The question of whether there is general equilibrium in Adam Smith lies at the heart of the battlefield between those who wish to see Smith as a precursor of modern economics and those who see in his writing an alternative system. In this article I will argue that it is possible for general...

An important clue to the ambiguity in Smith's attitudes towards commercial society may lie in his disaffection with natural distributions; with distributions based on unintended consequences. The absence of proportionality between motives and outcomes dooms the morality of commercial society,...