After Adam Smith : a century of transformation in politics and political economy / Murray Milgate & Shannon C. Stimson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Milgate, Murray.

Contributor:

Stimson, Shannon C.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics--Political aspects--History.

Economics.

Classical school of economics--History.

Classical school of economics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (319 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Few issues are more central to our present predicaments than the relationship between economics and politics. In the century after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations the British economy was transformed. After Adam Smith looks at how politics and political economy were articulated and altered. It considers how grand ideas about the connections between individual liberty, free markets, and social and economic justice sometimes attributed to Smith are as much the product of gradual modifications and changes wrought by later writers. Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and other liberals, radicals, and reformers had a hand in conceptual transformations that culminated in the advent of neoclassical economics. The population problem, the declining importance of agriculture, the consequences of industrialization, the structural characteristics of civil society, the role of the state in economic affairs, and the possible limits to progress were questions that underwent significant readjustments as the thinkers who confronted them in different times and circumstances reworked the framework of ideas advanced by Smith--transforming the dialogue between politics and political economy. By the end of the nineteenth century an industrialized and globalized market economy had firmly established itself. By exploring how questions Smith had originally grappled with were recast as the economy and the principles of political economy altered during the nineteenth century, this book demonstrates that we are as much the heirs of later images of Smith as we are of Smith himself. Many writers helped shape different ways of thinking about economics and politics after Adam Smith. By ignoring their interventions we risk misreading our past--and also misusing it--when thinking about the choices at the interface of economics and politics that confront us today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE. Introduction

CHAPTER TWO. Adam Smith's Political Odyssey

CHAPTER THREE. The Rise and Fall of Civil Society

CHAPTER FOUR. Economic Life and Political Life

CHAPTER FIVE. The Economic Machine and the Invisible Hand

CHAPTER SIX. The Figure of Smith

CHAPTER SEVEN. Population and Political Economy

CHAPTER EIGHT. Utility, Property, and Political Participation

CHAPTER NINE. Economic Opinion on Parliamentary Reform

CHAPTER TEN. Utopias and Stationary States

CHAPTER ELEVEN. Labour Defended

CHAPTER TWELVE. Individual Liberty and the Liberty of Trade

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Two Critiques of Classical Political Economy

REFERENCES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786612259104

9781282259102

1282259105

9781400831012

1400831016

OCLC:

439826031