Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T13:49:02.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

EQUITY, BESIDES: ADAM SMITH AND THE UTILITY OF POVERTY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2015

Christopher S. Martin
Christopher S. Martin*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics & Business Administration, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale MI. Email: cmartin@hillsdale.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Generations of readers have nodded in agreement with Adam Smith’s argument, in Book One of the Wealth of Nations, that a nation cannot be happy if the workers who constitute the majority of its population are miserable. Smith notes that equity, besides, demands that workers receive a generous recompense for their labor. I contend that this famous statement is best interpreted in light of contemporary arguments that it was socially useful for workers to be poor. Smith’s engagement with these arguments is usually interpreted with reference to the labor supply function, but I argue that it also involved deeper suppositions about the place of workers in the social order. Smith’s reaction to these suppositions enriches our understanding of his contribution to liberal economics.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 559 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Addison, Joseph. 1837. “The Spectator No. 200.” In The Works of Joseph Addison. Volume1. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Allen, William. 1736. Ways and Means to Raise the Value of Land: Or, The Landlord’s Companion: With Political Discourses on the Land-tax, War, and Other Subjects Occasionally Intermixed. London: J. Roberts.Google Scholar
American Husbandry. Containing an Account of the Soil, Climate, Production and Agriculture, of the British Colonies in North-America and the West-Indies; with Observations on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Settling in Them, Compared with Great Britain and Ireland. By an American. 1775. Volume 1. Two volumes. London: J. Bew.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce. 1976. “Ideology and Theory: The Tension Between Political and Economic Liberalism in Seventeenth-Century England.” The American Historical Review 81, 3 (June 1): 499–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristophanes. 1938. “Wealth.” In The Complete Greek Drama. Translated by Eugene, O’Neill Jr. Volume 2. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Baird, Bruce C. 1997. “Necessity and the ‘Perverse’ Supply of Labor in Pre-Classical British Political Economy.” History of Political Economy 29, 3 (September 21): 447–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berkeley, George. 1735. The Querist: Containing Several Queries, Proposed to the Consideration of the Public. Dublin and Glasgow: R. Urie.Google Scholar
Berkeley, George. 1752. A Miscellany, Containing Several Tracts on Various Subjects.Google Scholar
Blanchard, Ian. 1978. “Labour Productivity and Work Psychology in the English Mining Industry, 1400–1600.” The Economic History Review 31 (1): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonar, James, ed. 1894. A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith. London: Macmillan and Co.Google Scholar
Burke, Edmund. 1769. Observations on a Late State of the Nation. London.Google Scholar
Burn, Richard. 1764. The History of the Poor Laws: With Observations. A. Millar.Google Scholar
Cannan, Edwin. 1926. “Adam Smith as an Economist.” Economica 17 (June): 123–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Case of the Journeymen-Taylors Residing in the Cities of London and Westminster, Most Humbly Offered to the Consideration of Both Houses of Parliament. 1721. London.Google Scholar
Child, Josiah. 1751. A New Discourse of Trade…. Fifth edition. Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis.Google Scholar
Clapp, Brian William, Juřica, A. R. John, and Fisher, Harold Edward Stephen, eds. 1977. Documents in English Economic History: England from 1000 to 1760. Volume 1. Two volumes. London: G. Bell & Sons.Google Scholar
Clark, Michael J. 2011. “The Virtuous Discourse of Adam Smith: A Liberal Regard for Prevailing Prejudice.” Mercatus Center Working Paper, No. 11–16 (March). http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/wp1116-the-virtuous-discourse-of-adam-smith.pdf. Accessed 29 October 2012.Google Scholar
Clary, Betsy Jane. 2009. “Smith and Living Wages: Arguments in Support of a Mandated Living Wage.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 68 (5): 1063–1084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coats, Alfred William. 1958. “Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century.” The Economic History Review 11, 1, New Series (January 1): 35–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cobbett, William, and Hansard, Thomas. 1818. The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Volume 32. London: T.C. Hansard.Google Scholar
Coleman, Donald Cuthbert. 1956. “Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century.” The Economic History Review 8 (3): 280–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Commons, Great Britain House of. 1721. Journals of the House of Commons. Printed by order of the House of Commons by Samuel Richardson.Google Scholar
Commons, Great Britain House of. 1803. Journals of the House of Commons. H.M. Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Decker, Sir Matthew. 1750. An Essay on the Cause of the Decline of the Foreign Trade: Consequently of the Value of the Lands of Britain, and on the Means to Restore Both. Second edition. London: John Brotherton.Google Scholar
Dew, Ben. 2007. “Political Economy and the Problem of the Plebs in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” History Compass 5 (4): 1214–1235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evensky, Jerry. 2005. Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective on Markets, Law, Ethics, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, Henry. 1751. An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, &c. A. Miller.Google Scholar
Firth, Ann. 2002. “Moral Supervision and Autonomous Social Order: Wages and Consumption in 18th-Century Economic Thought.” History of the Human Sciences 15, 1 (February 1): 39–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleischacker, Samuel. 2005. A Short History of Distributive Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Furniss, Edgar Stevenson. 1920. The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: A Study in the Labor Theories of the Later English Mercantilists. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Grampp, William Dyer. 1965a. Economic Liberalism. Volume 1 of Studies in Economics. Two volumes. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Grampp, William Dyer. 1965b. Economic Liberalism. Volume 2 of Studies in Economics. Two volumes. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Gregory, Theodor Emanuel. 1921. “The Economics of Employment in England, 1660-1713.” Economica 1 (January 1): 37–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griswold, Charles L. 1999. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, John Lawrence, and Hammond, Barbara Bradby. 1913. The Village Labourer, 1760–1832: A Study in the Government of England Before the Reform Bill. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Hatcher, John. 1998. “Labour, Leisure and Economic Thought Before the Nineteenth Century.” Past & Present (160): 64–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckscher, Eli F. 1955. Mercantilism. Edited by Söderlund, E. F.. Translated by Shapiro, Mendel. Volume 2. Two volumes. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Henderson, Willie. 2004. “A Very Cautious, or a Very Polite, Dr Smith? Hedging in the Wealth of Nations.” In Brown, Vivienne, ed., The Adam Smith Review. New York: Routledge, pp. 1:60–81.Google Scholar
Hewins, William Albert Samuel. 1898. “The Regulation of Wages by the Justices of the Peace.” The Economic Journal 8 (31): 340–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Christopher. 1958. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1985. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age. First Vintage Books edition. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1752. Political Discourses. Second edition. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Kelsall, R. Keith. 1938. Wage Regulation under the Statute of Artificers. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Koyama, Mark. 2012. “The Transformation of Labor Supply in the Pre-industrial World.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 81, 2 (February): 505–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, David M. 1995. “The Partial Spectator in the Wealth of Nations: A Robust Utilitarianism.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 2, 2 (September): 299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclauchlan, Daniel. 1735. An Essay Upon Improving and Adding to the Strength of Geat Britain and Ireland, by Fornication, Justifying the Same from Scripture and Reason. By a Young Clergyman. Dublin.Google Scholar
The “Man in Trade.” 1767. “To the Printer of the Gazetteer.” The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser.Google Scholar
Mandeville, Bernard. [1924] 1957a. The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. Edited by Kaye, F. B.. Volume 1. Two volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mandeville, Bernard. [1924] 1957b. The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. Edited by Kaye, F. B.. Volume 2. Two volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Manley, Thomas. 1669. Usury at Six Per Cent, Examined, &c. London: Printed by Thomas Ratcliff and Thomas Daniel.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1906. Capital: a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. Edited by Engels, Frederick. Translated by Moore, Samuel and Aveling, Edward. Volume 1. Three volumes. Third edition. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.Google Scholar
McLean, Iain. 2006. Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the Twenty-first Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Minchinton, Walter E. 1972. Wage Regulation in Pre-industrial England. New York: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Mizuta, Hiroshi. 1967. Adam Smith’s Library: A Supplement to Bonar’s Catalogue with a Checklist of the Whole Library. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
A New Description of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, &c. 1749. Volume 3. London: James Corbett.Google Scholar
North, Sir Dudley. 1691. Discourses Upon Trade. Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press.Google Scholar
Otteson, James R. 1998. Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pellow, Thomas. 1735. The Adventures of Mr. Thomas Pellow, in Which Is Introduced, A Particular Account of the Manners and Customs of the Moors, and of the Inland Parts of Africa. Fourth edition. Dublin: James Hoey.Google Scholar
Petty, Sir William. 1899. “A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions.” In Hull, Charles Henry, ed., The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty. London: C. J. Clay and Sons, pp. 1–97.Google Scholar
Phillipson, Nicholas. 2010. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Postlethwayt, Malachy. 1766. The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Two volumes. London.Google Scholar
Rae, John. 1895. Life of Adam Smith. New York: Macmillan & Co.Google Scholar
Raphael, David Daiches. 2009. The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rashid, Salim. 1990. “Adam Smith’s Acknowledgements: Neo-Plagiarism and the Wealth of Nations.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 9 (2): 1–24.Google Scholar
Rawlinson, Christopher. 1767. An Inquiry Into the Management of the Poor &c. Benjamin White.Google Scholar
Rogers, James Edwin Thorold. 1884. Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The History of English Labour. W. S. Sonnenschein.Google Scholar
Rothschild, Emma. 1992. “Adam Smith and Conservative Economics.” The Economic History Review 45, 1, New Series (February): 74–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozbicki, Michal Jan. 2001. “To Save Them from Themselves: Proposals to Enslave the British Poor, 1698–1755.” Slavery & Abolition 22 (2): 29–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerhart von. 1895. The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent. A Study in the Field of the Cotton Industry. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, and Co., [etc., etc.].Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1776. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S.. Volume 1. Two volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1982a. Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1982b. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by Raphael, D. D. and Macfie, A. L.. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 2009. Lectures on Jurisprudence. Edited by Meek, R. L., Raphael, D. D., and Stein, P. G.. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc.Google Scholar
T. X. Y. Z. 1765. “To the Printer.” The London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post.Google Scholar
Tawney, Richard Henry. 1913. “The Assessment of Wages in England by the Justices of the Peace.” Vierteljahrschrift Für Sozial- Und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 11, 3 (January 1): 307–337.Google Scholar
Vanderlint, Jacob. 1734. Money Answers All Things. Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press.Google Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1930. “English Theories of Foreign Trade Before Adam Smith.” The Journal of Political Economy 38 , 3 (June 1): 249–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viner, Jacob. 1937. Studies in the Theory of International Trade. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
De Vries, Jan. 1994. “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution.” The Journal of Economic History 54 (2): 249–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, Robert. 1758. Characteristics of the Present Political State of Great Britain. Second Edition. London: Printed for A. Millar.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Jack Russell. 2001. On Adam Smith. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.Google Scholar
Weyland, John. 1807. Observations on Mr. Whitbread’s Poor Bill and on the Population of England. London: J. Hatchard.Google Scholar
Wiener, Joel H. 1974. Great Britain: The Lion at Home: A Documentary History of Domestic Policy, 1689–1973. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.Google Scholar
Wiles, Richard C. 1968. “The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism.” The Economic History Review 21 (1): 113–126.Google Scholar
Witztum, Amos, and Young, Jeffrey T.. 2006. “The Neglected Agent: Justice, Power, and Distribution in Adam Smith.” History of Political Economy 38, 3 (September 21): 437–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Arthur. 1771. The Farmer’s Tour Through the East of England: Being the Register of a Journey Through Various Counties of This Kingdom, to Enquire into the State of Agriculture, &c. Volume IV. Four volumes. London: W. Strahan.Google Scholar
Young, Jeffrey T, and Gordon, Barry. 1988. Economic justice in the Schoolmen, the Natural Law Theorists, and Adam Smith. Newcastle, NSW: University of Newcastle, Dept. of Economics.Google Scholar
Young, Jeffrey T, and Gordon, Barry. 1996. “Distributive Justice as a Normative Criterion in Adam Smith’s Political Economy.” History of Political Economy 28, 1 (March 20): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar