Table Of ContentThe Economy of the Word
OXFORD STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS
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sional forces that have surrounded and conditioned economics’ continued
development.
The Economy
of the Word
Language, History,
and Economics
Keith Tribe
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tribe, Keith.
The economy of the word : language, history, and economics / Keith Tribe.
p. cm. — (Oxford studies in the history of economics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–021161–5 (alk. paper)
1. Economics literature—History. 2. Economics—History.
3. Economics—Philosophy. I. Title.
HB75.T7147 2015
330.01’4—dc23
2014026933
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgments vii
Sources ix
1. Introduction: Not a Method, but a Grammar 1
PART I: Word and Number
2. The Word: Economy 21
3. Th e Measurement of Economic Activity and the Growth Metric:
Constructing National Income in Britain, 1907–1941 89
PART II: Reading—Reception
4. Reading ‘Trade’ in The Wealth of Nations 111
5. Das Adam Smith Problem and the Origins of Smith Scholarship 139
PART III: Economics as The Theory of Industrial Society
6. Karl Marx’s ‘Critique of Political Economy’: A Critique 171
7. ‘The Price Is Right’: Le prix juste and the Algebra of Action 255
8. Sources, Arguments, and Prospect 297
Bibliography 313
Index 329
( v )
LIST OF FIGURES
2.1 Frontispiece to Johannes Coler, Oeconomia Ruralis et Domestica
(1645) 38
2.2 Frontispiece to Münchhausen, Der Hausvater (1766) 41
2.3 Quesnay’s first draft version of the Tableau Economique
(1758) 49
3.1 Colin Clark, Exports by Value over the Period 1913 to 1930,
Various Countries (1931) 100
6.1 Title-page to Cabet, Voyage en Icarie (1845) 169
( vi )
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As a postgraduate student in Cambridge, when I first began to think seri-
ously about the historical analysis of economic discourse, I could always
rely on the insights and criticism of Terry Counihan, who arrived from
Australia with a Shell Scholarship in 1972. Writing this book has re-
minded me of his early death in 1999, and of what a great loss it was.
During the long winter of 2012–2013 I also lost the two friends who have
since the early 1980s been my prime sources of intellectual inspiration:
Wilhelm Hennis died in November 2012, and Istvan Hont in March 2013.
I completed the draft for most of this book while Guest of the Principal,
Björn Wittrock, at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, in
the autumn of 2012. With ideal working conditions and congenial company,
SCAS is in a scholarly time warp, and I am very grateful to Björn Wittrock
and Lars Magnusson for the experience. Thanks are due also to the staff at
SCAS: Ulrika Andersson, Bjarne Graff, Martin Grentzelius, Pia Hultgren,
Linn Östman, Sandra Recanovic, Sophie Sköld, and Anna Svensson.
I learned a considerable amount from, and very much enjoyed the com-
pany of, the resident SCAS fellows: Pietro Bortone, Antti Gronow, Gerhard
Jäger, Asifa Majid, Anthoula Malkopoulou, Przemyslaw Marciniak,
Stephan Palmié, Na’ama Pat-El, Eric Pederson, Wendelin Reich, Krishnan
Srinivasan, and Joost Zwarts. I am especially grateful to Asifa, Na’ama,
Eric, Wendelin, and Joost for showing me how much could be learned
from modern linguistics.
I have long benefited from the advice and criticism of Roger Backhouse,
Greg Claeys, Simon Cook, Ross Emmett, Gilbert Faccarello, Peter Ghosh,
Pat Hudson, Béla Kapossy, Gauthier Lanot, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Terry
Peach, Mike Sonenscher, Philippe Steiner, Chris Stray, Ryan Walter, Rich-
ard Whatmore, Mike White, and John Winckler; I thank them all. Edward
Castleton was especially generous in sharing his transcriptions of Proud-
hon and other materials with me while I was working on chapters 6 and 7.
I also owe a great deal to my editors in New York, Scott Parris and Cathryn
Vaulman, who have done much to restore a flagging faith in the book trade.
( vii )
( viii ) Acknowledgments
I am very glad to say that I have received no financial support at all
from the usual sources while working on this book, other than the oppor-
tunity to spend time at SCAS. Instead, I have relied on my own translation
company, Klartext, for all the various costs associated with scholarly ac-
tivity. Trying to explain this to the fellows at SCAS made me realise that I
was, after all, a harbinger of the neoliberal dream for the humanities: the
self-financing scholar with several part-time jobs. Chief among the latter
has been my employment from 2002 to 2013 at King’s School Worcester as
a rowing coach, the practical demands of which kept me sane and fit, and
gave me the privilege of working with a great team of coaches—Jim
Chalmers, Jo Wootton, Tom Sharp, Meg Glenn, Bill Needham, Helen
Taylor, and Olivia Rothbury—training a succession of talented young
people. Among these, James Green and Becky Lane deserve special men-
tion; and my last squad can stand for all those who preceded them: Theo
Beever, Jacob Blasdale, Tom Briggs, Henry Campion, Ollie Copeland, Ben
Foster, Chris Gregg, Tom Harrison, Nathan Moss, Joe Murcott, Kaushik
Rai, Nick Thomas, Laurence Tonks, Matt Underwood, George Watson, and
Jack Welch.
My family has, as always, been a great support while I have been work-
ing on this book; it is dedicated to Gabs, my first grand-daughter. The
future. However it turns out.
SOURCES
Chapter 1 was drafted at SCAS in October 2012 and completed in March
2014.
Chapter 2 was drafted at SCAS in September 2012. It incorporates some
material first published as ‘German Economics in the Early Nineteenth
Century’, in Steven Durlauf, Lawrence Blume (eds.) The New Palgrave Dic-
tionary of Economics, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2008.
Chapter 3 was published as ‘Constructing National Income in Britain,
1907–1941’, The History of Economic Thought (Japan) Vol. 47 No. 1 (June
2005) pp. 1–17; it has been slightly revised here.
Chapter 4 was originally published as ‘Reading Trade in the Wealth of Na-
tions’, History of European Ideas Vol. 32 (2006) pp. 57–89; it was revised
during October 2012 at SCAS.
Chapter 5 was originally presented at the annual meeting of the Dogmen-
historischer Auschuss of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, Lüdinghausen June
2007. In places I draw upon material included in my essays on the Smith
reception in A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith (edited by Keith Tribe,
with Hiroshi Mizuta), Pickering and Chatto, London 2002. It was pub-
lished in English as ‘“Das Adam Smith Problem” and the Origins of Modern
Smith Scholarship’, History of European Ideas Vol. 34 (2008) pp. 514–25;
minor revisions were made at SCAS in October 2012.
Chapter 6 began as two lectures on the Year 3 History of Economic Thought
course at the University of Birmingham in January 2012. Its main argu-
ments were exposed in the lecture ‘Karl Marx: Ricardian Socialist?’ at the
University of Sussex in May 2012. It was then written up during October
2012 at SCAS, and also in part presented at the CAMHIST Seminar, Clare
Hall, Cambridge in January 2014.
Sections of Chapter 7 were originally published as ‘“The Price is Right”:
Léon Walras and Economic Justice’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte
Vol. 50 (2000) pp. 388–402, but that essay has here become the conclusion
to a more extended argument which was drafted in April 2013.
( ix )
