【英文原声版60】Glory Liu：The Wealth of Nations

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Zachary Davis: 1776 is most famous as the year that the United States was born. But you could make an argument that the Declaration of Independence is only the second most important text written that year because 1776 was also the year Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s work helped found the field of economics and revolutionized how societies understood and organized their economies. In fact, so many decisions and transformations are attributed to Adam Smith, that his reputation is...well, let’s say hotly contested.

扎克里·戴维斯：1776年最有名的事件是美国的诞生。不过，如果你说《独立宣言》仅仅是那一年第二重要的文本，那也无可厚非。在那一年，问世的还有一本书，那便是亚当·斯密的《国富论》。斯密的著作推动了经济学这门学科的建立，并彻底改变了各个社会对经济的理解和组织方式。事实上，很多决策和变革都归功于亚当·斯密，以至于他成了一个饱受争议的人物。

Glory Liu: Smith has a very complicated reputation, and that’s kind of putting it lightly. So, my name is Glory Liu. I’m a college fellow and lecturer in social studies at Harvard.

格洛丽·刘：简而言之，斯密毁誉参半。我叫格洛丽·刘，是哈佛大学研究员和社会学讲师。

Zachary Davis: The Wealth of Nations became hugely popular and continues to shape our understanding of economics and politics.

扎克里·戴维斯：《国富论》很受欢迎，也一直影响着我们对经济和政治的理解。

Glory Liu: In the popular view, Smith is thought of as “the Father of Capitalism” and “the Father of Modern Economics”. His most famous ideas being things like self-interest and the invisible hand—the invisible hand of the market, not the heavy hand of government.

格洛丽·刘：人们普遍将斯密看作“资本主义之父”和“现代经济学之父”。他最著名的观点是“自利”和“看不见的手”，倡导运用市场这只“看不见的手”，而不是政府这只“看得见的手”。

Zachary Davis: In short, many see Smith as an economist—and only an economist.

扎克里·戴维斯：总之，很多人把斯密看作经济学家，而且仅仅把他看作经济学家。

Glory Liu: That’s the popular view. And it’s very narrow, and it’s often very politicized. Among Smith scholars, though, especially historians and political theorists, we tend to think of Smith as primarily a moral philosopher, somebody who wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations and gave lectures on jurisprudence, wrote about the history of astronomy, belles-lettres, and rhetoric, and everything else.

格洛丽·刘：人们普遍都是这么想的。这种观点很狭隘，而且往往很政治化。然而，在我们这些研究斯密的学者看来，尤其是历史学家和政治理论家看来，斯密主要还是一个道德哲学家。他写下了《道德情操论》和《国富论》，还做过法学讲座，写过天文学史、纯文学作品和修辞学著作，涉足了各种各样的领域。

Zachary Davis: This is how Smith understood himself. He was a philosopher. And he saw his work on economics as deeply connected with his work in moral philosophy.

扎克里·戴维斯：这就是斯密对自己的定位。他是一个哲学家。而且他觉得，他在经济学作品与他的道德哲学作品之间有很深的联系。

Glory Liu: So, if you look at the frontispiece of The Wealth of Nations, which was first published in 1776, his name, printed, you know, as the author of the text, is “Adam Smith, LL.D., Fellow of the Royal Society, and Former Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow.” So, you know, even in the work that would later become known as the founding text of modern economics, it’s clear that Smith wanted to be known as a moral philosopher, a kind of broad minded, ambitious social scientist of the Enlightenment, not what we now think of as narrowly economics, or an economist.

格洛丽·刘：如果你看一看1776年第一版《国富论》的封面，你会发现作者那栏印着“亚当·斯密，法学博士，皇家学会会员，格拉斯哥大学前道德哲学教授”。显然，即便在这部被后世誉为“现代经济学奠基之作”的书中，斯密也希望自己被看作道德哲学家，被看作一位思想开放、雄心勃勃的启蒙运动社会科学家，而不是我们现在认为的、狭义的经济学家。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Glory Liu to discuss Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和格洛丽·刘教授一起讨论亚当·斯密的《国富论》。

Zachary Davis: Tell us about Adam Smith’s life.

扎克里·戴维斯：您给我们介绍一下亚当·斯密的生平吧。

Glory Liu: Smith was born in a kind of seaside town called Kirkcaldy in Scotland in 1723. He was educated at a local school in the area, and then he went on to study at Oxford and eventually came back to Scotland and taught at Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow.

格洛丽·刘：1723年，斯密出生于苏格兰的海滨小镇寇克卡迪。他在当地的一所学校读书，后来去牛津大学深造，最后他又回到苏格兰，在爱丁堡大学和格拉斯哥大学任教。

Zachary Davis: In 1751, Smith became a professor at Glasgow University, teaching courses on logic. Two years later, he became the University’s Head of Moral Philosophy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1751年，斯密成为格拉斯哥大学的教授，教学生逻辑学。两年后，他成为该大学的道德哲学系主任。

Zachary Davis: What did it mean to be a moral philosopher in his time?

扎卡里·戴维斯：在他那个时代，什么叫做道德哲学家？

Glory Liu: So, the term “moral” in Smith’s time means something much more capacious and expansive than it does for us now. When we say the word “moral philosopher” or just if something is moral, we are usually thinking about rightness and wrongness from the standpoint of morality. It’s ethical. But in Smith’s time, the term moral was really used in contrast to “physical”. So, it meant something more like “mental” or “intellectual” and “social”.

格洛丽·刘：在斯密那个时代，“道德”这个词的涵义比我们现在的涵义更广。如今我们说“道德哲学家”这个词，或是说某件事情“道不道德”，我们通常都是在说这件事从道义上看是否正确，把它看作伦理方面的事情。但在斯密那个时代，“道德”这个词其实对应“物质”这个词，意思更偏向于“精神”、“心理”和“社会属性”。

Glory Liu: So, when we say that Smith wrote a book of moral philosophy, it’s not so much that he wrote a set of moral precepts, right? “Thou shalt not kill,” “you should always obey your conscience,” you know, “drinking is bad” and the like. It’s more like what we would call today moral psychology. Smith was interested in explaining what goes on in our minds when we are making judgments about our own behavior and about other people’s behavior.

格洛丽·刘：所以，虽然我们说斯密写了一本道德哲学书，但我们的意思并不是说他写了一堆清规戒律，如“不可杀人”、“要永远守住良心”、“不可酗酒”等等。他写的更像是如今我们说的道德心理学。斯密乐于分析的是，我们在判断自身和他人行为时，心中的所思所想。

Zachary Davis: Smith saw that our actions and judgements about ourselves and others stem from sympathy. He meant sympathy beyond just sorrow or pity. He meant in the broad sense of being able to put ourselves in others’ shoes and feel what they are feeling. According to Smith, to get a better understanding of ourselves, we should imagine ourselves in someone else’s position to see how other people would see us.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯密发现，我们对自己和他人的行为和判断都源于“同情心”。他说的“同情心”不仅仅是悲悯或怜悯，而是指广义上的将心比心。斯密认为，为了更好地了解自己，我们应该换位思考，看看别人会如何看待我们。

Glory Liu: And so that’s what The Theory of Moral Sentiments is about. It’s about how we come to know ourselves in relation to other people. Smith had this ability to really vividly illustrate what it’s like to be inside our own mind and to kind of see both inside and outside of ourselves.

格洛丽·刘：这就是《道德情操论》的内容，它探讨了我们如何借由自己与他人的关系来认识自我。斯密能够活灵活现地展现我们的内心世界，展现我们如何向内观照、如何从他人身上反观诸己。

Zachary Davis: Smith taught these theories at Glasgow for thirteen years. And it was during this time that he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Then, in 1763, a British politician named Charles Townshend offered Smith a job tutoring his stepson, the Duke of Buccleuch. Smith left his university teaching career behind and toured around Europe with his new pupil.

扎克里·戴维斯：十三年里，斯密一直在格拉斯哥大学教授这些理论。在这期间，他出版了《道德情操论》。到了1763年，英国政治家查尔斯·汤森德聘请斯密为继子巴克卢公爵的老师。斯密辞去格拉斯哥大学的教职，与这位新学生一起游历欧洲。

Glory Liu: And they go on tour in Europe to Paris, Toulouse, and Geneva. And it’s there that Smith encounters these illustrious thinkers of the French Enlightenment as well.

格洛丽·刘：他们游历欧洲，去了巴黎、图卢兹和日内瓦。在那些地方，斯密遇到了法国启蒙运动的杰出思想家。

Zachary Davis: One particularly influential group he met were the physiocrats. They had pioneered a new economic theory called physiocracy which can be loosely translated as “government of nature”. The physiocrats believed a nation’s wealth came from the land instead of from manufacturing or commerce. And so they placed a great deal of importance on agriculture and land development.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他遇到了一群对他影响特别大的人——重农主义者。他们开创了一种新的经济理论，叫“重农主义”。他们认为一国的财富来自于农业，而不是制造业或商业。所以他们非常重视农业和开垦土地。

Glory Liu: And Smith thought that this was a little bit too narrow, right? He thought that manufacturing and commerce actually could contribute a lot to a nation’s wealth and overall growth.

格洛丽·刘：但斯密觉得这种想法过于局限。他认为，制造业和商业对国家财富和整体发展大有裨益。

Zachary Davis: The physiocrats also believed in a natural order given by God. They believed that a society governed by the laws of nature was the ideal society. That these “laws of nature”, in contrast to artificial, human-created laws like the social contract, allowed people to live together without sacrificing freedoms. The physiocrats were also defenders of free trade. They believed countries should trade their excess resources from the land for those that they cannot produce themselves.

扎克里·戴维斯：重农主义者还坚守着上帝建立的自然秩序。他们认为，自然法约束下的社会是理想的社会。自然法与社会契约等人定法不同，可以让人们在不牺牲自由的前提下和谐共处。重农主义者也支持自由贸易，认为各国应该用过剩的农产品资源换取自己无法生产的资源。

Glory Liu: Smith, of course, was sympathetic to the idea of free trade and, you know, freedom of occupation. But he resisted the idea that it could be forcibly imposed on a nation and that, like, an ideal, you know, distribution or kind of ideal constitution of the nation’s economic capacities could be directed.

格洛丽·刘：斯密虽然也支持自由贸易和自由生产，但他不认为应当强制一个国家这么做，不应当干预国家资源配置和经济结构，使其变成理想的模样。

Zachary Davis: After his travels with his pupil, he returned to Scotland and started assembling his new ideas, combining his earlier work on moral philosophy with these new insights on economics.

扎克里·戴维斯：和学生游历欧洲之后，斯密回到了苏格兰。他开始整理自己的新思想，把之前的道德哲学观点和新的经济学观点融合起来。

Glory Liu: He returns to England and Scotland to begin writing The Wealth of Nations, over basically a 10 year period. But we know that Smith had actually drafted earlier parts of The Wealth of Nations between 1762 and 1767, really. He’s giving his lectures on jurisprudence. And at this point in his career, he’d already become famous for writing The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

格洛丽·刘：他先后回到英格兰和苏格兰，用十年时间写出了《国富论》。不过其实，斯密在1762年到1767年已经完成了《国富论》早期版本的草稿。与之同时，他还在教授法学课。那时的他已经因为《道德情操论》而赫赫有名了。

Glory Liu: So, again, it’s important to keep in mind that, right, in terms of Smith’s ambitions, he’s not setting out to kind of found economics and become “the Father of Free Trade” or “Free Enterprise”. Right? He’s continuing this very ambitious project of trying to derive general principles of human behavior and human society, starting with: How and why do humans behave morally? What are the moral sentiments and how do we kind of acquire them and follow moral rules? How do we understand the history of law and government? And then how do we understand the forces of wealth?

格洛丽·刘：重申一下，我们要记住，斯密的本意并不是为了创立经济学、成为“自由贸易之父”或“市场经济之父”。他写下这部鸿篇巨制，是为了探索人类行为和人类社会的普遍原理。他想要首先解答这些问题：何为道德行为？人类如何会有道德行为？何为道德情操？我们如何习得道德情操、遵循道德准则？我们如何看待法律和政府的历史？我们如何看待财富的力量？

Zachary Davis: Smith was also influenced by one of the most remarkable and brilliant philosophical movements in history—the Scottish Enlightenment. Key figures from this movement include Smith’s teacher, Frances Hutcheson; his best friend, David Hume; and his university colleagues, like Thomas Reed and Adam Ferguson.

扎克里·戴维斯：影响斯密的还有史上精彩绝伦的哲学运动——苏格兰启蒙运动。这场运动的代表人物有斯密的老师弗兰西斯·哈奇森、他最好的朋友大卫·休谟以及他的大学同事——托马斯·里德和亚当·弗格森。

Glory Liu: They’re representative of a distinct way of thinking about man in society and systematizing principles of man and society. And they kind of model themselves after Newton, hoping to discover universal, constant, scientific principles about the relationship between man, government, and society. And the idea being that, you know, if human beings, like the fundamental particles of physics, have an essential, unchanging nature, then we can understand the conditions under which, you know, people and societies behave differently.

格洛丽·刘：他们直截了当地思考社会中的个体，总结了人与社会关系的原理。他们以牛顿为榜样，希望能找到人、政府、社会三者之间普遍、永恒且科学的原理。他们认为，如果人像物理学基本粒子一样，具有某种永恒的本质，那么我们就可以据此解释在什么条件下，人和社会会有各种不同的行为。

Glory Liu: So, you know, it’s important to remind ourselves that The Wealth of Nations is just one part of this bigger social science that has its roots in Scottish Enlightenment thinking and then kind of radiates outward.

格洛丽·刘：所以我们有必要提醒自己，《国富论》只是一整套社会科学的一部分。而这套社会科学从苏格兰启蒙思想发展而来。

Zachary Davis: These were the major philosophical changes happening in Europe at the time, but there were political changes as well. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the British colonies were fighting for their independence. No one knew how this would play out. Would the colonies gain some independence but still be under British control? Or would they become their own nation, completely independent?

扎克里·戴维斯：这些是当时欧洲的主要哲学运动。与此同时，还出现了政治运动。在大西洋的另一端，北美殖民地的人民正在为独立而战。没有人知道他们能否成功。殖民地是会高度自治，但仍然属于英国，还是会彻底的独立出去？

Glory Liu: And so it’s at this really critical moment where Smith’s readers know that the colonial question, which Smith writes about in The Wealth of Nations, is right on the front of their mind. It’s right at the front of national and international politics. And some of Smith’s immediate readers and critics actually tell him in private correspondence, like, “This book is great. You did a really good job systematizing these principles. But there are times at which I think you’re being a little bit too polemical. It speaks too much to present issues,” they’ll say. And of course, they’re talking about the American question, like, what to do about these kind of rowdy colonies.

格洛丽·刘：在这个紧要关头，斯密在《国富论》中紧跟国内国际政治形势，谈到了北美殖民地，把这个话题摆在了读者面前。斯密的一些读者和评论者私下写信给他，说：“这本书很棒，系统且精彩地阐述了这些原理。但我觉得，有时候你争论得有些过了头，讲了太多当下的政治。”显然他们在说北美，在说该如何处理这些闹腾的殖民地。

Zachary Davis: Smith thought the colonies should be independent, but maintain a free trade relationship with Britain and even possibly an informal military alliance. Smith was also openly critical of British imperialism in general. By this time, the British Empire had set up colonies around the world, including parts of Africa, the Caribbean islands, and India. He was not in favor of how Britain was bulldozing their way through other countries for their own economic gain without regard to the public, either the British public or the inhabitants of the colonies themselves.

扎卡里·戴维斯：斯密认为殖民地应该独立，但应当与英国保持自由贸易关系，甚至可以在军事上与英国结成非正式的同盟。斯密还公然的批评了整个英国帝国主义。当时，大英帝国已经在世界各地建立了殖民地，版图包括非洲部分地区、加勒比海岛和印度。他反对英国枉顾英国和殖民地民众利益，只为本国利益而在其他国家巧取豪夺。

Glory Liu: So colonialism, imperialism, state capture—these are all matters of global politics that loom large in The Wealth of Nations.

格洛丽·刘：《国富论》探讨了当时的全球政治问题，如殖民主义、帝国主义和对他国的掠夺。

Zachary Davis: This shift in Smith’s career—from moral philosophy to political economy—has intrigued scholars and historians for years, especially in Germany. They refer to it as the Adam Smith Problem.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯密将目光从道德哲学转而投向政治经济学。这场学术生涯的转变多年来一直吸引着学者和历史学家，在德国尤其如此。他们称之为“亚当·斯密问题”。

Glory Liu: Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is fundamentally interested in and sees humans as being fundamentally motivated by sympathy. But then by the time we get to The Wealth of Nations, suddenly it’s just self-interest. So, the theory of Das Adam Smith Problem goes, is that Smith changed his mind and he became a materialist, and that happened because he encountered these thinkers in France who converted him.

格洛丽·刘：在《道德情操论》中，斯密倾向于认为，人类的行为受同情心驱使。但到了《国富论》中，他却觉得驱使人们的是自利心。人们对“亚当·斯密问题”的解释是，斯密在法国遇到了一些启蒙思想家，在他们的影响下思想有所转变，成为了一个唯物主义者。

Glory Liu: But, you know, fundamentally Das Adam Smith Problem is a question about the philosophical compatibility between sympathy and self-interest. I think oftentimes when we ask about the compatibility between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, we’re asking something, like “are ethics and economics compatible” or “does modern economics, the way we see it, have a moral foundation” or “is capitalism moral”. Those are the new kinds of questions around the compatibility of the moral philosophy and the political economy of Adam Smith. Those are the kinds of questions that I think people are bringing to Smith today.

格洛丽·刘：要知道，从根本上来说，“亚当·斯密问题”从哲学角度探讨了同情心与自利心能否并存。但是我想，更多时候，当我们问到《道德情操论》和《国富论》能否并存的时候，我们其实在问道德与经济能否兼容、我们所了解的现代经济学有没有道德基础、资本主义是否道德。这些都是围绕着亚当·斯密的道德哲学和政治经济学之间的兼容关系而提出的新问题。今天的人们针对斯密提出的就是这一类问题。

Glory Liu: I tend to think that what unites the two works is his method, his approach to trying to understand the principles of human behavior in human society. It’s this kind of looking out into the world, using observation, paying really close attention to detail, using history to kind of test theories, and then coming up with general principles based on those observations.

格洛丽·刘：我的答案是，贯穿于这两本书之中的，更多的是他理解人类社会行为准则的方法。他放眼世界，悉心观察，关注细节，用历史来检验理论，再根据观察结果得出普遍原理。

Zachary Davis: Now I would love for you to give us a summary of the book. How is it structured? What are the most powerful stories or arguments that are in there?

扎克里·戴维斯：您可以给我们概括一下这本书吗？它的框架是怎样的？书里最有影响力的故事或论点是什么？

Glory Liu: So, I like to think about The Wealth of Nations as a book about economic life. And notice I didn’t say it’s a book about economics, like Principles of Economics. It’s a book about economic life. And the title, the full title, is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. It’s an investigation into the nature of wealth—what it is, how it’s measured, what causes it to increase or decrease, what stunts its growth—and crucially, it’s about the wealth of nations, not the wealth of individuals. So, five books, two volumes—huge book. I’m not going to be able to cover every single thing here. But I think that summarizing really briefly based on the structure of the book, again, illuminates just how remarkable of a book it is and how different it is compared to what we often think it is about.

格洛丽·刘：我宁愿把《国富论》当成一本谈论经济生活的书，而不是《经济学原理》这样谈论经济学的书。《国富论》的全名是《国民财富的性质和原因的研究》。它探究了财富的本质，解释了财富是什么、如何衡量、为何增加或减少、其增长为何会受阻。而且关键是，它讲的是国家的财富，而不是个人的财富。全书分为两卷，共五篇，堪称鸿篇巨制。我在这儿没法讲到书里每一点，但我觉得，总的来说，从这本书的框架来看，就足以看出它多么了不起，简直无与伦比。

Glory Liu: So, Book One is really the first part of the title, the nature of wealth. And this is where Smith introduces the building blocks of his analysis. So, he has the famous illustration of the pin factory to talk about the division of labor, right? One man draws the wire, another man cuts it, another man sharpens the pin, another one puts the head on. And it’s because of the division of labor that you have an increase in the productive powers of individuals and of nations. He also introduces, you know, these other building blocks, definitions of price, labor, wages and the like.

格洛丽·刘：书的第一卷讲的是书名中间那个字——“财富”的本质。斯密这也从这儿起搭建起了自己的整套理论。有个例子很有名：他以别针厂为例来介绍劳动分工。在别针厂里，一个人画线，一个人剪线一个人削针，一个人安针头。正是因为劳动分工，个体和国家的生产力才会提高。他还介绍了理论中的其他概念，如价格、劳动、工资之类的定义。

Glory Liu: Book Two is, you know, similarly building blocks, but instead of covering the nature of wealth and how it’s produced, it covers things like money, stock, and capital. So, how does wealth flow?

格洛丽·刘：第二卷同样在搭建理论，但涉及的不是财富的本质和财富从何而来，而是货币、股票和资本等内容。换言之，财富是如何流动的？

Glory Liu: Book Three is my favorite, and I think it’s the most interesting because it is unlike other parts of the book. It’s where Smith turns to history, starting from the fall of Rome, leading right up to the beginning of the period in which Smith is living. And he’s turning to history to test the models of growth that he sort of begins elucidating in the first two books. So, what is wealth? How does it flow? And then Book Three, he suddenly goes, what thwarts its progress? If there is a natural progression to how societies develop, how does that go wrong? And that’s where history plays a big role.

格洛丽·刘：之后到了第三卷。这一卷是我最喜欢的，我觉得它最有趣的，因为它和书中其他几卷不太一样。在这一卷中，斯密用历史来检验自己在前两卷中阐述的财富增长模式，从罗马衰亡一直讲到了自己所处的时代的开端。前两卷都在回答什么是财富、它是如何流动的。到了第三卷，斯密突然发问：什么阻碍了财富的增长？如果社会会自然而然地发展演进，那它怎么会出问题？于是历史被用来解答这些问题。

Glory Liu: Book Four is where he brings that kind of historical and institutional analysis right up to the present, right up to the time in which he is living. And this is where he launches his critique of existing policies and existing frameworks for understanding the nature of national wealth. So, two main targets in particular—the mercantile and imperial system of Great Britain. He tries to take down the idea that wealth consists in hoarding gold and silver coin, and that we can increase wealth by beggaring other nations and, you know, keeping all the toys for ourselves. The favorable balance of trade. Export more, import less. He calls it...It’s a way of understanding wealth as zero sum. And Smith’s launching a huge critique against this whole mentality.

格洛丽·刘：在第四卷中，斯密从分析历史转向分析现实，批判他所处的那个时代的政策和框架，来帮助读者理解国家财富的本质。他批判了两大对象，其一是英国的重商主义思想和帝国主义体系。有人认为，财富就是囤积金币银币，可以掠夺他国财富来增加本国财富，把所有好东西都收为己有，让出口额大于进口额，实现贸易顺差。斯密反对这一观点，觉得这将财富增长误解成了零和博弈。他猛烈批判了这种心态。

Glory Liu: But the other system that he targets is what we were talking about earlier, the physiocratic system or agricultural system in France. And, you know, he thinks this is kind of mistaken on two counts. One, it ignores the productive powers of manufacturers and commerce. But also, he’s concerned about directing or imposing an idealized version of natural law upon a society.

格洛丽·刘：他批判的第二种观点，就是我们之前提到的法国重农主义思想。他觉得，重农主义错在两个方面：第一，它忽视了制造商和商业的生产能力；第二，重农主义将某种理想化的自然法强加给某个社会，而这恰恰是他不愿意看到的。

Glory Liu: Lastly, we get to Book Five, which I think a lot of people don’t realize is the longest part of The Wealth of Nations. And this is where Smith outlines what I call the politics of political economy. So, Book Five is devoted to principles that undergird sound policies for managing national wealth, providing for security, law, public works, education, national debt. It’s about policy, and it’s about management.

格洛丽·刘：最后，我们来谈谈第五卷。我想很多人都没有意识到这是《国富论》中最长的一卷。斯密在这一卷中阐述了“政治经济学”中与“政治”相关的内容，谈到了合理施行有关国家财富、安全、法律、公共工程、教育、国家债务等政策的基本原则。这一卷讲了政策与社会管理方面的内容。

Glory Liu: So, that’s what the book covers from start to finish. And I think it’s worth stepping back and realizing that this is very different from what you would expect if you opened up your standard textbook in an Econ One class at a university. You know, no equations, no graphs, he relies a lot on history. He relies a lot on observation and illustration. And there are real people in it, right? Real people with real jobs, real countries, and real history. So, that’s why I say it’s a book about economic life. It’s an embodied book. It’s a living text. It’s not about abstract principles.

格洛丽·刘：这就是全书的大致内容。你大可以放下原本的印象，翻开看看。然后你会发现，这本书和你预想的完全不一样。它不像你在大学第一堂经济课上看的教科书，没有方程式、也没有图标，有的只有大量史实。他依靠这些事实，辅以观察和论述，来展现自己的观点。他展现的是有真实工作的历史人物、真实的国家和真实的历史。所以我才说，这是一本讲经济生活的书。它是历史经验的集合，有血有肉，而不只有抽象的原理。

Zachary Davis: Smith was writing before the Industrial Revolution took off. There weren’t factories and mass production on the scale that would come, but there were still changes taking place, especially in his hometown of Kirkcaldy.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯密在工业革命到来之前写下了这本书。当时还没有工厂和大规模生产，但仍然出现了很多变化。在他的家乡寇克卡迪，情况尤其如此。

Glory Liu: Kirkcaldy, for example, was an influential trading port in, you know, even in the 17th century. By the 1730s, there was a huge revival of the linen industry. By the 1770s and 1780s, right, when Smith is writing The Wealth of Nations, they’re starting to break into things like cotton, stockings, and shipbuilding.

格洛丽·刘：早在17世纪，寇克卡迪就是一个有影响力的贸易港口。到了18世纪30年代，英国亚麻工业再度兴起。到了18世纪70至80年代，也就是斯密写《国富论》的时候，英国的棉花纺织业、丝袜制造业和造船业都发展了起来。

Glory Liu: Glasgow, where Smith taught for many years, becomes a city that’s dominated by trading elite families. And you know, the English colonies, the colonial trade becomes central to how people like Smith in Scotland and in England are thinking about economic integration and global trade, the rise of a different kind of society whose relations are based primarily on exchange, right? Not everybody can produce their own subsistence, right? We’re not all independent farmers anymore.

格洛丽·刘：斯密执教多年的格拉斯哥成了一个汇集贸易巨头的城市。英国殖民贸易促使斯密等苏格兰和英格兰的学者思考经济一体化和全球贸易。这是一种不同于以往的社会，人与人的关系基于商品交换。我们不再是自给自足的农民，人们无法再靠自己生产出所有生活必需品。

Glory Liu: Suddenly, there’s interdependency and mutual exchange. And when societies are primarily characterized by those kinds of relations, things start to look different. And I think that’s why Smith’s work was so ahead of its time. It was because he was attuned to these changes, that were happening as he was living. And he tried to capture them and also show what impact they would have in the long run.

格洛丽·刘：突然之间，人们相互依存，相互交换商品。当这种关系成为了社会主流，事情就开始不一样了。斯密敏锐地感知到了、也适应了生活中的这些变化，我想着也是斯密的著作之所以超越时代的原因。他努力捕捉这些变化，展示了它们可能的长期影响。

Zachary Davis: With the rise of industrialization came the fall of the previous economic system—feudalism. The feudal economy depended on serfs, who were essentially indentured servants, farming a king or nobleman’s land. Society was strictly divided along class lines with little mobility and often harsh treatment from lords.

扎克里·戴维斯：随着工业化的兴起，之前的封建经济也随之衰落。封建经济依赖于农奴，他们本质上是契约奴，在国王或贵族的土地上耕作。社会严格按照阶级划分，流动性小，农奴常常受到领主的压迫。

Glory Liu: Feudalism was the system of downward dependency. Kings are reliant on lords for security, and lords are reliant on their vassals and knights for security, and the serfs who provide them with subsistence, etc., etc.. But feudalism was violent. You were always in fear of invasions from outsiders or from, you know, other lords and other barons and other knights who were trying to compete for territory and land and riches. And it wasn’t particularly wealthy overall. And especially when you think about all those serfs who have no freedom, it wasn’t exactly what we would call a state of human flourishing.

格洛丽·刘：封建制度下，上层阶层依赖着下层阶层。国王依靠领主来保障安全，领主依靠臣民和骑士来保障安全，依靠农奴提供生活保障。但封建制度非常残酷。你总会担心外来入侵，担心其他领主和骑士争夺你的土地和财富。社会总体上看不是很富裕。特别是，当你想到当时还有失去人身自由的农奴时，就会由衷地觉得这绝不是一个繁荣昌盛的时代。

Zachary Davis: As feudalism faded and trade increased, democracy increased as well. Now, an individual could trade with whomever they wanted, instead of giving their goods to only their lords.

扎克里·戴维斯：随着封建制度的衰落和贸易的发展，民主也蓬勃发展。一个人可以和任何他们想交易的人进行贸易往来，而不是只把自己的物品上供给领主。

Glory Liu: The kind of advent of societies based primarily on exchange rather than on dependency introduced order, good government, and liberty for individuals. And it’s that liberty, that kind of modern liberty, freedom from being dependent on other people, freedom from subservient relations that he says is the most important of all of its effects.

格洛丽·刘：社会运转不再基于等级关系，而是基于商品交换，更好的政府建立了起来，人们也获得了更多的自由。而这种打破人身依附的现代意义上的自由才是贸易发展最重要的影响。

Zachary Davis: It would be great to move into legacy now and reception. How was the book initially received, and of all the books about human psychology and incentives, why has this one endured so much?

扎克里·戴维斯：我们现在来谈谈这本书的影响和读者的反响吧。读者反响最初如何呢？探讨人类精神面貌和行为动机的书这么多，为什么这本书能经久不衰？

Glory Liu: It has a kind of a lukewarm reception, which I think is probably surprising to most people who are familiar with, at least the popular image of Smith today, right? The Wealth of Nations is not, as one scholar once put it, the intellectual shot heard round the world. It was not this kind of like bang out of the cannon, suddenly everybody is proclaiming free trade and free enterprise. That’s not at all what happened.

格洛丽·刘：其实读者的反应一直不温不火，这恐怕出乎很多人的意料，至少不符合如今许多人对亚当·斯密的印象。《国富论》并不像一位学者说的那样，宛如划过全世界知识分子头顶的嘹亮枪鸣。它不是惊天动地的炮声，让人们一夜之间崇尚起了自由贸易和市场经济。情况并不是这样的。

Zachary Davis: The Wealth of Nations was not by any means Smith’s most influential book immediately following publication. For a long time, Smith’s 1759 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments was much more widely read and celebrated.

扎克里·戴维斯：《国富论》绝不是斯密出版后瞬时影响最大的一本书。在很长一段时间里，斯密1759年出版的《道德情操论》读者更多、名气也更大。

Glory Liu: The Wealth of Nations has a different reception story in the United States. It also is very well known. It’s considered the best book on matters of political economy and finance, but it doesn’t have the connotation of being revolutionary. Very few people are going around waving The Wealth of Nations around and saying “Adam Smith, the Father of Economics, says this, and therefore we should do that!”

格洛丽·刘：在美国，读者对《国富论》的态度也不太一样。它当然也很有名，被看作政治经济和金融事务方面最好的书。但人们并不把它看成是一本革命性的著作，所以很少有人到处挥舞着《国富论》，喊道：“经济学之父亚当·斯密是这样说的，所以我们应该这样做！”

Glory Liu: It’s much more of a kind of technical, neutral—but not necessarily politically neutral. But like, it’s a technical resource that people like James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton especially, can kind of take chunks of it, apply the logic to a specific policy issue like, you know, starting a national bank or making a case for promoting manufacturers and using the kind of underlying economic argument to support a different institutional agenda. And they do that in ways that kind of act separately from Smith’s intellectual authority. So, it’s important, but it’s not revolutionary, right, it’s not necessarily paradigm shifting, and it definitely isn’t kind of an intellectual authority around Smith in the 18th century in America.

格洛丽·刘：它更像是一本中立的专业书籍——当然，在政治立场上它绝不中立。它更像是詹姆斯·麦迪逊、约翰·亚当斯、尤其是亚历山大·汉密尔顿他们会参考的专业书籍。他们会从书中汲取营养，将其中的设想应用到某个政策性事务上，如创办国家银行、陈述发展制造业的理由、用其中的经济观点来支持各种制度安排。他们没有将斯密奉为知识权威，但也着实吸收了他的很多观点。他的观点很重要，但没有革命性，不一定有范式上的转变。斯密本人也绝不是18世纪的美国所热捧的知识权威。

Zachary Davis: But as political economy became more popular as a field of study, the book began to take on a different legacy.

扎克里·戴维斯：但随着政治经济学这个研究领域越来越受关注，这本书的影响力渐长。

Glory Liu: What I found that really does the work is the kind of creation of political economy as a science worth pursuing for its own sake. So when political economy becomes an academic field, suddenly, you know, it’s not just reading The Wealth of Nations to kind of pick out the logic of certain kinds of policies and see how they apply to immediate issues that the nation is facing. It’s more about: Okay, is this scientifically consistent? What are the kind of transcendental principles that speak beyond the time for which the book was written?

格洛丽·刘：这其中的关键，在于政治经济学开始成为一门值得研究的学科。当政治经济学成为一个学科时，突然间读《国富论》不只是为了参悟某类政策的逻辑，看它们如何适用于国家当下的问题，相反，人们开始阅读《国富论》，并追问这本书是否科学连贯、又提出了哪些超越那个时代的原理。

Glory Liu: And when you start to look at the kinds of academic texts emerging in the early 19th century trying to form a science of political economy, they’re systematically critiquing Smith, they’re systematically kind of going through Smith and saying, you know, here’s what’s good, here’s what’s bad, here’s what’s withstands the test of time, and here’s what, here’s what doesn’t. Here’s what seems scientifically valid, and here’s what it does. Here’s what doesn’t seem that way.

格洛丽·刘：19世纪初出现了一些试图构建政治经济学学科的学术著作。这些著作系统地评价了斯密，说整本书里哪些好、哪些坏、哪些经得起时间考验、哪些又经不起、哪些科学有效、哪些经不住推敲。

Glory Liu: Regardless of, you know, what these later authors say about what Smith got right, they all agree that Smith was the founder of the science. So, like, political economy has to start somewhere. The science of political economy needs a founder. And they all agree that, you know, Smith might not have been the first. There were other people who wrote about political economy. But Smith gave scientific value to political economy. He put the flag in the sand.

格洛丽·刘：不过不论他们给出了怎样的评价，他们都一直认为斯密是政治经济学的创始人。政治经济学必须有学科源头，必须有一个创始人，而他们都认为这个人是斯密。不过要知道，斯密可能不是第一个关注政治经济学的人。此前还有其他人写过关于政治经济学的文章，但斯密赋予了政治经济学以科学价值，在一盘散沙上插起了旗帜。

Zachary Davis: This process of combing through and critiquing Smith’s work is how he gets the title of “the Father of Economics”.

扎克里·戴维斯：在人们梳理、批判斯密著作的过程中，斯密获得了“经济学之父”的称号。

Glory Liu: And that process really, you know, it never ends. Even in the late 19th century, a hundred years after Smith first wrote The Wealth of Nations, Publishers Weekly put out a contest for its readers, asking what’s the best book on political economy? This a hundred years after The Wealth of Nations is written, and people said that The Wealth of Nations was the number one book on political economy. It was tied, actually, with Jon Stewart Mills’ Principles of Political Economy.

格洛丽·刘：人们不断对这本书进行着评估。19世纪晚期，也就是《国富论》问世差不多一百年的时候，《出版者周刊》发起了一项调查，问大家最好的政治经济学书籍是哪本。《国富论》出版已经有一百年左右，它却在调查中名列榜首，和约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒的《政治经济学原理》并列第一。

Glory Liu: So, you know, there’s a lot of work that was done by people who wanted to create a science of political economy specifically for American circumstances and how Smith could be reinterpreted and adapted for those circumstances. And that’s a big part of the story about why we get kind of a version of Smith as Smith the scientist, Smith the Father of Economics.

格洛丽·刘：除此之外，人们还做了很多工作，想要搭建起专门针对美国国情的政治经济学原则，并设想该如何重新阐述并调整亚当·斯密的理论，使其能够符合美国的语境。这也在很大程度上促成了在一部分人眼中，亚当·斯密“科学家”或“经济学之父”的形象。

Zachary Davis: One of Smith’s best known ideas in The Wealth of Nations is the phrase “the invisible hand of the market”. This phrase plays an important role in how the 20th century United States reappropriated Smith and The Wealth of Nations.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯密在《国富论》中最著名的观点之一，就是“市场这只看不见的手”。20世纪美国重新运用斯密和《国富论》时，这句话起到了重要作用。

Glory Liu: The invisible hand gets reinvented as this slogan in the 20th century, right, the invisible hand of the market, not the heavy hand of government or, you know, it’s the magic of the invisible hand that makes nations wealthy and makes people free. And that emerges in kind of mid-20th century revivals of free market economics, this idea that markets are self-regulating, self-correcting, and that they’re underpinned by individuals following their rational self-interest.

格洛丽·刘：20世纪，“看不见的手”这个说法被重提了起来。斯密主张运用市场这只看不见的手，反对政府这只看得见的手过度干预经济。他认为，看不见的手让国家富强，让人民自由。20世纪中叶，美国市场经济再度兴起，这种观点也重新兴起。人们相信，由于人们会理性维护自己的利益，市场因而具备自我调节、自我修正的能力。

Zachary Davis: The Great Depression of the 1930s turned this view of the invisible hand on its head. In 1929, the US stock market crashed, which shouldn’t have been possible according to Smith’s theories. If the invisible hand of the market was self-regulating and self-correcting, then how could the stock market collapse and ruin the economy the way it did? Economists of the time were looking for a new truth about markets, and so they reinterpreted the term “the invisible hand”.

扎克里·戴维斯：20世纪30年代的大萧条证明了“看不见的手”也会失灵。1929年，美国股市崩盘。按照斯密的理论，这绝不可能发生。如果市场这只看不见的手可以自我调节、自我修正，那么股市为什么会崩盘、经济为什么会崩溃？当时的经济学家们苦苦思索着自由市场的真相，重新解读了“看不见的手”。

Glory Liu: And so, thinkers at the University of Chicago, starting in the 1930s into the 1940s, are, they’re a mixed bag. But one thing that unites them is their view that, you know, markets can and do work under specific conditions. So, how can we recover the principles of a liberal society that can still be free, still rely on markets but without kind of the dangers of the Gilded Age. And that kind of, like, sympathy towards free markets really gets heightened in the 1960s and 1970s.

格洛丽·刘：20世纪30到40年代，芝加哥大学的经济学家虽然各有自己的立场，但他们一致认为，市场在特定的条件下可以发挥作用。那么，我们要如何遵循自由市场的原则，依靠市场配置资源，同时又避免重蹈大萧条时期的覆辙呢？20世纪60至70年代，美国对自由市场的呼声达到了顶峰。

Glory Liu: So, you have this generation of thinkers like George Stigler and Milton Friedman, who began to look at Smith’s works and see not only a kind of forefather, an intellectual forefather, somebody who believed in the power of markets, but somebody who actually provided the scientific principles of economics, the way that Stigler and Friedman wanted to do economics. Self-interest is the kind of most important predictive principle of human nature. The invisible hand is the price mechanism and ensures kind of the best allocation of resources in society. Individuals know best how to allocate their labor and capital. And Smith himself saw this in his statement of the invisible hand.

格洛丽·刘：于是乔治·斯蒂格勒、米尔顿·弗里德曼那一辈的经济学家开始审视斯密的著作。他们看到的斯密不仅仅是一位学术先驱、一个相信市场力量的人，更是一个真正提出了经济学科学原理的人。这些原理恰好和他们想要发展的经济学派所倡导的理念如出一辙。他们认为，自利心是人性，是首要的预测原则；无形的手是价格机制，保证了社会资源的最佳配置；个体最清楚如何分配自己的劳动和资本。斯密本人在阐述“看不见的手”时也得出了类似的结论。

Zachary Davis: Here, we get back to Smith’s theories of moral philosophy. Smith believed that people naturally acted from their own self-interest. And the invisible hand of the market relied on this fact—it relied on people doing what was best for them, without government regulation or intervention. In the mid-20th century, University of Chicago scholars used Smith’s idea of self-interest and the invisible hand to support their views of deregulation, free trade, and unchecked markets. But not everyone thought this was the correct interpretation.

扎克里·戴维斯：我们来回顾一下斯密的道德哲学理论。斯密认为，人们的行为自然是从自身利益出发的，而市场这只看不见的手就建立在这个事实基础之上——在没有政府的监管和干预的情况下，人们会做对自己最有利的事情。20世纪中期，芝加哥大学的学者们用斯密的自利思想和“看不见的手”来支持他们减少政府干预、倡导自由贸易和自由放任的观点。但并非所有人都赞同这种解读。

Glory Liu: A lot of Smith scholars immediately read their work and say, “My goodness, that’s a huge mistake. That’s a huge misunderstanding. They’re wrong.” People who are sympathetic to the Chicago School and even some economists say, “No, actually, there’s a grain of truth. It’s not wrong. It might be narrow, but it’s not wrong.”

格洛丽·刘：很多研究斯密学者读了芝加哥学派的著作后，马上会说：“这简直在胡说八道，完全跑偏了。”认同芝加哥学派的人、包括一些经济学家则认为，他们有几分道理，或许有些狭隘，但并不是完全错的。

Glory Liu: And I think, you know, from my view, it’s really important to acknowledge the Chicago School had a specific purpose in mind. They were trying to resuscitate and defend a particular approach to economics. And for somebody like Milton Friedman, they had a very distinct, very strong political agenda attached to that. That it was scientifically true that markets worked in this magical way, and therefore, deregulation, and therefore scale back the welfare state.

格洛丽·刘：在我看来，你不得不承认，芝加哥学派这么做是有特定目标的。他们想要恢复并捍卫某种经济学方法论。对于米尔顿·弗里德曼等人来说，他们有一个与之相关的、直接且坚定的政治目标。他们认为，从科学上讲，市场理应按这种神奇的方式运转，所以有必要减少国家干预、缩减福利预算。

Glory Liu: Now, for my view, the “harm” that’s done to Smith is not so much a misreading of Smith, but that it can’t stand alone without completely ignoring what he wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and what he talked about in terms of his views of politics in the Lectures on Jurisprudence and, indeed, in The Wealth of Nations.

格洛丽·刘：不过在我看来，芝加哥学派对斯密的“伤害”并不在于他们错误地理解了斯密的理论，而是由于他们孤立地去看“无形的手”这一观点，而忽视了他在《道德情操论》、《法理学讲义》中的观点以及《国富论》中的政治见解。

Glory Liu: I think what we have to realize about that particular view of Smith, right, that Smith associated with the Milton Friedman of the world and, you know, undeniably aligned with the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, is that that version of Smith has become so powerful and so influential, but it relies on an assumption that Smith had it in mind, right, to kind of create this science that was narrow and that science supported this political vision. And I think there’s plenty of space to, you know, interrogate that.

格洛丽·刘：我们有必要认识到，我们普遍了解的斯密的观点是经过米尔顿·弗里德曼和美国企业研究院二次阐释的。这个版本的观点很有影响力，但它建立在了一个前提之上，那就是斯密想要创建这套相对狭隘的科学，而且这套科学是为了支持某种政治目标的。这个前提有很多地方都值得我们去仔细推敲。

Glory Liu: The invisible hand is at the broadest level a story about unintended consequences, that there can be under certain conditions, situations where people can promote the public good without intention or direction. But that does not necessarily imply an aggressive policy of deregulation. What I think the invisible hand does point us to is the broader context in which Smith is using that metaphor, which is a story about merchant capture of the state.

格洛丽·刘：总的来说，看不见的手会带来意想不到的调节效果。在适当条件下，人们会在不经意间带来了公共利益。但这并不是说一定要采取激进的、取消政府干预的政策。我觉得，“看不见的手”指向的，不如说是它背后的那个更大的语境：当时，商人操控着国家，而斯密正是在这样的语境下使用了“看不见的手”一词。

Glory Liu: So, this idea that Smith was anti-government is mistaken because it misreads Smith’s criticism as criticizing the state when, in fact, he’s criticizing people in positions of economic power, merchant interests, people who are leading the British East India Company, who want to persuade legislators to pass legislation in their favor so that the East India Company can do its own thing and ravage an entire continent at the expense of the public.

格洛丽·刘：有人认为斯密反对的是政府，这显然不对。他们误以为斯密批判的是国家，而实际上他批判的是那些掌握经济权力的人、那些商人集团、那些英国东印度公司的高层。这些人想说服立法者通过对他们有利的法律，这样东印度公司就可以为所欲为，牺牲公众利益，掠夺整个大陆。

Glory Liu: So, Smith’s criticism is directed towards those people, the merchant mindset, not the government. Does he still think the government is kind of weak and incompetent sometimes? Yes. Is he skeptical of politicians’ cognitive and moral abilities? Yes. But is his criticism ultimately directed at governments? I don’t think so. I think it’s more directed at this merchant mentality that you can use the state to promote private interest above the public interest. And that’s what he’s really worried about.

格洛丽·刘：因此，斯密批判的是那些商人，而不是政府。他是不是觉得政府有点软弱无能？没错。他是不是怀疑政治家的能力，怀疑他们的认知水平和道德品行？没错。但他最终的批判对象是政府吗？我不觉得。我觉得他更多是在批判商人的这种心态，批判他们枉顾公共利益、利用国家满足一己私利。这才是他真正担心的。

Zachary Davis: How did the ideas in this text bleed out into society and culture and economies in ways that we recognize?

扎克里·戴维斯：《国富论》中的思想如何被我们所认可，影响到社会、文化和经济呢？

Glory Liu: So, I think of reception and influence being two sides of the same coin. Another metaphor that I’ve used is kind of a supply side story vs. demand side story. Supply side story of Smith’s influence is there’s something innate about The Wealth of Nations, or that enabled it to withstand the test of time, that it in and of itself is, kind of like the Bible, the transcendent.

格洛丽·刘：我觉得读者的认可和它的影响就像一枚硬币的两面，或者说像是需求与供给的关系。供给侧便是《国富论》的影响——这本书里的一些观点能经得起时间的考验，有着像《圣经》一样跨时代的意义。

Glory Liu: Of course, Smith had incredible literary talents. Of course, his vivid illustrations were powerful. And of course, he’s speaking to perennial questions—national wealth. Those questions about national wealth, how to manage it, questions about trade, they’re never going to go away. But I think it’s easy to be blinded by our assumptions about what makes a text great. And so that’s why I take more of the demand side approach to understanding influence. It’s the demands that we bring to the text.

格洛丽·刘：斯密文采飞扬，论述生动有力。他谈论的国家财富也是经久不衰的问题。在书中，他探讨了要如何管理国家财富、如何开展贸易，这些都是永恒的问题。但在思考一本书因何而伟大时，我们很容易下一些先入为主的错误判断。所以这也是为什么我还要从需求侧去看待这本书的影响力。我们对这本书的需求让我们阅读这本书。

Glory Liu: What is it that we’re trying to get out of the text? In the early 19th century, the demands that Americans were bringing to the text was a deep need to understand and create a new science of political economy, but one that didn’t just originate in Europe, but to kind of take the sources from European authors. Smith wasn’t the only one, right? You had Jean-Baptiste, you had Ricardo, Malthus, you had John Stuart Mill. And they’re taking these sources and saying, “Okay, what can we take to kind of create our own science of political economy for American circumstances?”

格洛丽·刘：我们想从这本书中收获什么？19世纪初，美国人需要用这本书来理解和创建他们的政治经济学原则。这门科学并不仅仅起源于欧洲，但其思想却源于欧洲学者。斯密并不是唯一一个阐述政治经济学问题的人。让·巴普蒂斯特、李嘉图、马尔萨斯，约翰·斯图尔特·密尔都在思考这个问题。美国人阅读所有这些人的理论，思考着如何创建适应美国国情的政治经济学原则。

Glory Liu: So, Smith is influencing American thinkers in that way. But it’s not because Smith, you know, from the grave is exerting influence. It’s because Americans are coming to Smith with specific needs. Same thing with the idea of free trade. Smith is referred to as “the Apostle of Free Trade” throughout the 19th century. And I find it hard to believe that Smith himself set out to write the book to become “the Apostle of Free Trade”. Yes, he championed free trade.

格洛丽·刘：斯密是以这种方式影响了美国的思想家。但这并不是棺材里的斯密主动对美国人施加了影响，而是美国人带着特定的需求翻开了他的著作。同样的还有倡导自由贸易的观点。在整个19世纪，斯密被称为“自由贸易的先驱”。但我不觉得斯密是为了这个名号而写《国富论》的。他确实倡导自由贸易。

Glory Liu: But really, what happens, like, why did that reputation become so prominent, is because later thinkers in kind of need of intellectual legitimation, in need of authorities to invoke, to identify a kind of political stance that they’re taking for or against free trade, look to Smith and say, “Hey, the Father of the Science of Political Economy was in favor of free trade. Therefore, we must be right. Therefore, we must pursue these policies.” And that is the way in which we have to understand influence.

格洛丽·刘：但为什么这个名号会流传开来？这是因为后世的思想家们在某种程度上需要理论支撑，需要引用权威的观点来支撑自己支持自由贸易的政治立场。于是他们将目光放在了斯密的理论上，说：“政治经济学之父支持自由贸易，所以我们一定是对的，我们必须推行这些政策。”了解了这些，我们才能全面看待斯密的影响力。

Zachary Davis: Smith didn’t set out to create the discipline of economics, but that’s what he did. By combining his experience in moral philosophy, his views on the physiocrats, and the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, Smith laid the foundation for how we continue to think about production, trade, capitalism, and wealth.

扎克里·戴维斯：斯密并没有打算创建经济学这门学科，但他确实带来了这种结果。他融合了自己在道德哲学方面的经验、对重农主义者的看法和苏格兰启蒙思想家的影响，为我们思考生产、贸易、资本主义和财富奠定了基础。

Glory Liu: I think Adam Smith brought our minds to life, and he also humanized the way in which we understand economic life. So, even if today we see him as the founder of economics, and economics is so different from the way Smith envisioned it, he made the science of political economy fundamentally about humans. And I think for that, you know, the world has Smith to thank.

格洛丽·刘：我觉得亚当·斯密在《道德情操论》中生动地展现了我们思维的运作方式，也让我们不用那么枯燥地去理解经济生活。尽管如今的经济学与这位经济学之父所设想大不相同，但多亏了他，政治经济学从根本上关注的还是人类。从这一点上看，全世界都应当对斯密说一声“谢谢”。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！