ADAM SMITH: CRITICAL ASSESSMENTS1

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1985.tb01206.x
Published date01 June 1985
AuthorJ. M. A. Gee
Date01 June 1985
Scottish
Journal
of
Political
Economy,
Vol.
32,
No.
2,
June
1985
0
1985
Scottish Economic Society
Review
Section
ADAM
SMITH
:
CRITICAL
ASSESSMENTS’
J.
M.
A.
GEE
University
of
Dundee
J. C. WOOD
(ed.),
Adam Smith: Critical
Assessments,
London
:
Croom Helm,
1984,
vol.
I, pp.
1-803
+xxxiii, vol.
11,
pp.
1-284,
vol. 111,
pp.
1-639,
VOI.
IV,
pp.
1-322. f250.
Adam Smith: Critical Assessments
is a four-
volume collection of one hundred and fifty
previously published English-language articles
on Smith’s writings. The chronological cover-
age is from
1893
to end
1981,
and, as may be
expected, the thematic coverage is extensive.
The publishers Croom-Helm and the editor
John Cunningham Wood are to be congratu-
lated by historians
of
economic thought for
making handily available such a wide range of
articles
on
Smith drawn from
so
many sources,
which congratulations must be extended to
welcome companion collections for Alfred
Marshall, John Maynard Keynes and David
Ricardo. Though this review is concerned only
with the Adam Smith collection, all these
volume sets should be in the personal collec-
tions
of
all rich historians ofeconomic thought,
and all university libraries should set a high
value
on
their procurement.
The plan
of
this review is as follows. Section
I
gives a very brief description
of
the textual
organisation of the collection. Section I1
“Changing Patterns of Interest” offers a de-
scription of and an explanation for changing
emphases on and interests in Smith’s thought
on the part of his commentators. Section 111,
“Das
Adam Smith Problem
and Related Issues”
offers a discussion of views on Smith as a
synoptic thinker. Finally, Section IV makes
some critical comments on the editorship ofthe
collection.
‘A review of
Adam Smith: Critical
Assessments
(ed.
J.
C. Woods), Croom-Helm,
London and Canberra,
1984.
I
would like to
thank C.
D.
Rogers, who read an earlier draft
of
the review, and whose comments have made
the review more intelligible. He is in no way
responsible for any remaining obscurities.
I
ORGANISATION
The editor claims to have arranged the
volumes thematically under the following
headings:
(1)
The Life
of
Adam Smith and
Perspectives on his Thought.
(2)
Smith’s Wealth
of
Nations.
(3)
Smith’s Economic Analysis.
These themes, however, are covered by the first
three volumes only: the first volume is eight
hundred pages in length and contains fifty-
three articles; the second is some three hun-
dred pages and twenty-three articles
;
the third
six hundred and forty pages and forty-nine
articles. The fourth volume
Specialised Topics
(some three hundred and twenty pages and
thirty-five articles) sits uneasily with the
avowed thematic aim, and it would have been
better either to have allocated the articles in the
fourth volume between the three very general
themes chosen or to have extended the thema-
tic categorisation. In point of fact, however,
each of the articles in the fourth volume relates
to
one or more of the articles in the previous
three.
I1
CHANGING
PATTERNS
OF
INTEREST
Now, of course, the editor will inevitably
have been biased in his estimation
of
what he
regarded as seminal and also in the allocation
of the selected articles between the categories.
But suppose we accept his ordering and
categorisation. If we trace chronologically the
relative number of articles in each category,
assuming the editor’s bias to be a constant, we
might then discern any relative shift in interest
by the profession as between the themes, as well
perhaps as changes in total interest for all the
themes taken together. The editor provides a
chronological table of the articles selected
together with article location in the collection,
209

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