Governor Pownall of Virginia provided Smith with an insightful critique of
Wealth of Nations (Pownall 1766). Pownall, anticipating the language of Marx
and Fourier, understood that the object of economics was to analyze "those laws
of motion ... which are the source of, and give direction to, the labour of man
in the individual; which form that reciprocation of wants and intercommunion of
mutual supply that becomes the creating cause of community" (Pownall 1766, p.
337; also see Marx 1977, p. 92; and Ainikin 1975, p. 353).
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Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929