ABSTRACT
Although Sir James Steuart is the subject of this chapter, I must begin, ironically, not with him, but with the person who, more than anyone else, ensured his eclipse. The first sentence of the first chapter of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations reads: ‘The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is any where directed, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour’ (Smith 1776:13). That is to say, Smith begins, straight off, with an internal mechanism of commerce. The first sentence of the second chapter reads: ‘This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion’ (Smith 1776:25). Concentration on the internal mechanism is now validated by the claim that we should not look to human intentions for the community as a whole (that is to say, in particular, to political intentions) when we seek to account for the origins of the division of labour. Its origins are on the individual level, and its results are unintended consequences of individual actions.
