A Nitpicky post on Matteo Pasquinelli's The Eye of the Master and its treatment of Adam Smith; with some Babbage and Hodgskin
I have been interviewed (here) at The University of Chicago’s The Inequality Podcast by the economist Steven Durlauf, who is a very gracious host. I mostly hold forth on Adam Smith, bu there is also a bit on evidential practices in social science at the end.
Charles T. Wolfe recently alerted me to the very entertaining The Eye of The master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence by Matteo Pasquinelli (Verso, 2023) One of its main claims is that Charles Babbage drew on Adam Smith to create a ‘Labour theory of Automation.’ In Pasquinelli’s narrative Marx then “overturned the industrialist perspective — ‘the eye of the master’ that was inherent in Babbage’s principles.” (p. 239 summarizing the first few chapters of the book.) A casual reader may be forgiven for thinking that the eye of the master is inherent in what Babbage inherited from Smith.
That Babbage drew on Smith has been reasonably well know. As Simon Schaffer noted (back in 1994) in Critical Enquiry, “Babbage's reinterpretation of Adam Smith's notion of the division of labour, and, as he emphasised, the fundamental principle of that division which allowed the sensitive analytical regulation of the process of manufacture. The 'Babbage principle', as it came to be known, applied equally to the regulation of the factory and the calculating engines.” (p. 208-209; emphasis added) This piece is cited by Pasquinelli (p. 104) to support the claim that Marx was “Babbage’s most penetrating London reader.”
Now, I think the casual reader of Pasquinelli is nudged into thinking that the eye of the master is really Smith’s stance in political economy. For, earlier in Pasquinelli’s book, Smith is treated as “the founder of modern economics” (a rather old-fashioned claim for such a cutting edge historical epistemologist) and said to be the first to “have sketched a labour theory of the machine in The Wealth of Nations (1776) by recognising that new machines are ‘invented’ by imitating the organisation of the tasks in the workplace.” (p. 62; emphasis added) My own view is that in many ways Smith is probably just repeating (with modest adjustments) what he read about pin factories in Diderot’s Encyclopédie.
This attribution to Smith has the air of plausibility, but I doubt that this claim — that the invention of new machines is patterned on the organisation of the tasks in the workplace — is in Smith. Pasquinelli quotes as supporting evidence, a passage from Smith’s Wealth of Nations, “The invention of all those machines by which labor is so much facilitated and abridged seems to have been originally owing to the division of labor.” All this says is that the division of labor is itself the ultimate cause of the invention of new machines.
In an accompanying footnote (n. 18) Pasquinelli writes “the passage continues,” but actually skips a few lines. I will quote more of the paragraph, and highlight the part Pasquinelli quotes:
I shall only observe…that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour. Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. But in consequence of the division of labour, the whole of every man's attention comes naturally to be directed towards some one very simple object. It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it admits of such improvement. A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures must frequently have been shown very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen in order to facilitate and quicken their particular part of the work. In the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his playfellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour. (WN book 1, chapter 1)
So, Smith’s claim is not, then, that the invention of new machines is patterned on the organisation of the tasks in the workplace. But rather that the division of labor, which sub-divides the operations of production, allows would-be-inventors on the work-floor the kind of focused attention on relatively connected operations that makes it possible to discern how one could introduce labor-saving devices so that one can enjoy one’s time better than in relatively tedious operations.
My own suspicion is that Pasquinelli’s view of Smith is inspired by Babbage, who quotes Smith in the two chapters (19 and 20) devoted to the division of labor. Here’s what Babbage writes in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 1832:
The division of labour suggests the contrivance of tools and machinery to execute its processes. When each processes, by which any article is produced, is the sole occupation of one individual, his whole attention being devoted to a very limited and simple operation, improvements in the form of his tools, or in the mode of using them, are much more likely to occur to his mind, than if it were distracted by a greater variety of circumstances. Such an improvement in the tool is generally the first step towards a machine. If a piece of metal is to be cut in a lathe, for example, there is one particular angle at which the cutting-tool must be held to insure the cleanest cut; and it is quite natural that the idea of fixing the tool at that angle should present itself to an intelligent workman.—Chapter 19, “On the Division of Labor,” Section 224. (Emphasis added)
The first quoted sentence may well be read as the ‘patterning on’ interpretation that Pasquinelli attributes to Smith. (But recall Schaffer’s ‘reinterpretation.’)
In the quoted passage, interestingly enough, Babbage’s ‘intelligent workman’ is far more elitist than Smith’s ‘common workmen’ and Smith’s repeated ‘boy’ (who wishes to play). I won’t repeat here my argument that Smith’s position is all about organizing, bottom up workplace ingenuity (recall this post).
That Babbage is reading Smith against the grain is not noted by Pasquinelli, who, thus, kind of implies that Smith originates the ‘eye of the master.’ This is reinforced in three episodes in Pasquinelli’s book. I treat them in reverse order. First, when Adam Ferguson is treated “Adam Smith’s mentor” (p. 111) and then is quoted from Marx as follows (the italicized parts are what’s quoted by Pasquinelli):
It may even be doubted, whether the measure of national capacity increases with the advancement of arts. Many mechanical arts, indeed, require no capacity; they succeed best under a total suppression of sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand, or the foot, is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most, where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men.—The original source is An essay on the history of civil society (1767)
As the first quoted sentence (by me) reveals, Ferguson is here criticizing a view he could have found in Hume’s essays (and Hume’s History, which he cites in his book). That is, the progress of the intellect and the growth of technology reinforce each other in wealthier societies. Smith’s own view is much closer to Hume’s position than Ferguson.
Ferguson was never Smith’s instructor or teacher. Now, that Marx thought that Ferguson was Smith’s teacher/instructor is not so strange. (He makes this claim several times in Volume 1 of Capital.) The History of Civil Society appeared before the Wealth of Nations, and to the best of my knowledge awareness of Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence was not widespread in the nineteenth century (the student manuscripts only got discovered later.) That there had been a priority dispute between Ferguson and Smith was surely not common knowledge then.
But Marx is actually more careful than Pasquinelli on the substance. He makes explicit that Smith’s view is only close to Ferguson’s in Book V, where Smith discusses the alienating effects of the division of labour on manual workers. And Marx notes, as Pasquinelli does not, that Smith also suggested ameliorative efforts (although — it is Marx, after all — in “homeopathic” dosage. [That’s from the translation Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels].) Smith’s grounds for amelioration are not just economic but also political. But I have described that in my book so won’t repeat that here.
The second episode occurs earlier than the one just discussed, on p. 86. We are told by Pasquinelli that socialists such as “Thompson an Hodgskin argued that knowledge is key to economic prosperity.” (p. 86) We are then informed, “Hodgskin complained that Adam Smith, the father of political economy, did not give a proper treatment to the subject.” (p. 86) Hodgskin’s (1827) Popular Political Economy is then quoted as follows:
Pasquinelli nicely suggests that Hodgskin then reclaims “the territory of knowledge production from the monopoly of state academies and science institutions.” (p. 86)
Now, the natural reading of Pasquinelli on Hodgskin is that this all an anti-Smithian polemic. I don’t think this is right. Hodgskin (not implausibly) is suggesting that Smith has been misrepresented by those who present to follow them, but are actually following his reception by Say (and, I would add, Ricardo): “and it is not a little curious, that both the name and the arrangement given to the science by Dr. Smith, should have been superseded in his own country, and even among those persons who are proud to call him their master and the founder of the science, by the name and arrangement of his French commentators.”
In fact, while indeed Hodgskin is sometimes critical of Smith, he is actually presenting himself as a kind of systematizer of Smith: “In The Wealth of Nations there are numberless scattered remarks, which show that Dr. Smith was aware of the influence of knowledge in adding to productive power; yet he has not dedicated any part of his book expressly to this subject.” Hodgskin then adds:
[Smith] has made no attempt whatever to explain the natural laws which regulate the increase of knowledge; and he has not examined the enactments of the legislator, with a view to ascertain in what respect or degree they promote or retard our acquaintance with the laws which regulate the material world.
I think this is actually evidence that Hodgskin was not familiar with Smith’s posthumously published (1795) Essays on Philosophical Subjects. But about that some other time. When he returns to Smith, Hodgskin reiterates his point and quotes a by now familiar passage:
Dr. Smith was not ignorant, I admit, of the effects of knowledge and observation in adding to productive power; for he has remarked, "that one of the circumstances which distinguished the colonists of North America from its former inhabitants was, that they carried with them a knowledge of agriculture and other useful arts superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations."† But he seems not to have been thoroughly sensible of their importance; and to have supposed, I think erroneously, as mental labourers subdivide their employments in the progress of society, as well as bodily labourers, that the effects of observation and knowledge might all be referred to his favourite principle. "The invention," he says, "of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged, seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour."* In consequence of this opinion, while Dr. Smith has developed at great length the influence of the latter principle, he has done little or nothing towards explaining the more important laws which regulate the increase of knowledge, and its influence over productive power. [I have added emphasis because I want to use that passage below.]
Hodgskin then explains what he takes to be the debate between himself and Smith to amount to:
So, the real issue between Hodgskin and Smith has nothing to do with Smith’s purported intellectual elitism or, as Pasquinelli implies, being a friend of “intellectual hierarchies.” (p. 87) But rather the role of the growth of population itself as an engine of change. And as Pasquinelli notes correctly, Hodgskin thinks it is the fundamental driver (although not the only one). Here’s how Hodsgkin puts it:
Of course, when Hodgskin goes on to explain how population does this, he draws explicitly and favorably on (you guessed it) Smith’s account of the role of the division of labor expanding markets. But about that some other time. (Bottom line nineteenth century socialists were often quite inspired by Smith.)
Third, and let me turn to first nudge. The significance of Smith to all of this is introduced by Pasquinelli, when we are informed that Smith’s ‘picture of the division of labour inspired de Prony, who designed accordingly a sort of collective algorithm for the calculus logarithms.” (p. 55-56, emphasis in original.) De Prony’s picture is explicitly intellectually hierarchical with on top the mathematicians, in the middle the calculators, and the bottom workers. And this intellectual hierarchy in turn maps onto all kinds of social/gender/class hierarchies. (p. 56) I haven’t read de Prony, but this is indeed the sense one gets from Babbage.
Babbage actually quotes a French pamphlet (in French) that recounts how de Prony encountered Smith’s Wealth of Nations in a shop.* That anecdote is all about serendipity and chance.*
As Pasquinelli notes, Babbage claims at the start of his second chapter (the twentieth of his book) on division of labor (the one where he discusses De Prony), "We have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of our readers that the division of labour can be applied with equal success to mental as to mechanical operations, and that it ensures in both the same economy of time.” (sect 241). As Babbage makes clear that’s basically a repetition of what he had demonstrated in the previous chapter.
But what neither Babbage nor Pasquinelli really makes clear is that Smith himself had already argued that mental operations, including the highest reaches of the mind (speculative philosophy), are part of and inside the division of labour. In a way this is clearly acknowledged by Hodgskin in the passage that I emphasized “and to have supposed, I think erroneously, as mental labourers subdivide their employments in the progress of society.”
Here’s the evidence from Smith: immediately after Smith discusses the pin example, he writes, “In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour are similar to what they are in this very trifling one; though, in many of them, the labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicity of operation.” Now, in Smith’s time, ‘arts’ really means what we would now call ‘engineering and science.’ That interpretation of Smith gets reinforced near the end of the Wealth of Nation’s chapter on the division of labor:
In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.
It’s very clear, then, that Hodgskin read Smith quite carefully. The more elitist Babbage not so; or, perhaps, Babbage wanted to claim even more originality than he merited.
Anyway, Pasquinelli is actually not that interested in Smith, so nothing I have said here undercuts his main argument. But I hope to have made clear in this nitpicky fashion that Smith is not responsible for the elitist sensibility we can find in Babbage. In fact, there is good reason why pre-Marxist, early socialists like Hodgskin took so much from Smith.
*”Se trouvant devant la boutique d'un marchand de livres. Il appercut la belle edition Anglaise de Smith, donnee a Londres en 1776: il ouvrit le livre au hazard. et tomba sur le premier chapitre, qui traite de la division du travail, et ou la fabrication des epingles est citee pour exemple. A peine avait-il parcouru les premieres pages, que, par une espece d'inspiration. il concut l'expedient de mettre ses logarithmes en manufacture comme les epingles.”