While philosophy students accept as self-evident the need to immerse themselves in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, few physics students, by contrast, ever peruse Aristotle’s Physics, Newton’s Principia or Einstein’s “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” Students of economics for the most part have inherited the disdain for classic texts of their natural-science colleagues. The sense which most students get from their lecturers is that they can benefit little from a work like The Wealth of Nations when there are modern texts available explaining the most up-to-date developments in the field.

Yet any modern introductory economics textbook refers to concepts such as comparative advantage, the invisible hand, the theory of labor value, the famous paradox that diamonds are more expensive than water even though water is critical for the maintenance of life while diamonds have few direct uses, and the advantages of the division of labor—all ideas that made their first appearance in The Wealth of Nations. Those who read the original work have the opportunity to study the origins of these concepts, and to catch a glimpse of the thinking processes and analytic techniques of one of history’s most influential thinkers. In reading the book, one can still learn not only valuable lessons in history and intellectual development, but also economic truths that will probably be relevant as long as human societies exist.

The Wealth of Nations placed political economics on the center stage of world history, and it has never left. Especially now, when a worldwide debate is taking place over the limits of the welfare state, Smith’s treatise has much to offer in understanding the principles behind the free market approach. The Hebrew translation fills an important gap on the bookshelf of classics translated into Hebrew.

 

As for the quality of the translation, Yariv Eitam and Shimshon Inbal deserve praise for composing a faithful translation which does not abridge any part of the first three books of The Wealth of Nations. The translators chose a formal Hebrew syntax, as befitting a classic text, while at the same time writing in a clear and readable style. A comparison of the original text and its translation often reveals that the latter is a good deal easier to understand. The Wealth of Nations was, of course, written in a late-eighteenth century English, posing a degree of difficulty to the modern reader which the translators wisely and competently alleviated, without compromising on fidelity to the original.

The Open University and the Bialik Institute also added a useful introduction covering a variety of topics, including biographical information about the author, an explanation of concepts appearing in the book and a summary of Smith’s economic philosophy. It also offers the modern reader a sense of the basic economic framework extant at the time The Wealth of Nations was written, since Smith assumed that this framework, as well as a number of other concepts which have become archaic, would be familiar enough to his readers to require no explanation.

Nevertheless, the translation has its shortcomings. Despite the introduction, a reader lacking expertise in English economic history will have a hard time handling the book’s many references to archaic weights, measures, currencies and agricultural terms. The translators could have aided their readers by supplying explanatory notes detailing, for example, what the average worker earned for a month’s labor in the eighteenth century, what the exchange rate was for the various currencies mentioned in the book and what was considered a luxury item as opposed to a necessity in those days.

Most inexcusable, however, is the omission of Books IV and V—which together comprise more than half the work—from the translation. In his introduction, Haim Barkai underscores the importance of these books: “It can be said that the theoretical background which [Smith] developed in the first two books, and the economic-social history which is covered in the third book, are in essence a foreword” to what follows, while “the fifth and final book of The Wealth of Nations is devoted to setting out the boundaries of the role of government and its proper activities in economies whose main economic activity occurs through free markets, and can serve today as an excellent guide to all those participating in the current debate over the limits of the welfare state and the argument taking place in Eastern Europe and China over the limits of central planning.”

Lacking the two books most relevant to the contemporary debate, the best that can be said for this edition of Adam Smith’s classic is that it is a good start to an important translation project. Every Hebrew reader who takes a serious interest in economic and intellectual history should add this book to his library, and hope that the task of translating The Wealth of Nations will some day see completion.