Note: TMS refers to Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, while WN = The Wealth of Nations

I mentioned in a previous post (see here or below) that typing “another Adam Smith problem” into Google Scholar’s search engine generates nine results: one book, two book chapters, and six research articles. At the time, however, I was only able to comment on seven of those nine works because two were gated: a 2006 paper by Catherine Labio (“The solution is in the text: a survey of the recent literary turn in Adam Smith studies”) and a 2001 book chapter by Amos Witztum (“Division of labour, wealth, and behaviour in Adam Smith”). I have since obtained copies of both works and will share my thoughts below:

Catherine Labio’s Adam Smith Problem

For Labio (2006, p. 153), “The question is no longer: how does one reconcile the potentially mutually exclusive ethical frameworks of two separate works by the same author [i.e. the notorious Adam Smith Problem of old], but how does one account for the internal contradictions at the heart of these respective works [TMS and WN] and of Smith’s oeuvre as a whole?” So, what are these potential “internal contradictions” in Smith’s works? Labio lists five of them:

1. Smith’s “reservations on the socio-political impact of the generalized application of the division of labour” (citing West 1996);
2. “his historicization of the natural price” (citing Leonard 1995);
3. “his praise of early versus late production” (citing Heinzelman 1995, Labio 1997, and Sutherland 1998 [1993]);
4. “his inclusion of envy in his conjectures on sympathy and the constitution of the subject” (citing Dupuy 1987 and Morillo 2001, ch. 5); and
5. “his qualms, articulated in both The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and WN, regarding the desirability of laissez-faire capitalism, the morality of commerce, and the fate of morality in a commercial society” (citing Pack 1991, Michie 2000, and G. Skinner 1999).

Amos Witztum’s Adam Smith Problem

For his part, Witztum’s work drills down on the first of Labio’s Smithian internal contradictions:

In what seems to be yet another Adam Smith problem, [Smith scholar E. G. West] argues that there is an apparent contradiction between Book 1 and Book 5 of the Wealth of Nations … with regard to the effects of the division of labour on the productivity of workers and the life of the working classes. While in Book 1 the division of labour appears as one of the major causes for the “improvement in the productive powers of labour”, in Book 5 it is this very same division of labour which gives rise to “stupidity and ignorance”, not at all conducive to dexterity and ingenuity.

Witztum 2001, p. 137, citing West 1964, 1996

Others, however, “dispute the existence of any such problem” (Witztum 2001, p. 137, citing Rosenberg 1965, 1990). So, is there a contradiction between Books 1 and 5 of WN, and if so, is the division of labor ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on balance? Suffice it to say that both Labio and Witztum give us a lot to think about and plenty to read, for in addition to the two scholarly works by E. G. West, Witztum’s bibliography includes five scholarly papers (counting two self-citations), two books, as well as four references to Smith (see Witztum 2001, p. 152), while Labio’s list of possible Smithian “internal contraditions” refers to nine more works (aside from West’s), including one self-citation (see Labio 2006, p. 153).