ABSTRACT
One of the many peculiarities around Adam Smith is that he is linked, seemingly indissolubly and forever, to an economic order that he himself never knew: the order we may most simply name capitalism. The commercial society of Smith's time was, indeed, well on the way towards capitalism, and by the time of his death in 1791 had probably passed the point of no return. But, first, the objective conditions for capitalism were far from complete. Large-scale machine industry was at best in its infancy: the crucial development of a machine tools industry – making machines with machinery – necessary to complete the internal dynamic of industrial production had not yet occurred (Marx 1977: 504–5). Wage-labour had not yet fully emerged as the dominant, potentially universal, form of productive activity; and a proper capitalist class had not yet coalesced around the principle of unlimited accumulation of capital.
