If, then, Adam Smith contributed nothing of value to economic
thought; if, in fact, he introduced numerous fallacies,
including the labour theory of value, and thereby caused a
significant deterioration of economic thought from previous
French and British economists of the eighteenth century; did he
make any positive contribution to economics? A common answer is
that the significance of the Wealth of Nations was political
rather than analytic: that his great achievement was to initiate
and take the lead in the advocacy of free trade, free markets,
and laissez-faire. It is true that Smith articulated the
political-economic sentiments of his day. As Joseph Schumpeter
wrote: 'Those who extolled A. Smith's work as an epoch-making,
original achievement were, of course, thinking primarily of the
policies he advocated...' Smith's views, Schumpeter added, 'were
not unpopular. They were in fashion.' In addition, Schumpeter
shrewdly noted that Smith was very much a 'judiciously diluted'
Rousseauan in his eighteenth cen