Proofs read, My Book is in Press.

This evening I completed reading the page proofs for my 'Adam Smith: a moral philosopher and his political economy' (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2008) in the Great Thinkers in Economics, General Editor, A. P. Thirlwall series.

So there is no turning back now. It remains as I have written it. The die is cast.

Now there is the next project to think about. I am tempted to recommence the book I was working on but stopped when Tony Thirlwall asked me to write on Adam Smith for the series he was editing. That was a forensic search for the people who changed what Adam Smith actually wrote and made him out to be a strange animal indeed. Subtly, he became a dangerous firebrand for subversion (William Playfair, Edmund Burke and assorted spokesmen for millowners and other similar types), an advocate of the Labour Theory of Value (Malthus and Ricardo), a promoter of laissez-faire (the Manchester School, The Economist), the enemy of the labouring poor, a sort of 'socialist' , a proto-Marxist,(many, including Marx too) and a believer in invisible hands in markets, an imperialist and a philosopher of selfishness and greed (modern economists).

I am also tempted to revise my 'The Pre-history of Bargaining', a long essay that I completed in 2003 but which needs substantial updating from consideration of the advances in social evolutionary history, anthropology, economics of behaviourial relations, psychology, genetics and paleontology.

I am in France for three months and will think it over carefully. Meanwhile, I shall provide my usual running commentary on Lost Legacy.