This work represents the best of contemporary scholarship on the history of political, economic, and social thought. A signal contribution of this book is the demonstration of how far Smith's original vision was from the image that has been conveyed in so much of the secondary literature and which has come to inform contemporary views of markets and politics. Milgate and Stimson have provided an indispensable resource for thinking through the issues manifest in the recent revival of concerns with political economy and its significance for democratic theory. -- John G. Gunnell, University at Albany, State University of New York After Adam Smith is a superior piece of scholarship, engagingly written and impressively erudite. Milgate and Stimson are first-rate historians of economic ideas. -- Ian Shapiro, Yale University This is a fascinating and elegant study of the development of political economy and its relationship to political thought. It is a major contribution to economic and political theory, and to the often neglected but hugely important intersections between the two. It tells a compelling and original story, based on extensive scholarship as well as acute competence in economics. -- Hannah Dawson, University of Edinburgh
Preface vii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO: Adam Smith's Political Odyssey 10 CHAPTER THREE: The Rise and Fall of Civil Society 33 CHAPTER FOUR: Economic Life and Political Life 60 CHAPTER FIVE: The Economic Machine and the Invisible Hand 77 CHAPTER SIX: The Figure of Smith 97 CHAPTER SEVEN: Population and Political Economy 121 CHAPTER EIGHT: Utility, Property, and Political Participation 139 CHAPTER NINE: Economic Opinion on Parliamentary Reform 160 CHAPTER TEN: Utopias and Stationary States 186 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Labour Defended 217 CHAPTER TWELVE: Individual Liberty and the Liberty of Trade 237 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Two Critiques of Classical Political Economy 258 References 269 Index 299
Murray Milgate is fellow at Queens' College, University of Cambridge. Shannon C. Stimson is professor of political science and the history of political thought at the University of California, Berkeley.
This is an important, sound analysis of the interrelation between political and economic theory in the century after Adam Smith... This book exemplifies the best contemporary work on the nexus of political and economic theory. -- "Choice Milgate and Stimson produce a very careful and detailed analysis of early economists' ideas on issues shaping the modern concept of the political order, in the process displaying a rich array of competing ideas... [T]his book provides a striking perspective on classical political economy. The reader will benefit from some prior familiarity with Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and J. S. Mill, along with the Utilitarians. -- Donald Frey, EH.net In the last decade, scholars have moved away from the interpretation of Smith as a simple economic determinist who espoused lasissez-faire economics, and Milgate and Simpson have advanced their undertaking immensely with this book. -- Donald Stabile, Australian Economic History Review
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