Ideology and Power

the chapter on International Trade and that on Public Finance. The concluding chapter is on Policy Prescription, The commentaries on the various aspects of classical political economy are based largely on second-hand sources. This can be understood when it is remembered that the book is meant for university students who have to do a paper on the history of economic thought. Even then one would wish the approach to have, been a little more integrated. For example, in spite of our author's appreciation that the purpose of classical political economy is to analyse the conditions of economic growth (chapter 3), he does not seem to have taken enough care, in the distribution of his materials, to highlight this feature. The arrangement of the chapters is such as tends to conceal the fact that the classical theory of Value and Distribution (at any rate, in so far as it proceeds from Adam Smith) is geared to the, idea of what the modern economists would call a 'steady state'. Adam Smith, indeed, fashions his theory of Value and Distribution with a view to analysing the conditions of a 'uniformly progressive economy'. It seems naive to interpret Smith's concept of