workers in some cases get paid to pull the
ticket out of the printer and hand it to the trucker, Nye said.
Technology would change significant chunks of the process.
----------------------endquote--------------------->>
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <rvien-F89F99....@news.dreamscape.com>,
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <ddfr-BFB775.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
> > Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
AS> "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular
AS> persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to
AS> work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials
AS> and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their
AS> work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the
AS> materials...The value which the workmen add to the materials,
AS> therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which
AS> one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer
AS> upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced."
AS> -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
RV> Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
DF> Payment to labor
DF> Payment to capital.
RV> Smith says these two parts sum up to what?
RV> Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
RV> Smith supportive of his position?
DF> Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
RV> Would you like to moderate your claim that Smith does not think
RV> capital is productive, if I recontextualize the topic to be
RV> contrasting Smith with Quesnay?
DF> I made no such claim. My "him" referred to your "somebody," not to
DF> Smith, as I thought was obvious from the context.
Yes, I misread you. I think a better answer would be more focused
on Smith. Would you care to offer such an answer?
Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
Smith supportive of his position?
"We recognize at once, in these opinions of [William] Thompson's,
the train of thought, and even the mode of expression, which
reappear later on in the works of so many socialists, especially
of Marx and Rodbertus. This view, held by Thompson and many
other socialists, that rent and interest are deductions made by
the owners of land and capital from the full produce of labour,
is by no means peculiar to socialists, for many of the
representatives of the classical school, for instance Adam Smith,
start from the same idea. Thompson and his followers are only
original in so far as they consider rent and interest to be
UNJUST deductions, which violate the right of the labourer to
the whole produce of labour. So that here, again, the difference
between the two views is rather juridical than economic."
-- Anton Menger (translated in 1899)
> > > 3: Wages, rent, profit. But a decent theory of rent had to wait a
> > > while
> > > to be invented.
> > Presumably, David is referring to a theory put forward by West,
> > Malthus,
> > and Ricardo. If so, I agree.
> Correct.
> > Do you know of Anderson?
> I don't know what Anderson you are referring to.
Consider the farmland around Rochester, NY and around Chicago, IL.
Which would have higher rent? The answer provided by the aforementioned
theory would differ in the year 1800 and 1900. This change is, at
least partly, brought about by forces that should be endogeneous
to the theory. The West-Malthus-Ricardo formulation did not explicitly
talk about such endogneous forces.
James Anderson, apparently, anticipated the aforementioned theory,
and he wrote about how the development process would change the
relative order of rent. He was a contemporary of Adam Smith's.
He seemingly wasn't very influential at the time.
> > > ...Marx was pretty dismissive of Smith, but he still might
> > > have
> > > cited him for his own purposes, and I expect other people who thought
> > > more highly of Smith would have done so.
> > Marx cited Smith a lot. Marx thought highly of Smith. Do you think
> > (incorrectly) that Marx was dismissive of Ricardo too?
> On the contrary. I would have said that Ricardo and Aristotle were
> practically the only people Marx was not dismissive of.
I agree that Marx was not dismissive of either Ricardo or Aristotle.
I'm surprised you don't mention Hegel in this context. If this is
not a simple oversight, if you think Marx was dismissive of Hegel
(Marx flipped Hegel over, in some sense) I guess your claim that
Marx was dismissive of Smith is more understandable. I still think
it debatable.
> > I think you are missing the point. Smith talked about instances of
> > businessmen doing things he thought bad - whenever they get together,
> > they conspire against the public. And he talked about specific
> > institutions dominated by capitalists he did not like - you probably
> > remember stuff about India better than I do. And he talked about
> > specific policy recommendations that involve government interference
> > in markets - I mentioned an upper limit on interest rates in an
> > earlier interchange.
> And he thought there ought to be a bottom limit on the denomination of
> bank issued paper money, and perhaps a subsidy to the merchant marine.
None of the above, in and of itself, can be used to justify any policy
at all today. (I realize that that is not David's intention.)
> > For example, David has never commented, as far as I know, on debates
> > between Hollander and the Sraffians.
> So far as I know too. There are lots of things in the world that I have
> never commented on.
> > (It is my impression that David's approach to the
> > history of economic thought is to ignore huge tracts of secondary
> > literature, read the great books, and give his reactions.)
> Mostly correct. I find Smith, Ricardo, Marshall, et. al. generally more
> interesting than the people who write about them.
Well, I cannot know exactly what you taught when you taught history
of economics. I did look at your Webified lecture notes once.
I think you might have presented Smith, Ricardo, Marshall as a story
of continuous development. The later authors would have filled gaps
in the previous works, elaborated parts that needed it, and corrected
mistakes. If you did present your students with that sort of story
with no indication how contentious it is, I think you did your
students something of, at best, a mixed service.
Notice the course readings for this class, and the paragraph on this
Web page immediately preceeding the reading list:
<http://www.nd.edu/~esent/syllabi/econ506.html>
Sent seems a lot more postmodern than David.
> > If
> > David does not want to comment on Hollander, perhaps he can tell
> > us whether he agrees with my opinion that Marshall's Appendix I is
> > highly misleading.
> But not tonight, since my good copy of Marshall is in the office and the
> Prometheus paperback doesn't have the appendices.
It's where Marshall writes about how we must interpret Ricardo
generously and how Ricardo differed from later writers only in
differences in emphasis. E.g., Ricardo did not emphasize demand.
What is the best edition of Ricardo's Principles? (I think my
answer is well-known around here.)
> > When I argue that 19th century socialists drew on Smith, I am not
> > referring exclusively to Marx and those who built on Marx. Nor am
> > I saying they exclusively took isolated observations from Smith (e.g.,
> > about how the division of labor under capitalism will lead to citizens
> > being as stupid as possible). I am saying that they built on the
> > theoretical edifice of the classical economists. In some sense, many
> > 19th century socialists were moving into the same building.
> Sounds plausible enough. I'm afraid Marx is the only one of them I have
> read, and while he seemed less wrong in the "final hour" controversy
> than his opponent, he also appeared to me to have a less coherent
> overall theory than Ricardo.
I'm surprised at the agreement.
David Friedman
Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> > On the contrary. I would have said that Ricardo and Aristotle were
> > practically the only people Marx was not dismissive of.
>
> I agree that Marx was not dismissive of either Ricardo or Aristotle.
> I'm surprised you don't mention Hegel in this context.
I read Marx as an economist; I don't know enough about Hegel to judge,
or even pay much attention to, what Marx said about him.
> I think you might have presented Smith, Ricardo, Marshall as a story
> of continuous development. The later authors would have filled gaps
> in the previous works, elaborated parts that needed it, and corrected
> mistakes. If you did present your students with that sort of story
> with no indication how contentious it is, I think you did your
> students something of, at best, a mixed service.
Could be. I was interested in the ideas, not the history--as I tried to
make clear in the course. I was still less interested in the history of
the history--in the literature on what different people had said about
the development of the ideas.
> Notice the course readings for this class, and the paragraph on this
> Web page immediately preceeding the reading list:
>
> <http://www.nd.edu/~esent/syllabi/econ506.html>
>
> Sent seems a lot more postmodern than David.
She writes:
"course that intends to show that the past is not necessarily embodied
in what we are learning now, that there is not necessarily direct
progression, and that current microeconomic textbooks do not necessarily
contain everything that was relevant in the past."
I would agree with that, in particular the final part. One of the things
I have done in several of my books is to argue for the superiority of
Marshall's approach to efficiency over Pareto's. It is the latter that
shows up in the textbooks. And I like to offer Smith's explanation of
how feudalism was destroyed by trade and the division of labor (the
diamond shoe buckle passage) as a nice example of the application of
economics to what are usually thought of as non-economic issues. Again,
you won't find that in many modern texts.
It seems to me that my approach--read the original works and try to make
sense of them--is farther from the approach being discussed by the
students at the beginning of that web page than the alternative of
reading secondary sources. Secondary sources are going to bias their
view of the past in the direction of a modern point of view. I want to
know what Smith and Ricardo said, not what someone now says about them.
And I am more interested in what Smith, Ricardo and Marshall said than
in what 19th century writers said about them.
That said, I should add that I think Blaug is pretty good. I believe I
have sometimes assigned him either as a required or alternate reading.
Also, I note that the grad student cites Rosen and Becker, but Stigler
wasn't at the table.
> What is the best edition of Ricardo's Principles? (I think my
> answer is well-known around here.)
I haven't compared editions. The one I use is late enough to have his
correction of the argument that technological progress couldn't make
workers worse off.
ro...@telus.net
<rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>In article <ddfr-1CF1F6.0...@sea-read.news.verio.net>, David
>Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>
>> On the contrary. I would have said that Ricardo and Aristotle were
>> practically the only people Marx was not dismissive of.
>
>I agree that Marx was not dismissive of either Ricardo or Aristotle.
In particular, Marx was evidently taken with Aristotle's occasional
method of arriving at conclusions by pure ratiocination, without
reference to factual observation. Too bad physics had to bide its
time until they built the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Galileo could
drop his cannonballs. At least economics didn't have to wait 1800
years for the experimental refutation of Marx...
-- Roy L
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <rvien-37D8C4....@news.dreamscape.com>,
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
AS> "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular
AS> persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to
AS> work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials
AS> and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their
AS> work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the
AS> materials...The value which the workmen add to the materials,
AS> therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which
AS> one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer
AS> upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced."
AS> -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
RV> Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
DF> Payment to labor
DF> Payment to capital.
RV> Smith says these two parts sum up to what?
RV> Why might somebody opposed to capitalism find the above passage of
RV> Smith supportive of his position?
DF> Because it hasn't occurred to him that capital is productive.
RV> I think a better answer would be more focused on Smith. Would
RV> you care to offer such an answer?
"We recognize at once, in these opinions of [William] Thompson's,
the train of thought, and even the mode of expression, which
reappear later on in the works of so many socialists, especially
of Marx and Rodbertus. This view, held by Thompson and many
other socialists, that rent and interest are deductions made by
the owners of land and capital from the full produce of labour,
is by no means peculiar to socialists, for many of the
representatives of the classical school, for instance Adam Smith,
start from the same idea. Thompson and his followers are only
original in so far as they consider rent and interest to be
UNJUST deductions, which violate the right of the labourer to
the whole produce of labour. So that here, again, the difference
between the two views is rather juridical than economic."
-- Anton Menger (translated in 1899)
> > > On the contrary. I would have said that Ricardo and Aristotle were
> > > practically the only people Marx was not dismissive of.
> > I agree that Marx was not dismissive of either Ricardo or Aristotle.
> > I'm surprised you don't mention Hegel in this context.
> I read Marx as an economist; I don't know enough about Hegel to judge,
> or even pay much attention to, what Marx said about him.
I certainly don't want to claim expertise on Hegel, quite the
opposite. But I still don't know why David thinks Marx was
"dismissive" of Smith.
"Historically, this method of investigation was justified and
necessary. Political economy had achieved a certain comprehensiveness
with Adam Smith; to a certain extent he had covered the whole of
its territory, so that Say was able to summarise it all in one
textbook, superficially but quite systematically. The only
investigations that were made in the period between Smith and
Ricardo were ones of detail, on productive and unproductive labour,
finance, theory of population, landed property, and taxes. Smith
himself moves with great naivete in a perpetual contradiction.
On the one hand he traces the intrinsic connection existing
between economic categories or the obscure structure of the
bourgeois economic system. On the other, he simultaneously sets
forth the connection as it appears in the phenomena of competition
and thus as it presents itself to the unscientific observer just
as to him who is actually involved and interested in the process
of bourgeois production. One of these connections fathoms the
inner connection, the physiology, so to speak, of the bourgeois
system, whereas the other takes the external phenomena of life,
as they seem and appear and merely describes, catalogues, recounts
and arranges them under formal definitions. With Smith both these
methods of approach not only merrily run alongside one another,
but also intermingle and constantly contradict one another. With
him this is justifiable (with the exception of a few special
investigations, [such as] that into money) since his task was
indeed a twofold one. On the one hand he attempted to penetrate
the inner phsyiology of bourgeois society but on the other, he
partly tried to describe its externally apparent forms of life
for the first time, to show its relations as they appear outwardly
and partly he had even to find a nomeclature and corresponding
mental concepts for these phenomena, i.e., to reproduce them for
the first time in the language and [in the] thought process. The
one task interests him as much as the other and since both proceed
independently of one another, this results in completely
contradictory ways of presentation: the one expresses the intrinsic
connections more or less correctly, the other, with the same
justification - and without any connection to the first method of
approach - expresses the APPARENT connections without any internal
relation. Adam Smith's successors, in so far as they do not
represent the reaction against him of older and obsolete methods
of approach, can pursue their particular investigations and
observations undisturbedly and can always regard Adam Smith as
their base, whether they follow the esoteric or the exoteric
part of his work or whether, as is almost always the case, they
jumble up the two. But at last Ricardo steps in and calls to
science: Halt! The basis, the starting point for the physiology
of the bourgeois system - for the understanding of its internal
organic coherence and life process - is the determination of
VALUE BY LABOUR-TIME. Ricardo starts with this and forces science
to get out of the rut, to render an account of the extent to
which the other categories - the relations of production and
commerce - evolved and described by it, correspond to or
contradict this basis, this starting point; to elucidate how far
a science which in fact only reflects and reproduces the
manifest forms of the process, and therefore also how far these
manifestations themselves, correspond to the basis on which the
inner coherence, the actual physiology of bourgeois society rests
or the basis which forms its starting-point; and in general, to
examine how matters stand with the contradiction between the
apparent and the actual movement of the system. This then is
Ricardo's great historical significance for science. This is why
the inane Say, Ricardo having cut the ground from right under his
feet, gave vent to his anger in the phrase that 'under the pretext
of expanding it' (science) 'it had been pushed into a vacuum'.
Closely bound up with this scientific merit is the fact that
Ricardo exposes and describes the economic contradiction between
the classes - as shown by the intrinsic relations - and that
consequently political economy perceives, discovers the root of
the historical struggle and development."
-- Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value. Part II, Chapter X,
A.2.
You can argue about Marx's understanding of Smith and Ricardo. But
I think it unfair to describe his attitude as "dismissive" of
either.
> > I think you might have presented Smith, Ricardo, Marshall as a story
> > of continuous development. The later authors would have filled gaps
> > in the previous works, elaborated parts that needed it, and corrected
> > mistakes. If you did present your students with that sort of story
> > with no indication how contentious it is, I think you did your
> > students something of, at best, a mixed service.
> Could be. I was interested in the ideas, not the history--as I tried to
> make clear in the course. I was still less interested in the history of
> the history--in the literature on what different people had said about
> the development of the ideas.
It took some time for "historiography" to enter my vocabulary.
I presented the above URL because I thought you might find it an
interesting contrast to your approach.
To the student, David Friedman's lecture notes are another contemporary
or modern text. I think Sent is trying to get the students
to compare and contrast the texts of historians who are trying to
make sense of texts of the past. Some of these historians are trying
not to evaluate old theories by the standards of today's theories;
they recognize past economists were not necessarily striving to
develop the theories accepted by today's economists, and past economists
were not necessarily using the standards of evaluation and methods
of today's economists.
> That said, I should add that I think Blaug is pretty good. I believe I
> have sometimes assigned him either as a required or alternate reading.
I have mixed opinions about Blaug.
> Also, I note that the grad student cites Rosen and Becker, but Stigler
> wasn't at the table.
> > What is the best edition of Ricardo's Principles? (I think my
> > answer is well-known around here.)
> I haven't compared editions. The one I use is late enough to have his
> correction of the argument that technological progress couldn't make
> workers worse off.
Yes, the third edition chapter on machinery is interesting. But I
didn't mean to use "edition" to refer to only the three that were
published during Ricardo's life.
I think a good scholarly edition of these sort of books should allow
the reader to examine the changes the author made in various editions
during his lifetime.
The following URL does not have anything to do with this conversation:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03m.htm
#c.1.2.6.3
David Friedman
Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> I presented the above URL because I thought you might find it an
> interesting contrast to your approach.
>
> To the student, David Friedman's lecture notes are another contemporary
> or modern text.
So is my lecture. But when I teach the course, I assign large chunks of
the primary sources. I don't assign my lecture notes--they are merely
there in the naive hope that they will induce students to spend their
time in class thinking instead of writing.
> I think Sent is trying to get the students
> to compare and contrast the texts of historians who are trying to
> make sense of texts of the past. Some of these historians are trying
> not to evaluate old theories by the standards of today's theories;
> they recognize past economists were not necessarily striving to
> develop the theories accepted by today's economists, and past economists
> were not necessarily using the standards of evaluation and methods
> of today's economists.
But resources, in this case students' time and attention, are scarce.
The more time you spend reading the historians of economics, the less
time you spend reading Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Marshall, Jevons, Keynes,
... .
> I think a good scholarly edition of these sort of books should allow
> the reader to examine the changes the author made in various editions
> during his lifetime.
That might be of interest to someone whose specialty was studying how
ideas developed. But that isn't really my interest, and for my students
studying how someone developed his ideas diverts attention from the very
difficult project of understanding the ideas themselves.
James A. Donald
Hegel, quite the
> opposite. But I still don't know why David thinks Marx was
> "dismissive" of Smith.
>
> "Historically, this method of investigation was justified
> and necessary. Political economy had achieved a certain
> comprehensiveness with Adam Smith; to a certain extent he
> had covered the whole of its territory, so that Say was
> able to summarise it all in one textbook, superficially but
> quite systematically.
Sure sounds like dismissal to me -- indeed were a regular
academic to write that of another I would say it smells of
bitter venemous hatred. Of course Marx was not a regular
academic. When he displayed venemous hatred, one does not have
to sniff carefully.
> You can argue about Marx's understanding of Smith and
> Ricardo. But I think it unfair to describe his attitude as
> "dismissive" of either.
Oh come on.
To anyone who doubts that Marx is the messiah, and therefore
entitled to condescend to all those lesser lights, such as
Smith and Ricardo, it is dismissal.
> To the student, David Friedman's lecture notes are another
> contemporary or modern text.
To study documents about the world as "text", as one would a
work of fiction, is a way of avoiding engaging their meaning.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
RFQOKzlCGTxHErulWjr/r1HGLbzBHRE982XHPJ5R
4E0GC+mVA9dQSdPa6FSXUa6siYsmBYmqU8tIq+Qf9
Robert Vienneau
> --
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote in message
> news:<rvien-> I certainly don't want to claim expertise on
> Hegel, quite the
> > opposite. But I still don't know why David thinks Marx was
> > "dismissive" of Smith.
> > "Historically, this method of investigation was justified
> > and necessary. Political economy had achieved a certain
> > comprehensiveness with Adam Smith; to a certain extent he
> > had covered the whole of its territory, so that Say was
> > able to summarise it all in one textbook, superficially but
> > quite systematically.
> Sure sounds like dismissal to me --
It is - of Say.
> indeed were a regular
> academic to write that of another I would say it smells of
> bitter venemous hatred. Of course Marx was not a regular
> academic. When he displayed venemous hatred, one does not have
> to sniff carefully.
As with David Friedman, at least as of a few years ago, you
obviously haven't even looked at the table of contents of Theories
of Surplus Value.
I'll help you correct your ignorance of Marx's detailed comments
on Adam Smith. Here's the contents of Part I of TSV:
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/tsv/Contents.htm>
My quote was from Part II. So obviously Marx has written of
Smith in places besides that detailed treatment outlined in
the above linked-toc.
> > You can argue about Marx's understanding of Smith and
> > Ricardo. But I think it unfair to describe his attitude as
> > "dismissive" of either.
> Oh come on.
Well, there's an engaged treatment of Marx's views on Smith - NOT.
> To anyone who doubts that Marx is the messiah, and therefore
> entitled to condescend to all those lesser lights, such as
> Smith and Ricardo, it is dismissal.
James Donald is once again demonstrating he posts from an
alternative dimension.
I've often explained where Marx was mistaken, at least according
to standard interpretations of Marx. And I've often recommended
authors, such as Jon Elster, that point out mistakes in Marx
on their reading. So I don't know why James writes the above.
> > To the student, David Friedman's lecture notes are another
> > contemporary or modern text.
> To study documents about the world as "text", as one would a
> work of fiction, is a way of avoiding engaging their meaning.
Whatever.
Maybe James should have directed his post to David. According to
David, Marx was not dismissive of Ricardo and both David's lecture
notes and the lectures themselves are another contemporary or modern
text.
--
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <rvien-A2C847....@news.dreamscape.com>,
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> > I presented the above URL because I thought you might find it an
> > interesting contrast to your approach.
> > To the student, David Friedman's lecture notes are another contemporary
> > or modern text.
> So is my lecture. But when I teach the course, I assign large chunks of
> the primary sources. I don't assign my lecture notes--they are merely
> there in the naive hope that they will induce students to spend their
> time in class thinking instead of writing.
For me, the writing during lectures is a learning process, even if
I never look at my notes again.
> > I think Sent is trying to get the students
> > to compare and contrast the texts of historians who are trying to
> > make sense of texts of the past. Some of these historians are trying
> > not to evaluate old theories by the standards of today's theories;
> > they recognize past economists were not necessarily striving to
> > develop the theories accepted by today's economists, and past economists
> > were not necessarily using the standards of evaluation and methods
> > of today's economists.
> But resources, in this case students' time and attention, are scarce.
> The more time you spend reading the historians of economics, the less
> time you spend reading Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Marshall, Jevons, Keynes,
> ... .
Have you actually read Jevons? I've read Walras and Menger in
translation, but never Jevons.
Consider Smith on the merchantilists and physiocrats, Ricardo on Smith,
Marx on almost everybody before him, Marshall and Jevons' contrasting
views on Ricardo, and Keynes on "classical" economics. Clearly
historiography is an important part of what you are getting with
your reading list.
I hope you noticed that Sent's course focuses on post-1870 developments.
I think economics became more spread out, in some sense, about then.
The great books approach would be more difficult for Sent's topic area,
than yours, given a greater classical orientation in your course. So
having Sent take advantage of the division of labor isn't all that
bad an idea, I think.
I realize both you and Sent have very challenging tasks. A semester is
an irrelevant time scale for my self-learning.
> > I think a good scholarly edition of these sort of books should allow
> > the reader to examine the changes the author made in various editions
> > during his lifetime.
> That might be of interest to someone whose specialty was studying how
> ideas developed. But that isn't really my interest, and for my students
> studying how someone developed his ideas diverts attention from the very
> difficult project of understanding the ideas themselves.
I'm not asking what version you assign your students.
I would think anybody like you interested in reading these books would
be interested in the books as books. I'm happy that my copy of Quesnay
has French and English translation on facing pages, even though I
can make only a little use of the French.
I also think some might find amusing how Smith's references
to the American revolution changed through his editions. The first
shows him thinking it would be over by the time his book hit the
streets.
Why do you remember that Ricardo's third edition contained the On
Machinery chapter? I suggest that Ricardo's willinginess to change
his position on something like that shows his intellectual honesty.
(For somebody else a litte later showing impressive intellectual
honesty, consider Robert Peel on free trade.)
I'm not sure that I recognize your distinction between the ideas
and their development. For particularly difficult and contentious
issues - e.g., Ricardo on value, Walras on how the economy gets
into equilibrium - the changes through the editions of their books
are helpful, I think, in understanding what the ideas of these
economists were. Once again, how you want to approach these questions
in your own study and what you want beginning students to see might
be different.
David Friedman
Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> Have you actually read Jevons? I've read Walras and Menger in
> translation, but never Jevons.
I read some of Jevons many years ago when I included him, along with
Walras and Menger, in the history of economic thought course I was
teaching. But I can't say I remember much of him.
> Consider Smith on the merchantilists and physiocrats, Ricardo on Smith,
> Marx on almost everybody before him, Marshall and Jevons' contrasting
> views on Ricardo, and Keynes on "classical" economics. Clearly
> historiography is an important part of what you are getting with
> your reading list.
I don't think so. What's interesting about Smith isn't what he says
about the mercantilists and physiocrats, nor am I sure it is
reliable--Cantillon in particular seems to have had more bits and pieces
of a reasonable theory than I remember Smith giving anyone credit for.
And what's interesting about Ricardo isn't that he points out a problem
in Smith's theory but that he solves it.
> I hope you noticed that Sent's course focuses on post-1870 developments.
> I think economics became more spread out, in some sense, about then.
> The great books approach would be more difficult for Sent's topic area,
> than yours, given a greater classical orientation in your course. So
> having Sent take advantage of the division of labor isn't all that
> bad an idea, I think.
I've gone as far as Keynes, although not in recent years. While I have
concentrated mostly on the period from Smith to Marshall, my guess is
that even for the later period you are better off understanding a small
number of people well than a larger number of people less well. How much
time do you think it takes even a bright student to make sense of
Keynes' _General Theory_? And it is more interesting, more
intellectually exciting, to make sense of Ricardo by reading Ricardo
than by reading even a good explanation of his views.
> > > I think a good scholarly edition of these sort of books should allow
> > > the reader to examine the changes the author made in various editions
> > > during his lifetime.
> > That might be of interest to someone whose specialty was studying how
> > ideas developed. But that isn't really my interest, and for my students
> > studying how someone developed his ideas diverts attention from the very
> > difficult project of understanding the ideas themselves.
>
> I'm not asking what version you assign your students.
>
> I would think anybody like you interested in reading these books would
> be interested in the books as books. I'm happy that my copy of Quesnay
> has French and English translation on facing pages, even though I
> can make only a little use of the French.
>
> I also think some might find amusing how Smith's references
> to the American revolution changed through his editions. The first
> shows him thinking it would be over by the time his book hit the
> streets.
It would be of some interest. But I'm not fundamentally a historian of
thought--I'm someone who finds people like Smith and Ricardo interesting
because they have interesting things to say. Most of my work has been in
other areas--applied price theory, very broadly defined.
> Why do you remember that Ricardo's third edition contained the On
> Machinery chapter? I suggest that Ricardo's willinginess to change
> his position on something like that shows his intellectual honesty.
> (For somebody else a litte later showing impressive intellectual
> honesty, consider Robert Peel on free trade.)
I agree. But it shows more than intellectual honesty--it shows the kind
of mind which wants to think the question through correctly, wherever
that leads. Or perhaps that's what you mean by intellectual honesty.
From my standpoint, the fact that he published the revised discussion is
admirable, but the fact that he thought his way through to it is even
more so.
Chasna1
>I've gone as far as Keynes, although not in recent years. While I have
>concentrated mostly on the period from Smith to Marshall, my guess is
>that even for the later period you are better off understanding a small
>number of people well than a larger number of people less well. How much
>time do you think it takes even a bright student to make sense of
>Keynes' _General Theory_? And it is more interesting, more
>intellectually exciting, to make sense of Ricardo by reading Ricardo
>than by reading even a good explanation of his views.
>
My Professor in Marxist theory, Dowd, once told me that to understand Marx, you
must first understand Smith and Ricardo. Of all the students he had, it was
unfortunately the one conservative student with a background in Smith and
Ricardo who would have the only chance of understanding Marx.
In order to understand Keynes, if such a thing is humanly possible, you must
first read and understand Irving Fisher, DH Robertson, AC Pigou, Marshall, etc,
ect.
And there lies the rub with economic thought, it's a daunting task. It's easier
to make a blanket condemnation of the entire history of economic thought and,
in the process, try to make yourself out as someone of some intellectual worth
with respect to the economy. Most of those who post here would be evidence of
this fact.
James A. Donald
Robert Vienneau\
> I'm not sure that I recognize your distinction between the
> ideas and their development. For particularly difficult and
> contentious issues - e.g., Ricardo on value, Walras on how
> the economy gets into equilibrium - the changes through the
> editions of their books are helpful, I think, in
> understanding what the ideas of these economists were.
We do not care by what paths these economists came to their
ideas. We care that these men by whatever path they walked
became good guides to reality. A "history of thought" approach
demeans them, flatters the reader by telling the reader these
men were as fallible as himself, when the reason that we read
them is that this is seldom the case.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
9IbkZSL0TT9/TywgSi9vksUgvqAhaOxAeupJVuh3
4ZD+4uxXfLqszAdSc0NTZBh+6cecnJOxJZWTkha9p
David Lloyd-Jones
>
> In order to understand Keynes, if such a thing is humanly possible,
you must
> first read and understand Irving Fisher, DH Robertson, AC Pigou,
Marshall, etc,
> ect.
>
Sidelsky would certainly agree with the Marshall part of this -- but I
think he preserves Keynes equally in the moralist and aesthetic, rather
than economic, amber of his time.
-dlj.
Robert Vienneau
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <rvien-77ED17....@news.dreamscape.com>,
> Robert Vienneau <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> > Have you actually read Jevons? I've read Walras and Menger in
> > translation, but never Jevons.
> I read some of Jevons many years ago when I included him, along with
> Walras and Menger, in the history of economic thought course I was
> teaching. But I can't say I remember much of him.
I find I remember these sort of books best if there's something new
in them that whatever secondary literature I have read hadn't
prepared me for and if I understand that new element.
I had difficulty understanding Menger and the early Austrians
because there seemed to be an extra scale whose role
I don't understand. After their exposition of value theory, I
thought they should be done. But then they would treat price
theory as a separate subject.
There's so much in Walras.
> > Consider Smith on the merchantilists and physiocrats, Ricardo on Smith,
> > Marx on almost everybody before him, Marshall and Jevons' contrasting
> > views on Ricardo, and Keynes on "classical" economics. Clearly
> > historiography is an important part of what you are getting with
> > your reading list.
> I don't think so. What's interesting about Smith isn't what he says
> about the mercantilists and physiocrats,
You cannot imagine how irrelevant I continue to find what David
Friedman thinks is interesting.
> nor am I sure it is
> reliable--Cantillon in particular seems to have had more bits and pieces
> of a reasonable theory than I remember Smith giving anyone credit for.
Another non sequitur. Nowhere did I say that the histories presented
in David Friedman's reading list are reliable from the perspective
of today's historians. Yet David presents his view as if it is a
refutation of mine.
> And what's interesting about Ricardo isn't that he points out a problem
> in Smith's theory but that he solves it.
I don't think he solves it. Ricardo's theory of distribution is
tied to his theory of value. As his final draft essay, "Absolute
Value and Exchange Value", makes clear, Ricardo was never
entirely satisfied with his theory of value.
> > I hope you noticed that Sent's course focuses on post-1870
> > developments.
> > I think economics became more spread out, in some sense, about then.
> > The great books approach would be more difficult for Sent's topic area,
> > than yours, given a greater classical orientation in your course. So
> > having Sent take advantage of the division of labor isn't all that
> > bad an idea, I think.
> I've gone as far as Keynes, although not in recent years. While I have
> concentrated mostly on the period from Smith to Marshall, my guess is
> that even for the later period you are better off understanding a small
> number of people well than a larger number of people less well. How much
> time do you think it takes even a bright student to make sense of
> Keynes' _General Theory_?
Well, that's my point about how much a challenge you set yourself when
you taught that class. The GT can easily require a semester, I would
think.
> And it is more interesting, more
> intellectually exciting, to make sense of Ricardo by reading Ricardo
> than by reading even a good explanation of his views.
I don't think one should not read Ricardo. But you don't seem to
understand that the literature I point out has multiple explanations
of his views, some diametrically opposed. This multivocality is
intellectually exciting, I think.
> > > > I think a good scholarly edition of these sort of books should
> > > > allow
> > > > the reader to examine the changes the author made in various
> > > > editions
> > > > during his lifetime.
>
> > > That might be of interest to someone whose specialty was studying how
> > > ideas developed. But that isn't really my interest, and for my
> > > students
> > > studying how someone developed his ideas diverts attention from the
> > > very
> > > difficult project of understanding the ideas themselves.
> > I'm not asking what version you assign your students.
> >
> > I would think anybody like you interested in reading these books would
> > be interested in the books as books. I'm happy that my copy of Quesnay
> > has French and English translation on facing pages, even though I
> > can make only a little use of the French.
> >
> > I also think some might find amusing how Smith's references
> > to the American revolution changed through his editions. The first
> > shows him thinking it would be over by the time his book hit the
> > streets.
> It would be of some interest. But I'm not fundamentally a historian of
> thought--I'm someone who finds people like Smith and Ricardo interesting
> because they have interesting things to say. Most of my work has been in
> other areas--applied price theory, very broadly defined.
You've praised Smith's writing style before. I would think this
would be one of those tidbits that make him fun to read.
> > Why do you remember that Ricardo's third edition contained the On
> > Machinery chapter? I suggest that Ricardo's willinginess to change
> > his position on something like that shows his intellectual honesty.
> > (For somebody else a litte later showing impressive intellectual
> > honesty, consider Robert Peel on free trade.)
> I agree. But it shows more than intellectual honesty--it shows the kind
> of mind which wants to think the question through correctly, wherever
> that leads.
Sort of the opposite of David Friedman's willingness to acknowledge
that Adam Smith said the returns to capital result from paying
workers less than the full fruit of their labor.
> Or perhaps that's what you mean by intellectual honesty.
> From my standpoint, the fact that he published the revised discussion is
> admirable, but the fact that he thought his way through to it is even
> more so.
I agree both are admirable.
Some find this funny:
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020925-3.html>
Robert Vienneau
cha...@aol.com (Chasna1) wrote:
> My Professor in Marxist theory, Dowd, once told me that to understand
> Marx, you
> must first understand Smith and Ricardo.
I thank Charles Anderson for his support, although I might not have
gone so far.
> Of all the students he had, it
> was
> unfortunately the one conservative student with a background in Smith and
> Ricardo who would have the only chance of understanding Marx.
David Friedman has often said, in the newsgroups of mostly right-wing
nuts where he hangs out, that he does not understand Marx. Once he
found out that Marx acknowledged in the first volume of Capital
and elsewhere that relative labor values do not act as centers of
attraction for relative prices, he could not see what Marx was on
about.
I wonder if in the future he will explain to reactionary nuts that
those who think profit results from not paying workers the full fruits
of their labor, e.g., Adam Smith, have also thought that employment
decisions are made in unregulated markets.
> In order to understand Keynes, if such a thing is humanly possible, you
> must
> first read and understand Irving Fisher, DH Robertson, AC Pigou,
> Marshall, etc,
> ect.
That's why it's useful to take advantage of the study of others, e.g.,
Robert W. Dimand, "The Origins of the Keynesian Revolution".
I think it is also of interest to study what economists made out of
Keynes. Some of the bastard Keynesians, such as Samuelson, were not
around for the debates of the 1920s. Such Post Keynesians as
Joan Robinson, Richard Kahn, and Nicholas Kaldor were of a later
generation than those participating in the earlier debates
over business cycles.
> And there lies the rub with economic thought, it's a daunting task. It's
> easier
> to make a blanket condemnation of the entire history of economic thought
> and,
> in the process, try to make yourself out as someone of some intellectual
> worth
> with respect to the economy. Most of those who post here would be
> evidence of
> this fact.
The confused syntax probably reflects muddled thought. What does it
mean to "try to make yourself out as someone of some intellectual
worth with respect to the economy"? In my day job, I am paid for
intellectual work. So perhaps I am of some intellectual worth with
respect to the economy. But of course Charles Anderson doesn't
mean to refer to me since I don't "make a blanket condemnation of
the entire history of economic thought". In fact, it is apparently
mainstream North American economists who are indoctrinated into
rejecting the study of the history of economics.
Robert Vienneau
> Robert Vienneau
> > I'm not sure that I recognize your distinction between the
> > ideas and their development. For particularly difficult and
> > contentious issues - e.g., Ricardo on value, Walras on how
> > the economy gets into equilibrium - the changes through the
> > editions of their books are helpful, I think, in
> > understanding what the ideas of these economists were.
> We do not care by what paths these economists came to their
> ideas. We care that these men by whatever path they walked
> became good guides to reality. A "history of thought" approach
> demeans them, flatters the reader by telling the reader these
> men were as fallible as himself, when the reason that we read
> them is that this is seldom the case.
Meanwhile, those in this universe recognize that James' comment
has little, if anything, to do with my text to which he is
pretending to respond.
ro...@telus.net
??? Surely the point of the passage you quoted is that production is
the fruit not _just_ of labor, but of the capital and land employed,
as well. The return to capital is a reward for increasing production
by contributing capital. It is less clear what the return to land is
a reward for, as the land would have been there, just the same, even
had the landowner never been born.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
>David Friedman has often said, in the newsgroups of mostly right-wing
>nuts where he hangs out, that he does not understand Marx.
It's a bit like understanding Kant. Once you get that there is not
meant to be any relationship to observable facts, it's duck soup.
>Once he
>found out that Marx acknowledged in the first volume of Capital
>and elsewhere that relative labor values do not act as centers of
>attraction for relative prices, he could not see what Marx was on
>about.
One must first understand that Marx was not on about economics, but
about history and society -- a kind of pre-scientific anthropology.
>I wonder if in the future he will explain to reactionary nuts that
>those who think profit results from not paying workers the full fruits
>of their labor, e.g., Adam Smith, have also thought that employment
>decisions are made in unregulated markets.
IMO you seriously misread Smith on that score -- roughly the same way
Marx did.
-- Roy L
Chasna1
>??? Surely the point of the passage you quoted is that production is
>the fruit not _just_ of labor, but of the capital and land employed,
>as well. The return to capital is a reward for increasing production
>by contributing capital. It is less clear what the return to land is
>a reward for, as the land would have been there, just the same, even
>had the landowner never been born.
>
>-- Roy L
A rent from differential fertility.
Robert Vienneau
> On Tue, 08 Oct 2002 05:22:06 -0400, Robert Vienneau
> <rv...@see.sig.com> wrote:
> >David Friedman has often said, in the newsgroups of mostly right-wing
> >nuts where he hangs out, that he does not understand Marx.
> It's a bit like understanding Kant. Once you get that there is not
> meant to be any relationship to observable facts, it's duck soup.
Feel free to continue to make crap up.
Robert Vienneau
Roy might as well as said that the point of that passage was "April
showers bring may flowers" for all the connection he draws between
his statements and the text.
Perhaps he will answer a question that David Friedman is unwilling
or incapable of answering correctly.
S> "As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular
AS> persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to
AS> work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials
AS> and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their
AS> work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the
AS> materials...The value which the workmen add to the materials,
AS> therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which
AS> one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer
AS> upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced."
AS> -- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VI
RV> Above, Smith writes about "two parts". What are these two parts?
DF> Payment to labor
DF> Payment to capital.
RV> Smith says these two parts sum up to what?
?????
Of course, I quoted another passage of Adam Smith's. Editing it, and
substituting their referents for pronouns and so on, I get:
"The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages
of labour.
In that original state of things, which precedes both the
appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole
produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither
landlord nor master to share with him...
As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord['s]
...rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour
which is employed upon land.
[The] profit [of the] master [or] farmer who employs...
the person who tills the ground...makes a second deduction from
the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
In all the arts and manufactures[, the] master... shares
in the produce of [the] labour, or in the value which it adds to
the materials upon which it is bestowed; and in this share
consists his profit."
-- Adam Smith 1776, Book I, Chapter VIII
In other words, Adam Smith said the returns to capital result from
paying workers less than the full fruit of their labor, that is, the
full value which the workers' labor adds to the materials upon
which it is bestowed.
Adam Smith describes a society in which the workers have a double
freedom. They are free to make agreements to enter into
employment. And they are mostly free from ownership of
the "wherewithal to maintain [themselves] till [they] reap the
harvest" and of "the materials upon which [their] labor is
bestowed".
David Haardt
news:N4pj9.17079$IL6.8...@news2.east.cox.net:
> The German Works provided by Burkhard Schipper I list last (I don't
> know German, could someone provide me with the common translations of
> the titles of these works, if available?):
> Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus
> fliessenden Regeln fuer menschliches Handeln by Gossen
> Die Grundsaetze der Volkswirtschaftslehre by Menger
> Die Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung by Schumpeter
> Marktform und Gleichgewicht by von Stackelberg
The Development of the Laws of Exchange among Men and of the Consequent
Rules of Human Action by Gossen (title available in English)
The Principles of Economics by Menger (my own translation)
Theory of Economic Development by Schumpeter (title available in English)
Market Structure and Equilibrium by von Stackelberg (my own translation)
Best,
-David Haardt