| The Wealth of Nations (1937) |
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| Notes/Review |
| I generally don't read other peoples' reviews of books until after I've written mine. Or, if I do read them, it's when I put a book on my wish list, which may be several months or years before I read the book. For this book, though, I couldn't resist the temptation to see what others thought. It was an interesting exercise. I can compare it best to the allegory of the blind men and the elephant: every reader seemed to be describing a different book. Now that I've gotten to the end of it, that makes a sort of sense. The Wealth of Nations isn't exactly the book I thought it was. First, a digression. This is a difficult book to get through. It's long and technical and most will find it pretty dry. As it was written two and a half centuries ago, the language is somewhat different. Paragraphs sometimes go on for pages, sentences are long, and the vocabulary and word choice are sometimes strange to the modern ear. As the subject matter is the economy, there is much discussion of money. Being an American, the old English monetary units - pounds, shillings, and pence - are alien to me. When discussion turns to France or Austria it gets even more obscure. We learn that some commodity had some value at some point in time. Not only are the currency units difficult for me, so are the units of measure: a quarter of grain, a hogshead of "melasses", and so on. Then there are the more subtle things: today, when somebody talks of cattle they mean beef: cows, steers, bulls. Centuries ago, cattle was a broader term that included oxen and other animals. Contributing to the length of the book is Smith's thoroughness. He never provides one or two examples when he has five or ten. It would be easy to dismiss this as unnecessary, but the completeness serves to support his position. You're seldom left with any questions that begin with "yes, but what about". To emulate Smith, I'll add a few more things that contributed to my difficulty in plowing through the book. As this work predates many dictionaries, there is some odd spelling. I've used "melasses" above. There is also "chuse" instead of "choose". There are many others. Then there is the nomenclature of legislation. When you encounter something like "In the fifth of George II. c. 14" he's specifying a particular act, passed in the fifth year of King George II, chapter 14. Smith is not particularly consistent in this notation, but so it goes. I'd venture to guess that The Wealth of Nations is one of the most widely recognized yet seldom read books, along with Darwin's The Origin of the Species and Marx's Capital. Ask someone who knows about The Wealth of Nations but hasn't read it and they'll probably say something like "Ah, that book about the invisible hand." This would be akin to describing the Bible as that book about two giraffes on a boat. Yes, there were two giraffes on Noah's Ark, but that's not what the Bible is about. Yes, Smith mentions the invisible hand, but it's not what the book is about. The Wealth of Nations is an encyclopedic work about economic philosophy. That's not a great description either. It's about everything to do with how the world economy of the late 18th century worked. As such, it includes topics including (but not limited to) history, mining, coin and currency, banking, farming, mercantilism, trade, government, taxation, debt, law, and philosophy. The Wealth of Nations is one of the foundational texts in the study of economics. Smith describes many economic principles. Many of these he illustrates with his many examples and declares them to be universally true. By this he means they have always been true and will always be true. In some cases, he is correct. But he wrote this work on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution and he could not foresee many of the structural changes that took place. The agrarian world he lived in, the world he saw in history, he assumed would continue unchanged into the future. And it wasn't just the Industrial Revolution that invalidates some of his universal truths. Smith's universal truths included money as specie. There are some exceptions to that, sure, but his logical arguments always come down to specie. All paper money was tied explicitly or implicitly to either gold and silver or to some other tangible asset or commodity. Fiat money and a flexible money supply were beyond him. His description of banks is fascinating but also totally outdated. So, why read it if many of the principles are no longer true? Anybody studying economics should read it for those things which are (still) universally true. There are quite a few of them. Also, a student of the American Revolution will find much background material here. It was written at about the time of that war, and many of the issues of taxation, government, and public debt give some insight into that conflict. As well, there's a nice description of the difference between a standing army and a militia which is interesting when considering the Second Amendment. And the student of general history may gain some understanding on the growth of cities, international trade, and the advent of corporations. I generally read a book without interruption. That is, I work through it day after day until I finish. Only then do I pick up another book. This one was just too big and intimidating for me. I found that I was making notes as I went through it, and my progress was much slower than with most other non-fiction I read. Thankfully, Smith broke the work into separate sections. There are five "books" in the volume. My approach was to read one book, set it down for a few weeks and read something else. I found this helped me get through it. This is a book that I enjoyed, that I find valuable. But it isn't a book that I can recommend. |