Smith, Turgot, and the ‘Four Stages’ Theory

Abstract

In the early years after the war, when I was a lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at Glasgow University, I became very interested in the work of the members of the so-called Scottish Historical School, which Roy Pascal had rescued from oblivion in his remarkable article of 1938.2 I was impressed in particular by John Millar, whose work was pervaded by a theory of history and society which seemed to me to be a kind of preview of the materialist conception of history upon which I had been brought up in my revolutionary youth. I was interested also, of course, in the work of the other members of the School — notably that of Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, and Adam Smith; but these three seemed to be rather shadowy, peripheral figures in the face of the gigantic presence of the great John Millar.