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back by capital.

Both accounts are to be found in a great number of passages;

and these passages, oddly enough, sometimes stand quite close to

each other, as, e.g. in the sixth chapter of the first book.

Adam Smith has been speaking in that chapter of a past time,

– of course a mythical time, — when the land was not yet

appropriated, and when an accumulation of capital had not yet

begun, and has made the remark that, at that time, the quantity

of labour required for the production of goods would be the sole

determinant of their price. He continues: “As soon as stock has

accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will

naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom

they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make

a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds

to the value of the materials. In exchanging the complete

manufacture either for money, for labour, or for other goods,

over and above what may be sufficient to pay the price of the

materials and the wages of the workmen, something must be given

for the profits of the undertaker of the work, who hazards his

stock in this adventure.”

This sentence, when taken with the opposite remark of the

previous paragraph (that, in primitive conditions, labour is the

sole determinant of price), very clearly expresses the opinion

that the capitalist’s claim of interest causes a rise in the

price of the product, and is met from this raised price. But Adam

Smith immediately goes on to say: “The value which the workman

adds to the material, therefore, resolves itself in this case

into two parts, of which the one pays the wages, the other the

profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and

wages which he advanced.” Here again the price of the product is

looked upon as exclusively determined by the quantity of labour

expended, and the claim of interest is said to be met by a part

of the return which the worker has produced.

We meet the same contradiction, put even more strikingly, a

page farther on.

“In this state of things,” says Adam Smith, “the whole

produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must

in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs

him.” This is an evident paraphrase of the second account. But

immediately after that come the words: “Neither is the quantity

of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any

commodity, the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity

which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for. An

additional quantity, it is evident, must be due for the profits

of the stock which advanced the wages and furnished the materials

of that labour.” He could scarcely have said more plainly that

the effect of a claim of interest is to raise prices without

curtailing the wages of labour.

Later on he says alternately: “As in a civilised community

there are but few commodities of which the exchangeable value

arises from labour only, rent and profit contributing largely to

that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of

its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a

much greater quantity of labour than was employed in raising,

preparing, and bringing that produce to market” (first account,

chap. vi.) “The produce of almost all other labour is liable to

the like deduction of profit. In all arts and manufactures the

greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance

them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance

till it be completed. He shares in the produce of their labour,

or in the value which it adds to the materials upon which it is

bestowed; and in this consists his profit” (second account, chap.

viii.)

“High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low

price; high or low rent is the effect of it” (first account,

chap. xi.)

Contradictions like these on the part of such an eminent

thinker admit, I think, of only one explanation; — that Adam

Smith had not thoroughly thought out the interest problem; and –

as is usual with those who have only imperfectly mastered a

subject — was not very particular in his choice of expressions,

but allowed himself to be swayed very much by the changing

impressions which the subject may have made on him from time to

time.

Adam Smith, then, has no perfected theory of interest.(4*)

But the suggestions he threw out were all destined to fall on

fruitful soil. His casual remark on the necessity of interest was

developed later into the Abstinence theory. In the same way the

two accounts he gave of the source of interest were taken up by

his followers, logically carried out, and raised into principles

of independent theories. With the first account — that interest

is paid out of an additional value which the employment of

capital calls into existence — are connected the later

Productivity theories. With the second account — that interest

is paid out of the return to labour — are connected the

Socialist theories of interest. Thus the most important of later

theories trace their pedigree back to Adam Smith.

The position taken by Adam Smith towards the question may be

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