Schumpeter's Assessment of Adam Smith and 'The Wealth of Nations': Why He Got It Wrong

Abstract

In his History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter (Schumpeter 1954a) dismissed Adam Smith’s Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1976) in a blunt and ad hominem manner. We argue that Schumpeter’s assessment resulted from his failure to appreciate the rhetorical structure of Smith’s masterpiece, a failure largely due to Schumpeter not having access to student notes of Smith’s lectures on rhetoric that surfaced only after Schumpeter’s death.