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Comments on Adam Smith's theory of value specifically labor, wages and rent. Criticisms on Smith's theory; Role of labor in Smith's theory; Information on Smith's cost-of-production theory.

This article examines economists' intellectual heritage in the matter of budget balancing. It is commonly held that the classicists assumed that the economic role of the state must necessarily be limited and they then adduced certain rationalizations regarding the nature of governmental fiscal operations to support this assumption. It seems more likely that such economists as Adam Smith looked first at the objective requirements of the economic order and then proceeded to theorize about the proper role of the state therein. Adam Smith's views on balanced budgets were conditioned vary largely by his views on national debt. And his views on the latter are a clear and direct product of his antimercantilism. It is difficult to dissociate Smith, the antimereantile-polemicist, from Smith the economist. His often quoted passages defining, in restrictive terms, the proper and legitimate functions of the state should probably be viewed not so much as an evidence of his pro-laissez-faire position as an evidence of his antimercantilism. Smith was an antimercantilist because he saw that the state apparatus as it then existed was an inefficient organization from the standpoint of wealth and income creation.

The article presents information on the development and acceptance of the marginal utility theory. Much earlier than is generally assumed the theorists of subjective value had discovered the principles of marginal utility. At the time of economist Adam Smith, Italian and French economists already considered it self-evident that the interplay of utility and scarcity explains the value of consumer goods, money and the level of wages. The French, Italian and Swiss writers had solved all problems of marginal utility except one, no one saw the connection between marginal utility and the individual value of equal units. Economist William F. Lloyd discovered the correct relation in 1834. Fourteen years later economist John Stuart Mill, in his Principles expounded a somewhat weak mixture of objective and subjective elements in his theory of value. Mill, like other economists either by-passed the utility approach or paid scant attention to it. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not ignorance which accounted for the dividing line between the two opposing points of view, but rather the antagonism between the Aristotelian-Thomistic and the Protestant social schools of thought.

The article examines the usage of the term, favorable balance of trade, by American economists in light of the origin and development of the expressions favorable and unfavorable balance of trade. It asserts that the impression of mercantilists about the term, such that it implies the advantage of excess commodity exports over commodity exports, is merely conventional and is not a true index of the economic well-being of a country. Several works dealing with the commercial or mercantile system and the balance of trade were analyzed like "The Wealth of Nations," by economist Adam Smith, and the Bullion Report, which identified the balance of trade with the movement of exchange rates.

This article discusses the role of the natural laws in the economic philosophies of French economist Francois Quesnay and his disciples and of economist Adam Smith. According to the author, the economic and social philosophies of the Physiocrats and Smith, though very different in character, thus came to very similar results. Under a natural law, a natural economic process would ensure the working out of appropriate adjustments in the economic system and the maximization of national wealth. The Physiocrats said that the natural legal system was the one indicated by the Nature, through certain simple and obvious facts of social life, to the reason of the reformer, as the system intended and calculated to promote the general welfare. Whereas Smith said it was the system which harmonizes with the moral sentiments that the Nature engenders in men's minds through the workings of sympathy. The natural economic process was not an uncontrolled process but the process intended by the Nature, and capable of complete realization as the actual economic process only if the state should do its part by establishing the laws and policies prescribed by the Nature.

Focuses on the residual claimant theory of distribution. Factors governing the theory; Deductions related to share of laborers and capital included in the theory; Comparison of the theory with that of Adam Smith's theory of distribution.

The article examines the preconceptions of economic science. It discusses the view that the economics handed down by the writers of a past generation is substantially a taxonomic science. The author argues that while economic science in the remoter past of its history has been mainly of a taxonomic character, later writers of all schools show a divergence from the taxonomic line and an inclination to make the science a genetic account of the economic life process. The article considers Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," and his views on economics.

This article presents information on the commercial legislation of England and its effect on the U.S. It also discusses economist Adam Smith's interpretation of economic activity. One cannot be surprised that the first generation of American historians writing, as they did, before the passions provoked by the great struggle had time to subside. It compelled them to pay more than their "fair value" for the commodities they imported, and to accept less than their "fair value" for the commodities they sold. But a like opinion is not confined to American historians, it has come to be very generally accepted by English writers and upon its side it has the authority of the most painstaking and the most widely read of the historians of the eighteenth century. It is, undoubtedly true that the commercial policy of England had established a real opposition of interest between the mother country and her colonies. The laws of England, affecting the trade and industry of the American colonies, fall, with one notable exception to be dealt with by and by, into three groups and it is essential to bear in mind the differences between them. There were, in the first place, the Navigation Laws proper in the second place, what one may conveniently christen the Enumeration Laws and lastly and of far less significance, the Law concerning Manufacture.

The article discusses the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Adam Smith in the field of political economy. It has often been asserted that Hamilton was familiar with Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." Having previously perused the earlier writers, he now entered upon a deliberate examination of the political economy of Adam Smith. This passage is the common source of the statement that is inferred from the fact that, with the three exceptions following, no indication has been offered of the nature of the evidence upon which it is based. Well-known economist Dunbar, in his sketch of "Economic Science in America, 1776-1876," says that Hamilton, in some parts of his Report on Manufactures, was influenced by his familiarity with Adam Smith, and significantly adds that Hamilton pointed out errors in Smith's concessions to the Physiocrats. Hamilton nowhere in the report mentions Adam Smith's name. Hamilton's remarks on premiums cover the same general points as Smith's, but there is less similarity of language.

The article focuses on problems related to economic education. The divergence to which the attention both of economists and the thinking public is now invited runs on lines essentially different from those just marked out. The disagreement in question is not between different classes of economic students or different schools of thought, but between well-established economic conclusions on the one hand and the ideas of the public on the other. These ideas do not spring from a study of the contrast between the present state of industry and that of a century ago, but are as old as the commercial system. One of the most marked points of antagonism between the ideas of the economists since Adam Smith and those which governed the commercial policy of nations before his time is found in the case of foreign trade. Before such a thing as economic science was known arose the theory of the balance of trade. The fundamental doctrine of this theory was that trade was advantageous or disadvantageous to a nation according as the value of its exports exceeded or fell short of the value of its imports.

The article discusses the interpretation of writings of economist David Ricardo. Ever since the death of Ricardo there has been an increasing interest in him and his writings. For all deductive economists his theories have had a charm which those of no later writer possess. There are many whose reasoning is more perfect, many whose ideas are more clearly expressed; but few have attained the commanding position of Ricardo in economic theory. In the early part of the year 1815 a remarkable essay by Thomas Robert Malthus appeared, which opened up the discussion of the theory of rent; and a few months later came a still more remarkable essay by Ricardo, in which the position of the modern economist was clearly represented. There is a marked difference between the essay of Malthus and that of Ricardo. The character of the change which Ricardo brought about in economics becomes more manifest when one compares the position of Malthus with that taken by Ricardo in his Political Economy, published two years later. Ricardo's thinking on economic subjects begins with a study of the conditions which determine the rate of profits, and about this all of his system is constructed. Adam Smith had said that the rate of profits was lowered by the competition of producers.

A representative collection of people who profess to study labor problems today would consist of members of almost every social science faculty. There would be economists, historians, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, lawyers, political theorists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others. Each would be looking at labor behavior from his specialist point of view; convinced, justifiably, that his view was important, but rarely if ever taking account of the views of others. This state of affairs has evolved because the factors which aroused the interest of academics in labor problems have been many and varied. Early political economists were interested in the wages of labor and in the quantity of labour used in production. Sociologist Adam Smith examined wages as a price but his approach had width as well as depth as befitted a moral philosopher. Political economists who followed paid less attention to wages and more to the quantity of labour in production.

In the development of political economy, alike as an academic discipline and as an art of government, there has been evinced from time to time a disposition to treat the range of problems concerned with what may be broadly termed raw material supply as distinctive. Indeed, from the middle of the eighteenth up to the middle of the nineteenth century, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that problems of raw material supply were generally regarded by economists as not only peculiar but crucial. Thus, physiocrats accounted raw-materials producing industries the unique source of the social net product. While economist Adam Smith disputed the contention that agriculture and mining were the sole source of the Wealth of Nations, even he was willing to allow that "the labor of is certainly more productive than that of merchants, artificers, and manufacturers." And he added that "of all ways in which capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to the society." After the middle of the nineteenth century, however, economics no less than economic statesmanship became increasingly concerned with the role of capital in the productive process and with the relations of capital and labor in industrial organization.

This articles describes the professional life of economist Adam Smith as the Commissioner of His Majesty's Customs in Great Britain. Adam Smith entered upon his duties as Commissioner of His Majesty's Customs at Edinburgh early in 1778. He was then close to fifty-five years of age, and at the height of his powers and reputation. With an assured income of £900 a year-two-thirds from his government appointments, the other third his pension from the House of Buccleugh-he was a rich man in the Edinburgh of his day and fully in position to enjoy what he loved most: "his mother, his friends, his books." Yet his acceptance of the appointment greatly disturbed his friends who were fearful that the duties of the office would prove "sufficient to waste his spirit and dissipate his attention." During the first years of his residence in this city his studies seemed to be entirely suspended and his passion for letters served only to amuse his leisure and animate his conversation.

This article attempts to trace the growth of the commercial conception of the economics from the time of Adam Smith to its apogee in J. S. Mill and to describe the contemporary opposition to it. Smith more easily could distinguish between monetary prices and national wealth because of his use of the word "price" in a broader sense than that which became prevalent among his followers and from the first he contrasted "the price of commodities" in labor and in money. David Ricardo's main work appeared in 1817 and it is no mere chance that the beginning of the great increase of popular interest in economics have been dated the following year. It was chiefly Ricardo who gave to the liberal economic doctrine, handed down from Adam Smith, both its appearance of theoretical completeness and its pronounced commercial character. Ricardian economics was in full vigor from 1818 until 1860. The ethical protest against price economics was led by Thomas Carlyle, who voiced his opinions with characteristic vigor in three successive groups of essays. Carlyle's fulminations on economic evils gave offense in some quarters but, uttered, as they were, when he was at the very height of his literary reputation, had doubtless a notable effect and many have had no small part in hastening various measures of parliamentary reform.

This article focuses on the labor theory of value. By the modern meaning of the phrase "theory of value," the labor theory of value is presumably the proposition that commodities exchange at ratios that are reciprocals of the quantities of labor involved in their production, including, of course, that involved in the creation of capital. Economist Adam Smith presents provided a classical account of how, in a competitive market, the prices of commodities, through shifts in the allocation of factors, approach equality with their money costs of production, where the latter are estimated by the quantities of the three traditional factors remunerated at their natural or usual rates. However, another economist David Ricardo, did not subscribe to this proposition. Like Smith, he accepted the theorem on the long-run equality of price and cost. For all nonagricultural commodities, in which land is presumed not to enter, long-run average and marginal costs are presumed to be constant, but among these the proportions of capital to labor vary considerably. Thus fluctuations in the rates of wages and profits will cause fluctuations in the relative prices of these commodities, unconnected with any changes in their relative labor contents.

This article considers the institutional factors in economic thinking. To Thorstein Veblen, what economists believed and had to say about the operation of economic forces in a price system was essentially a logical formulation of the preconceptions and observations of those whose daily lives were subjected to the impact of the system. The problems economists think about and the way they think about them are determined by the institutional matrix in which they find themselves. Around this idea, economist Wesley Clair Mitchell built his course in the development of economic thought from Adam Smith to John R. Commons. Smith formulated principles governing the determination of prices, the economic allocation of resources, the distribution of income, the geographic division of labor, and economic progress, and in doing so he laid the basis for late-nineteenth-century neoclassicism. Smith, in defending economic individualism as a means of promoting the national welfare, conceived of the national income as the aggregate of individual incomes .But economic individualism, the philosophical product of individualistic capitalism, had no sooner conquered men's minds than the great transformation was ushering in the next sequence in the inexorable flow of institutions and ideas.

Most modern authors define profit as the income of the firm as such or as the price paid for performing the function of enterprise. This has not always been the case, however, Adam Smith, the founder of the classical school, so little a classicist himself shows profit as the income of the capitalist entrepreneur, that is, as the income of the individual owner of a capital sum who uses this capital to hire workers, buy machines and manufacture products which he sells on a market. But after Smith have come a whole series of authors, who have in one way or another, with all the resources of excessively atomistic analysis, dismembered Smith's basic idea. In profit, as Smith defined it, they treat as separate elements the interest which remunerates the capital provided by the entrepreneur himself and the wage which pays for his labor of direction and coordination of the factors of production. In the income of the entrepreneur, designated as gross profit, they isolate, after eliminating the interest on the entrepreneur's own capital and a wage for his labor of direction, a net profit which seems to them to be pure profit and which they then proceed to try to explain.

The article discusses the development of the labor or cost-of-production tradition of Aristotle, which indicates that labor cost was connected with the process of value determination. It informs that an eighteenth century thinker who was directly familiar with the works of Aristotle, and who was at least indirectly influenced by scholastic writers, might take a labor-oriented approach. Such an orientation can be shown to persist in early value theory along with the utility element, as a secondary, but nevertheless influential, factor. Further, there are a number of passages in Aristotle's writings, which can be interpreted as indicating that he also thought that labor cost was connected with the process of value determination. It has adequately demonstrated how the Austrian value theorists of the nineteenth century were anticipated in part, by writers in a tradition, which stemmed from Aristotle. However, there is also a labor or cost-of-production tradition which may be less obvious, but which links Adam Smith, the scholastics and Aristotle.

The article discusses the reasons for the establishment and the operations of the International Material Conference during the Korean emergency and discusses the appropriateness of economist Adam Smith's dictum, that restrictions on international trade are justified when some particular industry is necessary for the defense of the country, as guide to economic policy. When the Korean emergency began, the domestic economy was approaching full employment. It was likely that additional large demands for raw materials arising primarily from the emergency might have to be met by creating or discovering additional productive units rather than from existing facilities. Temporarily, certain "nonessential" or "less essential" demands might have to be administratively curtailed unless prices were to be allowed to serve as a rationing device. In the 1950s the United States had adopted and was implementing a political policy of collective defense under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program and had adopted and was implementing a long-term policy of freer international trade, which also applied to raw materials.

The article comments on social exchange theory. Economist Adam Smith's most direct role in the development of modern exchange theory was, in all probability, through the influence of his work on economists. This article attempts to establish the historical precedence of Smith's exchange theory and to explore its value in theoretical development. This article will also compare modern theory with an in-depth treatment of Smith's ideas and speculate about the current value of his work and reasons why it has been relatively neglected. Smith's work is quoted extensively to permit the reader to judge the validity of the author's interpretations. Like many social-psychological models, exchange theory treats the processes through which social systems socialize their participants, maintain participant involvement in the system to permit stable patterns of social interaction, and carry on transactions with their environment. Focusing on these three processes facilitates a comparison of Smith's work with that of modern scholars. Both Smith and contemporary theorists emphasize the importance of social approval in the socialization process. Modern exchange theorists assume that people value and work for social approval and conversely dislike and attempt to avoid social disapproval.

From 1783 TO 1834 William Godwin published a succession of ingeniously varied works that were widely and vehemently discussed and criticized. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, with the complete defeat of these Englishmen who were spokesmen for reform, Godwin fell out of "extreme notoriety," as William Hazlitt put it in his "The Spirit of the Age." During much of the time that the Western world was arguing the merits of his strikingly individualistic-even anarchistic ideas, Japan was almost entirely isolated intellectually. What has been the impact upon Japanese thinking of a writer so varied and so original as this man? Godwin's ideas first reached Japanese minds with the growth of the study of political economy. Japan had to develop her economy rapidly after being opened to outside trade in 1854. It was not only Adam Smith with whom students of economics became acquainted. Among Japanese theorists on population, discussions of Malthus have always included Godwin's contribution, although the attitudes of these scholars have varied.

Comments on George Stigler's opinion on economist Adam Smith's views on public choice, as indicated in his article "Smith's Travels on the Ship of State," which appeared in the Fall 1971 issue of the periodical "History of Political Economy." Comments on Stigler's interpretation of Adam Smith's views on political process; Information on Smith's letter to Henry Dudas, about support for free trade for the Irish.

Regular, periodic taxation is a function of modern government, a practice that arose only because the rent of land and natural resources was transformed from the traditional source of public revenue in the Middle Ages to private property, starting in the 17th century. In the earlier era, taxes (special exactions on ordinary income and daily necessities) were imposed only under unusual circumstances, usually to fight wars. The French Physiocrats and their student, Adam Smith, proposed that the best form of modern taxation would be based on the same principle as the medieval system-a fee derived entirely from surpluses, not imposed as a burden on production. This was actually what Adam Smith meant by 'ability to pay.' Smith's sophisticated understanding of economic rent was, however, simplified and distorted by numerous economists throughout the 19th century, who buried the concept under layers of obfuscation. In particular, the substitution of ' Paretian rent' for ' Ricardian rent' committed the fallacy of composition by shifting rent from a social concept to a private, unit-level concept, which caused social surplus to simply 'disappear.' Bringing this 'lost history' to light permits us to re-evaluate how modern societies might benefit from Smith's physiocratic concept of taxation. This work not only traces debates about rent-for example, whether rent arises from risk-taking, or whether a tax on rent raises commodity prices-but also discusses the practical benefits of taxing it today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' views on Dennis C. Rasmussen's opinion on the journal's write-up on Adam Smith's arguments concerning economic happiness. They state that Rasmussen presented in an essay about issues that troubled him about the said article which include the journal's failure to refer to left-Smitheans in its analysis and its offering of a traditional free market reading of Smith on political economy. They believe that Rasmussen's concept of progressive state is the happiness of society considered generally. They add that wealth is not the same as happiness and that the modern welfare state produces the dissatisfactions and illusions that Smith claims comes from investing one's happiness in objects.

The article presents the author's views on the opinion of Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen concerning Adam Smith's take on commerce and happiness. Smith reportedly argued in an article that neither the pursuit of happiness nor the possession of material goods can make one happier as happiness consists in tranquility and enjoyment. He comments on what is the point of promoting the wealth of nations if everyone ends up being miserable. He adds that Den Uyl and Rasmussen agree with his argument that Smith views liberty and security as the key benefits given by commercial society and that the benefits help alleviate misery.

The article discusses the happiness theory of economist Adam Smith. It mentions Smith's consideration of the paradox which tells that people might not be happier with more goods and this was printed on his book "The Moral Sentiments". It reveals the truth on the pursuit of wealth, the order of the society and corruption which Smith included. The article indicates the meaning and the possibility of a happy commercial order which Smith emphasized. It also notes the discussion of other famous economists including Charles Griswold, Samuel Fleischacker and Dennis C. Rasmussen.

The article discusses the views and insights of philosophers and economists Adam Smith and David Hume on the moral psychology of market relations, morality, liberal political order, and civil society in the then-emerging modern world. It mentions the important features of a liberal political order in the aspects of rights and liberties of individuals, private property rights, and value of pluralism. It notes the optimistic views of Hume in the industry and commerce and their overall social impact and the Smith's views on life in a liberal polity. It also cites the ways in which market can corrupt the political culture and the scope of market values.