Changes at Lost Legacy
When Palgrave Macmillan published “Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy” in 2005, I opened the Lost Legacy Blog and have kept it going almost daily since, and in these past few weeks I have been reflecting on its achievements, its success in attracting readers (and keeping them), and readers’ responses in the comments sections and in private correspondence.
Overall, I am pleased, but I want to improve Lost Legacy in any way I can that is feasible and, to quote common enough word today, that is sustainable. One idea that has been gaining support from within my own thinking at least, is that I need to broaden out from my mainly reactive challenges to the almost daily verbal ‘atrocities’ against Adam Smith’s writings and correspondence in the world’s media.
Much of these incorrect attributions are written by economists who ought to know more about the history of economic thought (this set includes several Nobel Prize winners) and those educated by academic faculties across North America and British universities, who were not required to read for themselves the works and correspondence of Adam Smith (or for that matter any other major contributors to economic theories) and have taken their tutor's assertions as authoritative (as most of whom probably took their tutors views as 'gospel' too).
The result overall is that a purely fictional ‘Adam Smith’ emanating from Chicago is widely believed to be the authentic Adam Smith (the one born in Kirkcaldy in 1723), even though the authentic Kirkcaldy philosopher’s work is checkable in their original format, whereas the Chicago version is a parody of them.
What I intend to do in future weeks and months is add to Lost Legacy’s output by shifting its emphasis from repetitive polemics against repetitive atrocities to more thoughtful short pieces, with a few longer essays on the thoughts and context of Adam Smith, both as he wrote them, and as they can be shown to have relevance today.
Thus, instead of repeating regular expositions of what he meant by his use of the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’, I shall refer readers to my paper on ‘Adam Smith and the invisible hand: from metaphor to myth’, which is downloadable by readers from the Lost Legacy Home page. As I produce other papers, I shall add them to the downloadable list.
Meanwhile, I shall produce more expositions of themes and thoughts from Adam Smith’s considerable published output, some a few paragraphs long, others more substantial. I shall also experiment with short series versions of connected ideas as expressed by Adam Smith - consider these as in the style of ‘companion’ compositions to the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Readers may collect these together for their future reference.
I shall write these in my role as an educator, not as a doctrinal authority; where I am shown to be wrong in my assessments I shall acknowledge my errors and re-present the ideas as corrected. Where readers ask questions of clarification I shall be delighted to provide such explanations as I can honestly provide.
To start this new approach off, I shall be bearing in mind this new role as I continue my current research project which aims to assess the extent, if any, to which Adam Smith had a religious theme in his works, beginning with his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). This work may produce potential postings on other things beside my main theme on possible religious roots in Smith’s thinking. These past few weeks I have noted several other topics worth me commenting on for the interest of readers (please let me know if they prove to be of interest or not).
I shall commence posting on them once I return from Rome and the 20th annual conference of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (of which more later).
Overall, I am pleased, but I want to improve Lost Legacy in any way I can that is feasible and, to quote common enough word today, that is sustainable. One idea that has been gaining support from within my own thinking at least, is that I need to broaden out from my mainly reactive challenges to the almost daily verbal ‘atrocities’ against Adam Smith’s writings and correspondence in the world’s media.
Much of these incorrect attributions are written by economists who ought to know more about the history of economic thought (this set includes several Nobel Prize winners) and those educated by academic faculties across North America and British universities, who were not required to read for themselves the works and correspondence of Adam Smith (or for that matter any other major contributors to economic theories) and have taken their tutor's assertions as authoritative (as most of whom probably took their tutors views as 'gospel' too).
The result overall is that a purely fictional ‘Adam Smith’ emanating from Chicago is widely believed to be the authentic Adam Smith (the one born in Kirkcaldy in 1723), even though the authentic Kirkcaldy philosopher’s work is checkable in their original format, whereas the Chicago version is a parody of them.
What I intend to do in future weeks and months is add to Lost Legacy’s output by shifting its emphasis from repetitive polemics against repetitive atrocities to more thoughtful short pieces, with a few longer essays on the thoughts and context of Adam Smith, both as he wrote them, and as they can be shown to have relevance today.
Thus, instead of repeating regular expositions of what he meant by his use of the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’, I shall refer readers to my paper on ‘Adam Smith and the invisible hand: from metaphor to myth’, which is downloadable by readers from the Lost Legacy Home page. As I produce other papers, I shall add them to the downloadable list.
Meanwhile, I shall produce more expositions of themes and thoughts from Adam Smith’s considerable published output, some a few paragraphs long, others more substantial. I shall also experiment with short series versions of connected ideas as expressed by Adam Smith - consider these as in the style of ‘companion’ compositions to the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Readers may collect these together for their future reference.
I shall write these in my role as an educator, not as a doctrinal authority; where I am shown to be wrong in my assessments I shall acknowledge my errors and re-present the ideas as corrected. Where readers ask questions of clarification I shall be delighted to provide such explanations as I can honestly provide.
To start this new approach off, I shall be bearing in mind this new role as I continue my current research project which aims to assess the extent, if any, to which Adam Smith had a religious theme in his works, beginning with his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). This work may produce potential postings on other things beside my main theme on possible religious roots in Smith’s thinking. These past few weeks I have noted several other topics worth me commenting on for the interest of readers (please let me know if they prove to be of interest or not).
I shall commence posting on them once I return from Rome and the 20th annual conference of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (of which more later).
Labels: Lost Legacy
7 Comments:
I'm not an economist but I've learned so much from your posts as you interact with popular characterizations of Smith. One of the things I've wanted from time to time is exactly what you're describing with the essays you have in mind.
I'll look forward to the posts and thanks for the service you offer through your blog.
"The result overall is that a purely fictional ‘Adam Smith’ emanating from Chicago is widely believed to be the authentic Adam Smith (the one born in Kirkcaldy in 1723), even though the authentic Kirkcaldy philosopher’s work is checkable in their original format, whereas the Chicago version is a parody of them."
Where in the writing of the Chicago does this occur? From what I have read of the Chicago School I don't see them pushing this line. In fact in some cases I see the opposite: with this in mind I found the following passage from Johan Van Overtveldt's book "The Chicago School" interesting. He is writing about Jacob Viner:As a student of the history of economic thought, Viner also focused on utility theory (1937), methods of economic analysis (1925b), mercantilism, and Adam Smith. Viner was one of the first to draw attention to the fact that one had to be familiar with both the famous Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, written 19 years earlier, to get a real understanding of Smith's world. "Smith was the great eclectic . . . Science, philosophy, theology, psychology, history, contemporary observation of facts-all of them were made to produce, under Smith's capable management, an abundance of evidence of the existence of an order in nature in which beneficent intentions towards mankind could be discerned (Viner 1927, 199,200).
However, Viner was also among the first to stress that "Adam Smith was not a doctrinaire advocate of laissez faire . . . He had little trust in the competence or good faith of government. He knew who controlled it, and whose purposes they tried to serve . . . He saw, nevertheless, that it was necessary, in the absence of a better instrument, to rely upon government for the performance of many tasks which individuals as such would not do, or could not do, or could only do badly" (Viner 1927, 231-2).
One thing that would really help the blog is a search engine. I often want to find something on the blog and this is a problem without a search engine.
Michael
Thank you for your comments.
I hope to add to the array of subject posts as I have delivered so far since 2005; I will continue to post some rebuttals in detail but for the most part these shall be selective.
The more challenging intention is to provide more substance on the wide array of subjects associated with Adam Smith's Works and Correspondence.
With subject titles it should be possible to collect subject titles as they build to a good number of them.
Paul
My reference is 'emanating from Chicago (sometimes presented as 'in the environs of 59th street' and refers to Chicago as a generic association (Friedman, Stigler, Becker, etc.,) and not to what some historians distinguish as 'the Chicago school', of which there was in fact more than one.
I have in mind George Stigler's introduction at the 1976 commemoration meeting on Wealth Of Nations that 'greetings from Adam Smith who is alive and well in Chicago'.
But more, as this was a trend before then in presentations of 'general equilibrium' ideas by Samuelson in his popular textbook, backed ostensibly by his and Debrue's work on mathematical proof of GE, which thousands of economists in North America and Britain were taught from Economics 101 and the false notion of such a role of the metaphor used once by Smith in Wealth Of Nations gained almost universal currency.
Milton Friedman was one such popular exponent and his rightful prestige as a theorist gave credence to the belief that there was a real invisible hand working (how? where?) in the world's markets.
With the current crisis, critics of markets in any form are throwing the metaphor back at economists, and Adam Smith (who remains entirely innocent) with great affect. And there are those who have written detailed treatises on the spirtual role of the 'real' invisihble hand of gods and other mystical entities that emanate from those who preached it since the end of WWII.
I take your point about a search engine and I recently began addng titles to my posts but have not yet extended that into the archives, but will try to do so over the coming months.
Thank you for your interesting and constructive comments.
Gavin. Thanks for your response.
"But more, as this was a trend before then in presentations of 'general equilibrium' ideas by Samuelson in his popular textbook, backed ostensibly by his and Debrue's work on mathematical proof of GE, which thousands of economists in North America and Britain were taught from Economics 101 and the false notion of such a role of the metaphor used once by Smith in Wealth Of Nations gained almost universal currency."
I would not think of Chicago as the centre of mathematical theories of general equilibrium. I would have seen Chicago as having more of an emphasis on basic price theory in its partial equilibrium form. General equilibrium followed from Walras's work and found its modern form in the works of McKenize, Arrow and Debreu etc. This is not, to my way of thinking, the Chicago tradition. Overtveldt (2007: 93-4) makes the point that "At the end of World War II, the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics was installed at the University of Chicago. The fact that leading members of this Commission - such as Jacob Marschak, Trygve Haavelmo, Lawrence Klein, and Tjalling Koopmans-were heavily involved in the development of Walrasian general equilibrium economics and building sophisticated econometric models was a constant source of friction between them and the group around Friedman at the University of Chicago's department of economics." The Commission left and Friedman stayed.
I would think of the work of Samuelson, Debreu et al as un (if not anti) Chicago type economics.
Paul
You are of course right about GM (out of Walras) and Samuelson was more East Coast (MIT), and whose texbook, Economics, was in its sixth edition when I used a the course book as a student, and tens of thousands of others used it across the US and Britain. Almost en passant, Samuelson's comment on Adam Smith's invisible hand, passed into the minds of hundreds of graduae economists who formed the main core of faculty teachers.
However, proselytisers like Friedman, Stigler, and the other Nobel Prize winners, inspired graduates to link the invisible hand to their media columns, news chats and to those doing research.
Chicago became the place where Stigler claimed he carried his 'greetings from Adam Smith who is alive an well and living in Chicago'. Of course, Chicago was never a unanimous home for any single idea, theory or dogma, but it is in my mind a source for the mis-ascribing of Adam Smith to the laissez-faire, small government, invisible hand, self interested, greed is good, school of economic policies, postures of those advising on policies in mainstream politics and corporate management.
Lost Legacy fights a small corner on behalf of separating Adam Smith from what has become of his legacy by fellow economists whose prestige carries the day in public life.
Jacob Viner at Chicago is lauded because he tried to put some realism into these debates (his 1926 article on Laissez faire), but his voice was drowned out, post-war.
I re-iterate that the purely fictional 'Adam Smith' emanating from Chicago is wdely believed to by the authentic Adam Smith (the one born in Kirkcaldy in 1723)' is a parody of Adam Smith's views.
Of course, to Chicago we could add Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and so on through the lists, but doing so would test the patience of readers, as well as blunt the point.
Was wondering if you'd care to reflect on Michael Smith's essay that included the two Smiths (not) that appeared over the weekend,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5109991.ece
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