In an interview on Managerial Culture

Next book, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations.

The Wealth of Nations was the first serious tract on economics in the English language and it profoundly shaped the way people thought about the economy and society. However, it has been seriously misrepresented by people who either have not read it or, if they have done so, overlooked important passages. Many people know Smith’s arguments in favour of free markets but how many people know his thoughts about the failings of market economics? In the book he argues things like: ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…’ or the even more damning: ‘Commerce sinks the courage of mankind? The minds of men are contracted and incapable of elevation.’

In an interview on Reading the Romantics

What does Adam Smith’s magnum opus The Wealth of Nations tell us about the history of reading?

It’s a long book and it covers many things. But it’s particularly important for the history of reading. Smith thinks in terms of systems. There is an economic system, a financial system, an agricultural system and so on. He’s modern in that way, but he also looks at business practices. He offers data for the reader to consider and scrutinise. He does not argue as an ideologue. One of the systems that he looked at is monopoly and competition. There’s a terrific passage about the silversmiths and the guilds in various towns that were given exclusive rights to sell silver and control the prices and training of silversmiths. He shows that, contrary to what was claimed, this system led there to being less silver in the country than there would be if anybody was allowed to work in silver. So he’s saying the wealth of the nation is reduced by monopolistic structures that are publicly presented as increasing it. Smith says much the same about the monopoly of copyright and argues that, like any other monopoly, it should only be tolerated for a short time in order to encourage innovation that is of general usefulness to the society that gives the privilege.

So was he an advocate of reducing the length of the copyright publishers held?

Until 1774 copyright was perpetual in England, although only 28 years maximum in Scotland. The eventual 1774 decision by the House of Lords to stop the book industry from unlawfully exercising perpetual copyright, that had been battled over for half a century, was greatly influenced by Smith’s lectures, which attracted much attention before his book was published. The Romantic period, when there was a short copyright, coincided with an amazingly rich episode in the writing not only of literature but in history and political economy, and with a huge increase in reading generally, as the prices of out-of-copyright books tumbled. Since then, the copyright term has gradually been lengthened and the situation now is that it’s nearly perpetual. So the link between the granting of a short-term monopoly to provide encouragement to innovation for the benefit of society as a whole has been lost. And the issues of freedom and access that confronted the 18th century and the Romantic period now have to be faced again in the age of the Internet.