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牛津大學齣版百年旗艦産品,英文版本原汁原味呈現,資深編輯專為閱讀進階定製,文學評論名傢妙趣橫生解讀。 內容簡介
亞當·斯密是十八世紀中期英國負盛名的政治經濟學傢和倫理學傢,他一生研究的學問涉及天文學、純文學、修辭學、哲學、倫理學、政治學、法學和政治經濟學等。《國富論》奠定瞭他作為英國古典政治經濟學奠基人的崇高地位和名望。 作者簡介
亞當·斯密(1723—1790),被譽為“現代經濟學之父”。1723年齣生在蘇格蘭的柯科迪,青年時就讀於牛津大學,1751年至1764年在格斯哥大學擔任哲學教授。在此期間,斯密發錶瞭他的*一部著作《道德情操論》,確立瞭他在知識界的威望。但是,他的不朽名聲則得自於1776年齣版的偉大著作《國民財富的性質和原因的研究》(簡稱《國富論》)。這部著作使其在餘生中享受著無盡的榮譽和愛戴,並延續至今。 精彩書評
迴到經濟學的基本問題,讓我們重讀亞當·斯密,不要再相信凱恩斯主義的那些政策。 ——張維迎
雖然斯密也勸說放任自由,但他的論證卻更多地是反對政府乾預和反對壟斷;雖然他贊揚貪欲的結果,卻又幾乎總是鄙視商人的行為和策略。他也不認為商業製度本身是完*值得贊美的。 ——謝宗林
這本書需要人們聚精會神地去讀纔能讀進去,而目前很少有人能坐下來專心讀書,因而本書*初也許不會受到非常熱烈的歡迎。 ——大衛·休謨 目錄
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Adam Smith and His Time
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
Explanatory notes and Commentary
Index 精彩書摘
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consists always, either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion. But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and , secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be soil, climate , or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances. The abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers,* every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing, Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beats. Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire. The causes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the First Book of this Inquiry. Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is every where in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. The Second Book, therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is employed. Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of it; and those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce. The policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement to industry of country; that of others to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry. Since the downfall of the Roman empire, the policy o Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns; than to agriculture, the industry of the country. The circumstances which seem to have introduced and established this policy are explained in the Third Book. Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; yet they have given occasion to very different theories o political oeconomy;* of which some magnify the importance of that industry which is carried on in towns, others of that which is carried on in the country, Those theories have had a considerable influence, not only upon the opinions of men of learning, but upon the public conduct of princes and sovereign states. I have endeavoured, in the Fourth Book, to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those different, and the principal effects which they have produced in different ages and nations. To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what has been the nature of those funds which, in different ages and nations, have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these Four first Books. The Fifth and last Book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth. In this Book I have endeavoures to show; first, what are the necessary expences of the sovereign, or commonwealth; which of those expences ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society; and which of them, by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of it; secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniencies of each of those methods: and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon thereal wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. BOOK I Of the Causes of Improvement in the productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order according to which its Produce is naturally distributed among the different Ranks of the People CHAPTER I Pf the Division of Labour THE greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.* The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single brance. …… 前言/序言
Who owns the Wealth of Nations? Since the early nineteenth century Smith has been the patron saint of homo economicus. Victorian liberal economists invoked his work to justify the pursuit of individual self-interest in a free market. The political and economic trends of the more recent past—the drive to privatization, the concentration on the profit motive as the key to market effectiveness and economic co-ordination—in Thatcherite Britain and Reaganite North America (but also in St Petersburg and Moscow), claim descent from Smith. His name is taken by the Adam Smith Institute, a right-wing think-tank whose aim is to devise policy based on market principals; but his interpreters and descendants include Karl Marx. For not only did Smith view merchants and manufacturers with deep suspicion, but he considered the sigh of a properly functioning market system to be the maximization of material benefits to society’s lowest members. The comprehensiveness of his vision of a self –regulating market appears to confirm him as the founding father of economic conservatism; but against his celebration of capitalism as the surest means of wealth accumulation should be set a pessimism at the dehumanizing potential of industrial society which appears appears to anticipate Marx’s alienation theory. Nor should we too readily conflate Smith’s socio-economic prescriptions with conditions in the late twentieth century. His experience as an eighteenth-century citizen was of pre-industrial, small-scale technology, multinational interests of modern institutions the dangerous consumption of non-renewable natural resources, or the problems of post-industrial unemployment. Immediately relevant in the ideological climate of the late twentieth century , the Wealth of Nations is firmly embedded in a complex of assumptions surrounding the birth of a consumer society in the eighteenth century. I There is nothing which requires more to be illustrated buy philosophy than trade does. . . A merchant seldom thinks but of his own particular trade. To write a good book upon it, a man ust have extensive views. (Samuel Johnson) If the significance of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations has been too narrowly restricted to no more than the beginnings of technical economics, this is in Some measure the consequence of his own famous exposition of the division of labour. As a plea for specialization, it is a theory which appears to justify modern interpreters in editing out of consideration Smith’s complicating deliberations on the nature of law, government, and social and individual morality as they affect the operations of a market economy. In the 1970 Penguin edition of the Wealth of Nations, for example, Books 1 and 2 form the substance of a work ‘solely concerned with Smith’s contribution to the principles of economics’, and Books 3 is included simply ‘in order to make the maximum use of the available space’. In justification, the editor, Andrew Skinner, anticipates his readers’ response by arguing that ‘[i]t would probably be agreed that the first two books contain the central part of Smith’s work as a theoretical economist, and the real basis of a profoundly influential system of thought’. With less tactical skill. The same argument is employed to explain the complete absence of Book 5 from the recent Everyman reprint of 1991: Book 5, the reader is assured, adds nothing new. D. D. Raphael concludes his Introduction by observing that: ‘Books I-IV do, however, contain the whole of what Smith had to say in carrying out his aim, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”.’ What both of these editions fail to acknowledge is the importance of that man of ‘extensive views’ whom Dr Johnson described in explaining Smith’s qualifications for writing on economics. It is the original embedding of the economic argument within a wider cultural, intellectual, and historical enquiry which the present selected edition attempts to reinstate against the more traditional view of the Wealth of Nations as the ‘classic’ economics textbook. By including large sections from all five books, the discursive context of Smith’s model becomes apparent. An enquiry in five books, the Wealth of Nations sites economic activity within the framework of a wide-ranging discussion of social institutions and human propensities. The effect of its extended description is to complicate and problematize economic analysis by driving the economic impulse deeper into the recesses of human personality as the nature basis of our psychological and social existence. Book 1 is concerned to outline that division of labour which constitutes the wealth of nations, and to establish a new division of society into landlords, wage-earners, and capitalists, who in their various combinations activate and keep in motion the mechanism of the economic process. As Smith summarizes his argument so far in the ‘Conclusion to Chapter 11: The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself. . . into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are three great, original and constituent orders of every civilized society, from whose revenue that of every other order is ultimately derived. (p. 155) Book 2 is concerned with accumulation, I its economic and psychological aspects—with productive and unproductive labour, the virtues of parsimony, and the human urge to better our condition (that is, to amass greater and greater wealth). Taken together, Books 1 and 2 do, indeed, form an economic treatise—Smith’s demonstration of what constitutes the wealth of nations, and in particular the wealth of the modern commercial nation. But without Book 3 their argument would lack the significant historical dimension which eventually reveals how it is that the humblest beneficiary of the division of labour, the ‘industrious and frugal peasant’ of the opening chapter, excels in his material comforts the African king, ‘the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages’ (p.20). For Book 3 is dedicated to historical explanation, to the historical and geographic relation of town to country, and in particular to the emergence of the ur-capitalist protagonist from the medieval contest for dominance between the town guilds and the feudal landowners. Smith’s subject, broadly historicized here, is the relation between those legislative and administrative institutions which constitute and protect human society, and that individual liberty from regulation which is the motor of economic development. Is society a community of private interests or public regulation? Book 4 ranges widely while purporting to be a critique of two systems of political economy—Mercantilism, the still feudally minded philosophy of wealth through trade, dominated economic thought and practice between the mid-sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries. It recognized the need to safeguard a potent national economy through high import tariffs and state intervention. ‘Physiocracy’ is the label attached to the doctrines of a group of eighteenth-century French economists, led by Fran?ois Quesnay, who argued, in contrast, that mercantile stock is ‘sterile’, and that agriculture is the only source of wealth because it alone produces a surplus, other manufactures merely reproducing what they consume. Most of Book 4 is concerned to expose the flaws in the Mercantilist system, under whose intricate controls, it is claimed, the British and other European economies have been severely hampered.
穿越時空的思想迴響:一部關於人類社會與經濟秩序的宏偉畫捲 書名: 啓濛時代的智慧:政治經濟學導論與現代社會構建的基石 作者: [請在此處想象一位18世紀的哲學傢、經濟學傢或社會思想傢的名字,例如:詹姆斯·斯圖爾特爵士 或 弗朗索瓦·魁奈 的繼承者] 齣版年份: [請在此處設定一個架空的年份,例如:1785年] 書籍篇幅: 約1200頁,四捲本 --- 內容提要 本書並非一部探討特定國傢財富積纍的經典文本,而是一部深入剖析人類社會結構、財富的本質、勞動價值的起源以及理想國傢治理模式的宏大哲學與經濟學著作。它誕生於啓濛運動的鼎盛時期,一個理性與經驗並重,對既有秩序提齣質疑的時代。作者試圖搭建一座跨越純粹政治思辨與粗糙商業實踐之間的橋梁,旨在為理解一個日益復雜、充滿變革的現代社會提供一套嚴謹而富有洞察力的分析框架。 第一捲:論人類存在的結構與分工的必然性 本捲著眼於對人類社會的起源和基本驅動力的哲學探討。作者首先摒棄瞭關於“黃金時代”的浪漫想象,轉而從經驗主義的角度審視人類行為的基本動機:自我保存、增進福祉以及自然産生的互助傾嚮。 1. 勞動與能力的異化: 探討瞭勞動如何從簡單的生存行為演變為具有社會屬性的經濟活動。我們著重分析瞭技能的形成、知識的積纍,以及當個人專業化於某一特定任務時,所帶來的效率的指數級增長,同時也指齣瞭這種專業化對個體心智可能産生的局限性——即“心智的狹隘化”。 2. 交換的原始衝動: 作者認為,交換(或稱“以物易物”)是社會性的必然産物,而非偶然的權宜之計。通過對原始部落、手工業作坊的細緻觀察,本書構建瞭一個關於“需求差異性”如何驅動社會互聯的模型。我們探究瞭信任機製在遠距離和長期閤約中扮演的核心角色,並初步區分瞭被認為是“有用”的勞動與僅僅是“耗費時間”的活動之間的區彆。 3. 土地、自然資源與初始稟賦: 這一部分對自然資源的稀缺性進行瞭冷靜的評估。與那些將土地視為永恒財富的傳統觀念不同,本書強調瞭環境對生産力的製約作用,並提齣瞭一個關於“自然盈餘”的概念,即在滿足基本生存需求後,剩餘可供社會分配的資源總量。我們嚴厲批評瞭將土地壟斷視為社會進步標誌的做法,認為它阻礙瞭更廣泛的社會創新。 第二捲:貨幣的本質與權力的媒介 本捲的核心在於解構貨幣的神秘性,將其還原為一種社會契約的工具,而非自然産生的價值實體。 1. 從貴金屬到信用票據的演變: 作者詳細追溯瞭金屬貨幣的起源,分析瞭其被選為交換媒介的社會心理基礎(如其稀有性、可分割性)。然而,本書的重點在於對早期信用體係的分析。我們探討瞭政府和早期銀行傢如何通過發行超齣實際金屬儲備的票據來擴大流通,以及這種“信用的膨脹”對社會生産力的潛在雙重影響——既能刺激大規模項目,也可能埋下通貨膨脹的隱患。 2. 財富的真正尺度: 明確區分瞭“金銀”(Nominal Wealth)與“商品與服務”(Real Wealth)的概念。本書斷言,衡量一個國傢真正的繁榮程度,不應看其金庫中有多少閃光的金屬,而應看其國民能夠消費和使用的必需品與奢侈品的豐富程度。這種對“名義價值”和“實質價值”的區分,是理解後續社會經濟運動的關鍵。 3. 資本的蓄積與風險投資: 資本被定義為“被用於生産而非消費的剩餘價值”。本捲對早期冒險傢、船東和工廠主的投資行為進行瞭倫理和經濟的雙重考察,試圖理解他們願意承擔高風險以換取未來收益的心理機製,並論證瞭這種對未來收益的預期,是推動技術進步和市場擴張的核心動力。 第三捲:國傢乾預的邊界與“看不見的手”的初步構想 這是全書最具爭議性也最具前瞻性的部分,它探討瞭政府在經濟活動中應扮演的角色,並試圖描繪一個自我調節的社會秩序圖景。 1. 對重商主義的批判性審視: 本書對當時盛行的重商主義政策(如嚴格的齣口補貼、限製進口)進行瞭全麵的邏輯解構。作者認為,這種將國傢財富視為零和博弈(你多得我必少得)的觀點是基於對國際貿易本質的誤解。 2. 自由流動與自然秩序: 在這一部分,作者提齣瞭一個革命性的觀點:當個體受自身利益的驅使去追求生産效率最大化時,如果缺乏暴力的強製和不正當的法律限製,其行為往往會在無意中增進整個社會的福祉。這種“自然傾嚮”的描述,為後世關於市場機製的論述奠定瞭哲學基礎,盡管此時還未形成成熟的數學模型。我們強調,這種“秩序”的産生依賴於嚴格的法治和公正的仲裁機製。 3. 公共工程的必要性: 盡管倡導市場自由,作者並未陷入極端的個人主義。他清醒地認識到,市場機製無法有效激勵某些必要的公共産品(如基礎防禦、司法體係、重要的交通設施)的建設。因此,本書為政府職能劃定瞭清晰的邊界:維護産權、執行契約以及提供無法通過私人激勵實現的公共服務。 第四捲:道德哲學與經濟行為的交織 本書的第四捲迴歸到作者的更廣闊的道德關懷,試圖將經濟學的洞察融入到對“善的生活”的追求中。 1. 節製與長期規劃: 探討瞭過度消費對個人和社會長期發展的影響。作者認為,一個健康的經濟體不僅需要高效的生産,還需要國民具備一種審慎的“延遲滿足”的能力。本捲深入分析瞭儲蓄行為背後的倫理動機,並將其視為社會韌性的重要來源。 2. 財富分配的倫理睏境: 作者坦誠地麵對瞭效率與公平之間的張力。雖然本書傾嚮於效率,但它從未忽視那些因自然稟賦不足或社會結構性劣勢而無法參與有效勞動的群體。解決這一問題的方案,被置於謹慎的慈善和社會保障框架之下,而非激進的財富再分配。 3. 國際關係的理性基礎: 最後,本書展望瞭一個基於互惠互利的國際貿易體係,認為隻有當各國都專注於其相對優勢,並通過和平貿易而非軍事徵服來獲取所需時,纔能實現真正的、持久的全球繁榮。 總結 《啓濛時代的智慧》是一部跨越學科界限的巨著,它既是對當時政治經濟思潮的總結與反思,也是對未來社會形態的理性推演。它要求讀者以批判性的眼光審視一切既定的權力結構,用理性和經驗來衡量“財富”的真正含義,並最終引導人們思考:在一個日益專業化和互賴的社會中,如何實現效率、自由與道德責任的和諧統一。這部作品挑戰瞭傳統的階級觀念,為理解現代市場經濟的復雜運作機製,提供瞭一份堅實而深刻的思想基石。