ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Adam Smith in the role as a historian of economic thought. He assumes this role in the fourth book of his Wealth of Nations in which he analyses two systems of political economy, to wit, mercantilism and physiocracy. He unequivocally condemns the former and has much praise for the latter, which he considers as the best system as yet put forward. In both cases, however, his analysis suffers from narrow methodological views and, more importantly, from his ambition to prove the superiority of his own system of political economy. This leads him to distort and misrepresent the views of his predecessors and to acknowledge only part of the intellectual debts he owed them. It is the case of mercantilism in which these tendencies are most obvious. Thus, Smith used the history of economic thought as a weapon in the fight over scientific precedence and economic policy. Today, unfortunately, this way of representing the history of economic thought seems to be en vogue again.
