Customer Reviews

The Wealth of Nations : Books 1-3 : Complete And Unabridged

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Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776) is a foundation work for classical economics (Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill), contending that free markets are more productive and beneficial, and can regulate themselves. At the time, medieval feudalism was giving way to major changes brought first by the agricultural revolution (individual field ownership - replacing common fields, early mechanization, introduction of the iron plow, crop rotation, and selective breeding). One of Smith's biggest changes was shifting from a focus on the king's/lord's treasury to the national income of all citizens, be they laborers, landlords, or factory owners.

Smith saw division of labor, more in industry than agriculture, as bringing the greatest increase in output of all factors. 'Water-carriage' extends markets and the opportunities for division of labor to areas near waterways. Division of labor also greatly reduces one's ability to be self-sufficient, and increases the need for money.

Smith envisioned the natural value of commodities as that of the embedded labor. Incorporating scarcity/supply vs. demand (including that created by secret processes) then leads to market price. Combinations among workers (unions) or employers would circumvent natural price determination. Interest rate determination follows a similar supply-demand process.

Smith was also one of the first to note the tendency of aligned individuals to use collective influence to manipulate government (eg. subsidies), or more simply, to conspire to raise prices.

Continuing, Smith was anti-protectionism (pro Free Trade - an obvious outgrowth of his support for division of labor) and believed that an 'invisible hand' guides individuals to generally promote the public interest more than intended.

Smith supported taxation in proportion to respective ability - eg. progressive taxation, as well as limiting government involvement to preventing society from falling apart. Continuing - "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become" - hardly an endorsement for democracy.

Smith also envisioned that government borrowing increased the likelihood of waging war and spending money on schemes to win citizen favor. He suspected that opposing large international corporations allowed production of greater value.

Bottom-Line: Adam Smith was clearly a great early political-economic thinker.

I appreciated this edition of the classic work of economics because it is precisely the first three books that I found most relevant to my understanding of Smith's theories. A more complete version might be suitable to some, but I found this more than met my purposes for a general introduction.

The complete, unabridged penguin edition of this book is around 900 pages long and is divided into 2 volumes. The first volume is divided into books I, II and III, the second into books IV and V. These two last books comprise more than half of the bulk of the whole work, more than 500 pages. They also contain the aspects of Economics in which Smith believed personal interests must be balanced by social responsibility. Describing this edition as unabridged is insulting and disingenuous.

Adam Smith is a thinker of the first order. But he was writing in the second half of the eighteenth century. This must always be kept in mind, as the values he held may find themselves appropriated in ways he then did not understand, and if alive today may have disagreed with. He was a moral philosopher before he was an economist, and his works in both fields can only be fully understood in light of one another.

I bought this book for self interest in economics. I know this is probably one of the greatest works ever created, but the editor of this edition of the book certainly did not make me feel this. Typos permeate throughout this book, and the spacing and overall design simply make this book look like a rushed work. I don't know whether I should pay this much attention on the physical appearance of this book, but this definitely doesn't make me feel good when reading it.
To me, this book definitely doesn't worth its price.