Adam Smith and the Labour Contract: Is Labour Exchange Analogous to Commodity Exchange?(Report‪)‬

Introduction One of the key political and economic developments of the last few decades has been the renewed political strength of a certain kind of economic liberalism, globally. In the Anglophone world, these developments had their genesis in the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. They were also associated with various forms of 'labour-market deregulation', and accompanied by a decline of labour unionism--no doubt interdependent occurrences. Coincidentally, a short time before the rise of Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan, there was the bicentenary of the first publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776; hereafter, WN). This text is commonly regarded as one of the great canonical texts of classical liberalism, economic and political, in the British or Anglo-American tradition. Indeed, the intellectual movements and institutions that were formed in support of the 'neo-liberal' or 'neo-conservative' revival which found initial political expression in the Thatcher and Reagan governments, commonly connected themselves to Adam Smith celebrations at that time.