Idols of Nations by Roland Boer

Author:Roland Boer [Roland Boer and Christina Petterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4514-8441-0
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

The moral coding of Smith’s work emerges here in all its glory, a moral coding reinforced time and again through stories such as this. The industrious merchant is of course the virtuous one, full of spirited energy, order, economy, and boldness. He is able to generate profit and thereby improve the condition of the land itself. By contrast, the country gentleman simply has not a clue. A timid person, he lacks the discipline needed for real improvement.

Parables

The moral tale we just quoted spills into the dominant form of the parable, although the demarcations between various types are never firm. Parables exist in abundance, especially when Smith wishes to persuade readers concerning an initial assertion. Forget any extended analysis of empirical data, of tables and calculations, or factory reports, and so forth. When he needs to make a point, a parable is far more useful. As we cannot tackle them all, we have selected a few of the better examples.[48]

The first needs only a brief mention, for it is nothing less than a comprehensive gloss of the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. Smith sets up an initial opposition between the prodigal and prudent (or frugal) man, and develops a tale of the growth of capitalism in England in light of the opposition. However, the whole account reconfigures the relationship between the two, for the prodigal becomes the reprehensible figure in the story, while the frugal character is praised. When the prodigal (a king, government, or landlord) dominates, economic growth is threatened, but when the frugal and sober son comes to the fore, the story begins to sound more cheerful.

However, the second parable is more typical of Smith’s storytelling. It concerns the borrowed parable of the pin:

To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations,

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