Journal of the History of Economic Thought
Volume 4, Issue 1, Mar 1997
Pages 23-42
- DOI: 10.1080/10427719700000018
- Print ISSN: 0967-2567
- Online ISSN: 1469-5936
Adam Smith's conception of the social relations of production
- By
- Hyun-Ho Song
This article as a sequel to Song (1995), ‘Adam Smith as an early pioneer of institutional individualism’, aims to depict what Smith's conception of social relations of production looks like, and draws a tentative conclusion that when grasped in the whole context of Smith's system of social thought, it is neither neoclassical nor Marxian orthodoxy, but can be better appreciated as suggesting an independent - Smithian - perspective. Then, an exploratory claim is submitted to show that Smith's view of class and power relations is found to bear striking affinities with that of Max Weber, the great German sociologist.