Tag / Adam Smith

by doctormcgrail

Economics and the Value of Nations: Why Adam Smith Still Matters

Why, in the 21st century, should we still read Adam Smith? Often hailed as the “father of modern economics,” Smith is just as often dismissed as outdated—an 18th century thinker writing before industrialisation, automation, and the complex global economy we know today. Yet, as a closer reading of The Wealth of Nations (1776) reveals, Smith’s ideas remain deeply relevant—not because they offer final answers, but because they expose enduring questions about labour, value, and the structure of modern society.

This blog post offers a concise exploration of Smith’s place in economic thought, drawing on the evolution of economic theory in his time, his intellectual influences, and a critical evaluation of both his insights and his limitations. My blog is a shorter version of a longer (6,000 word) article which can be read here: Economics & the Value of Nations: A Snapshot on Smithian Scholarship.

The Modern Relevance of Adam Smith
At first glance, Smith’s world seems distant from ours. But on closer inspection, the society he described—what he termed “commercial society”—is the same one we inhabit today. Its defining feature is waged labour: people earning a living by selling their capacity to work. While earlier societies relied primarily on slaves, serfs, or domestic servants, Smith observed the rise of wage labour as the dominant social relationship—a condition that continues today.

Importantly, Smith wrote at a moment of transition. The social structure of modern capitalism had already emerged, even if the technological form—industrial machinery—had not yet fully developed. This gave him a unique vantage point. Without the distraction of machines, Smith could focus more clearly on the social relationships underpinning economic life, particularly how wages, profit, and rent are distributed across social classes.

Later economists, captivated by mechanisation, often misread these relationships. Thinkers such as Jean-Baptiste Say even treated machines as independent “factors of production” deserving income in their own right—an idea foreign to Smith. By contrast, Smith’s emphasis remained firmly on human labour and its organisation.

Competing Economic Theories in Smith’s Time
To understand Smith’s contribution, we need to situate him within the intellectual context of the late 18th century. Two dominant schools of thought shaped economic debate:


• Mercantilism
• Physiocracy


Smith’s work engages critically with both.

Mercantilism: Wealth Through Trade
Mercantilism argued that national wealth comes from maintaining a positive balance of trade—exporting more than you import. Rooted in the practical experience of merchants, it framed economic life as a process of buying cheap and selling dear.
However, mercantilist policies required heavy government intervention. States enforced monopolies, controlled trade routes, imposed tariffs, and maintained colonial systems to ensure profits. Colonies were restricted to trading with their “mother country,” creating protected markets that enriched merchants and, by extension, state revenues.

While this system could generate wealth for the metropole (e.g. Britain), it did so at a cost: higher prices, reduced competition, and greater inequality. Workers, in particular, bore the burden of inflated costs and heavy taxation. Despite Smith’s powerful critique, mercantilist policies persisted well into the 19th century, only gradually giving way to freer trade principles.

Physiocracy: Wealth from Nature
In contrast, the French Physiocrats located the source of wealth in nature, especially agriculture. Observing that agricultural production yields a surplus—planting one seed produces many—they concluded that only agriculture (and extractive industries like mining or fishing) truly created new wealth.

Urban industries, by comparison, were deemed “sterile.” A jeweller might reshape silver into necklaces, but the total quantity of silver remains unchanged. Physiocracy also introduced a powerful methodological innovation: systematic data collection. By tracking agricultural output, population, and economic activity, the Physiocrats could analyse economic growth empirically. They also advocated laissez-faire policies, arguing that government interference—such as price controls on bread—often made economic problems worse.

Smith’s Synthesis and Breakthrough
Adam Smith absorbed ideas from both traditions, particularly during his time in France, where he engaged directly with leading Physiocrats. Yet his contribution lies in transcending their limitations. Smith agreed that production is central to wealth, but he rejected the idea that only agriculture is productive. Instead, he identified human labour, across all sectors, as the true source of value.

His famous example of the pin factory illustrates this point. By dividing labour into specialised tasks, productivity increases dramatically—even without new machinery. This increase is not natural but social, arising from the organisation of work.
Smith also challenged the Physiocratic dismissal of trade. For him, exchange is not sterile; it motivates production. People produce not just for subsistence but for markets, responding to demand shaped by social needs.

Class Structure and Economic Insight
One of Smith’s enduring contributions is his clear articulation of a three-class system:

• Workers (earning wages)
• Capitalists (taking profit)
• Landowners (taking rent)

This framework remains influential today. Unlike earlier thinkers, Smith recognised the shared characteristics within each class. Workers across sectors are united by their dependence on wages, while business owners share a profit motive.

The Importance of Smith’s Library
Modern scholarship has deepened our understanding of Smith through the study of his personal library. This “hermeneutic” approach—interpreting Smith through the texts he read—reveals the intellectual world that shaped his thinking. Smith’s library contained works in multiple languages, travel accounts, and early economic texts like Richard Cantillon’s (1755 [1720s]) Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. By tracing Smith’s references back to these sources, we see how he adapted and reinterpreted earlier ideas.

For instance, from Cantillon, Smith draws insights about wages needing to cover not just workers’ survival but also population reproduction. This reflects a deep awareness of the relationship between labour, subsistence, and demographic growth.
Smith was also aware (from Cantillon’s work) that workers are perfectly capable of producing double what they require to survive.

The Labour Theory of Value: Insight and Problem
At the heart of Smith’s economics lies a powerful but problematic idea: that labour is the measure of value. In principle, this means that the value of goods reflects the (generic) labour time required to produce them.

However, Smith also recognises an apparent contradiction: workers do not receive the full value of what they produce. Instead, part of this value becomes profit for employers (and rent for landowners; interest for bankers; taxes for politicians).
This creates a theoretical tension. If goods exchange at their labour values, how can workers consistently receive less than the value of their labour?

Smith never fully resolves this issue. Later economists attempted to “correct” him, often abandoning the labour theory of value altogether. But another interpretation suggests that Smith was uncovering a real feature of capitalist society: a mismatch between value as a universal measure (of human effort) and the labour time of wage labourers (and how it can be the ‘measure’ of itself).

My longer article (link above) outlines this contradiction using the analogy of Kilograms as a measure of weight (which cannot then appear on the scales as a ‘Kilogram of Kilograms’). Marx resolved the ‘problem’ by noting that wage labourers are not paid for their ‘labour time’ (but for the product of their ‘recreation’ time, namely. their labour power.

Wealth vs. Value: A Crucial Distinction

Another key issue in Smith’s work is his use of the term “wealth.” He famously argues that labour is the source of all wealth, but this is only partly correct. Nature clearly provides wealth—sunlight, minerals, natural resources. What nature does not provide is value, which is a social construct arising from exchange. Smith’s failure to clearly distinguish between wealth and value leads to confusion. A more accurate title for his book might have been The Value of Nations, emphasising the social processes that determine economic outcomes.

Conclusion: A Thinker Worth Revisiting
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations remains a foundational text not because it offers flawless theory, but because it grapples with fundamental questions that are still unresolved in “mainstream” economic theory:

• What creates value?
• Why is value distributed in the way it is? [What is role of violence / exploitation?]
• What role do labour, nature, and exchange play in economic life?


Consequently, Smith’s insights into labour, class, and productivity continue to shape economic thought. At the same time, his unresolved contradictions—particularly around value and wages—highlight the complexity of the system he sought to understand. Far from being outdated, Smith’s work invites us to think more critically about the modern economy. His legacy lies not in providing final answers, but in opening a field of inquiry that remains in dispute.

by doctormcgrail

Utopia Lost in Language: Rethinking the Politics of Possibility

What if utopia isn’t a perfect place—but a way of thinking and acting, in common?

For many people, the word “utopia” conjures images of unrealistic fantasies, naïve idealism, or even dangerous political experiments gone wrong. In everyday conversation, it often means something impossible: a dream that can’t be realised. But this understanding is deeply misleading—and more importantly, it limits our political imagination at a time when we need it most.

Rather than being a fixed blueprint for a perfect society, utopia can be understood as a political technique and a shared language for exploring social possibilities. Utopia is not simply a destination; it is an activity. It lives in how we imagine, question, critique, and attempt to transform the world around us.

Utopia as Practice, Not Blueprint

The problem begins when utopia is reduced to a picture: a finished model of “the good society.” These static visions—whether architectural masterplans or literary dream worlds—tend to close down discussion rather than open it up. They present a completed answer rather than an ongoing process.

But utopia, at its most powerful, is something else entirely. It is what happens when people begin to ask: what could be different? It is the act of imagining alternatives and bringing those imaginings into public conversation. In that sense, utopia is always grounded in the present. It is something we do, not something that is only dreamt about. Crucially, utopia does not fail because people imagine too much, as anti-utopians (like Gray, 2007) claim. It fails when imagination is suppressed—when social conditions discourage some people from thinking beyond what already exists. The real danger is not utopian dreaming, but absence of it.

The Problem with How We Talk About Utopia

Part of the difficulty lies in language. We often talk about utopia in ways that create confusion or shut down debate. For instance, utopia is frequently treated as synonymous with a “perfect world.” This conflation ignores the richness of utopian thinking and reduces it to a narrow ideal. Similarly, the common opposition between “utopia” (good) and “dystopia” (bad) oversimplifies matters. It suggests that utopian thinking is naïvely optimistic, while dystopian thinking is realistic or critical.

In reality, both are part of the same process. Dystopias are not anti-utopian—they are warnings, critiques, and provocations. They show us what could go wrong, often in order to spur us into action. Likewise, many so-called utopias contain elements that are troubling or exclusionary. Even the term “apocalypse” is misunderstood. Commonly associated with destruction, it simply means “revelation.” Apocalyptic thinking can reveal hidden truths about society and provoke transformative change. If we want better conversations about society and its future, we need a more flexible and inclusive language of utopia—one that reflects its diversity and its role as a tool for inquiry.

A Broader View: Utopia as an Umbrella Concept

Instead of treating utopia as a single idea, I consider it as an umbrella term covering many different kinds of imaginative activity. Under this umbrella, I include:

  • Eutopias: visions of better (‘good’) societies
  • Dystopias: warnings about impaired or failing worlds
  • Arcadias: nostalgic longings for a lost past
  • Apocalyptias: visions of transformation or revelation

Each of these expresses a different relationship to time—past, present, or future—but all are rooted in the present moment of imagination and action, in the Utopian thinker. This broader approach allows us to see utopian thinking everywhere: in political movements, philosophical arguments, cultural narratives, and everyday moral decisions.

The Utopian Imagination in Action

One of the most important aspects of utopian thinking is its connection to imagination. This is not just about fantasy; it is about the ability to place ourselves in different situations and perspectives.

Adam Smith (1759), for instance, argued that we make moral judgments through “indirect sympathy” (VII. iii. I. 3)—our capacity to imagine what it feels like to be someone else. This imaginative leap allows us to evaluate social arrangements, even those we have never experienced. To judge something like private property, we need the capacity to imagine a world where private property doesn’t exist. That “no place” (or not yet) is precisely where utopia operates: as a space of critical reflection. In this sense, utopia is not escapism. It is a method for understanding the present by imagining alternatives.

Is Dystopia Really So Bad?

If we rethink utopia in this broader sense, the boundary between utopia and dystopia starts to blur. Take dystopian fiction (a la Huxley and Orwell). These narratives often depict bleak or oppressive worlds—but they also rely on imagination, critique, and the possibility of change. In fact, dystopias can be powerful tools for political engagement, forcing us to confront uncomfortable truths and consider how things might be different (new possibilities).

Even the idea of a “perfect” society can be troubling (see Zamyatin’s [1924] We). A society that eliminates imagination or dissent in the name of stability risks becoming stagnant or oppressive. In this context, a flawed, changing world may be preferable to a static “perfect” one. This raises an important question: is it better to live in an imperfect world where change is possible, or a perfect one where nothing can ever change?

When Utopia Becomes Stagnation

A key danger arises when a utopian vision becomes fixed—what we might call an “autotopia,” a system that simply reproduces itself endlessly. In such a world, imagination is seen as a threat (as with Zamyatin’s OneState). Stability becomes the highest value, and any deviation must be suppressed. This can happen in political systems, economic structures, educational practices, or even cultural norms.

The irony is that a “perfect” system can become lifeless. Without the possibility of change, critique, or innovation, it loses the very qualities that make social life dynamic and meaningful. Human beings are not like machines that can simply repeat the same patterns indefinitely. We are imaginative, questioning, and creative—and any society that ignores this, risks becoming deeply alienating.

Utopia and Capitalism

Utopian thinking is not limited to radical or revolutionary ideas. It also operates within and reproduces existing systems, including capitalism. Karl Marx’s (1867) description of the capitalist marketplace (at the beginning of Capital), for example, can be read as a form of utopia: a world of perfect equality, where individuals freely exchange goods and “mutually recognise” (Chp2) each other’s rights. This “ideal” (abstracted) version of capitalism purposely strips away real historical social inequalities like slavery, xenophobia, racism, or sexism—it is a theoretical version of how capitalism could / should work.

Of course, Marx’s point was that even with this idealised scenario (a vision reformers strive for), exploitation persists (see Bonefeld, 2023). The system still depends on unequal outcomes, despite its language of fairness and equality. This demonstrates how utopian thinking can be used critically. By imagining a system in its purest form (not its contaminated reality), Marx exposes its contradictions and limitations.

At the same time, this exposition (process) highlights how defenders of capitalism rely on utopian ideas—promoting visions of innovation, growth, and progress. Utopia, then, is not owned by any one ideology. It is a shared tool, open to all. Utopia is a process we all take a ‘risk’ in promoting.

Why Utopia Matters Today

We live in a time when utopia is often dismissed as unrealistic or dangerous. But this dismissal has consequences. Without utopian thinking, we run the alternate risk of accepting the status quo as inevitable. We lose the ability to imagine alternatives, to critique existing systems, and to strive for something better. Thus, utopia, understood as a technique and a language, is essential for democratic life. It allows us to explore possibilities, challenge assumptions, and engage collectively in shaping the future. Importantly, this is not the task of a select few (e.g., the utopian ‘novelist’). Utopian thinking should not be confined to writers, philosophers, or political leaders. It should be communalised: open to everyone.

Reclaiming the Language of Possibility

In conclusion, if utopia has been “lost” it is not because the idea itself has failed. It is because our language around it has become restrictive and confused. To reclaim utopia, we need to broaden how we talk about it. There is a need to recognise its diversity, its flexibility, and its presence in everyday life.

Above all, we need to see utopia not as a distant dream, but as an ongoing practice—a way of engaging with the world and imagining how it could be different. Because the future is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we create. And utopia, in all its forms, is the language through which that creation begins.

References:

Bonefeld, W. (2023) A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation London: Routledge.

Gray, J. (2007) Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. London: Macmillan.

Marx, K. (1867) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Pelican Library. [1976 edition; trans. Ben Fowkes]. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Smith, A. (1759) Theory of Moral Sentiments. [2012 edition; edited by Knud Haakonssen]. Cambridge Texts in the Philosophy of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zamyatin, E. (1924) We. [1993 edition; translated by Clarence Brown]. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Links:

This is a shortened (blog style) article of a 6,000-word essay with the same argument (fully referenced with direct quotations).  This longer version can be found at:

McGrail, B. A. (2026) Utopia Lost (in Language): Rethinking Utopia and the Politics of Possibility [PDF] (14 pages / 28 minute read). Available at: Utopia Lost (In Language): Rethinking Utopia and the Politics of Possibility

Acknowledgments:

An earlier (2024) version of this blog (and essay) was written in response to (and participant / presenter in) the Arts & Humanities Research Council (ARHC) funded Workshop Series on Utopia and Failure, organised and led by Prof. Mathias Thaler (Edinburgh), Prof. Davina Cooper (KCL), and Dr Ruth Houghton (Newcastle). I received essential and supportive feedback from Mathias, Davina, and Ruth, to whom I would like to express my gratitude.  The usual disclaimers apply.

by doctormcgrail

AI? The Technology of Small Boat Vagabondage

In 16th century England laws were enacted to prevent dispossessed peasants from roaming the countryside and pouring into town centres.  Rules against beggars were enforced using draconian measures such as cutting or branding miscreants, and deporting them to their place of origin, their parish of birth.  The Poor Law system was established on the basis that benefits (alms) would only be given to the impoverished within the boundaries of their birth parish, thereby effectively confining dispossessed peasants to impoverishment within the district where they were ‘dispossessed’.  Identifying such authorised beggars was made possible by forced ‘badge’ wearing, like yellow Star of David identification in Nazi Germany. And the idea gives food for thought regarding the use of ‘badging’ within contemporary online education!

What caused the 16th century crisis of vagabondage in England was not just ‘technology’ (new farming methods and implements) but a new social relationship, which changed the balance of power between producer peasants and expropriating ‘superiors’.  The nature of the latter also went through change, with the ‘stewards’ of ancestral common lands being either ousted and outlawed completely (the dissolution of the church and monastic estates) or converted into an absolute owner of ‘private’ property.  Though technical change (following the Black Death and population decline) played a role, this initially gave the whip hand to the peasant labourers, who were in short supply (Black Death in 1348 > Peasant Revolt in 1381).  Labourers incomes rose in 15th century England.  With the old ‘relationships’ in crisis, the (ruling class) reaction was to change the connection between (direct) producers – the peasants – and the means of production – the land.  Dispossession (propertyless-ness) became the defining characteristic of capital accumulation in creating a class of waged labourers destined to scour the earth in search of sustenance and survival – first in England, then Ireland and Scotland, before the ‘colonies’ in East and West became the main means of ‘absorption’.

In the 21st century, what, if anything, has really changed?

On the one hand the bourgeois ruling ‘sensibility’ still decries roaming beggars and vagabonds, although the land over which such dispossessed people ‘roam’ is much larger – it is the globe.  Yet, on the other, the very same ‘sensibility’ lauds advances in technology as either part of the ‘inevitable’ march of progress or as the saviour of the system – a key means of ‘restoring’ the profitability of companies forced to increase productivity on an infinite basis, an important aspect of which is to compete with companies using cheaper labour power in distant realms.  Of course, cheaper workers is a sign of already existing abundant supply in those realms and not just skill or technological differentiation.  There is a constant imbalance which both pushes and draws the available labour power from one pole to the other.  Vagabondage (and its systems of badging, branding, placing in stocks, and incarceration) has become global, though there is no global equivalent of England’s 16th century absolute monarch.

What of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a new technology entering this process?  It has been claimed it will lead to another ‘industrial revolution’ with far reaching consequences for those in ‘middle class jobs’, that is, within the ‘metropole’.  Of course, if this is the case, then pressure on ‘wages’ could be relieved as far as employers are concerned – there will be an excess supply of skilled labour power where it is needed.

But application of AI will be across all industries, increasing output from regional and national firms, ultimately turning them into ones which need global markets as they outgrow their national context.  The pressures on the existing system of global vagabondage would be clear, and this is where a lesson from the past would need to be learned.  The old Poor Law system collapsed because it became untenable to keep workers in their parish of birth.  First, it chocked off the supply of labour power from where it was most needed and, second, it raised the costs of maintaining an ‘industrial reserve army’ (reliant on ‘benefits’ or revenue expenditure) out of local taxation in an already underdeveloped economy.

A drive towards greater ‘growth’ in the economy is a contemporary, common mantra, and one under which it is presumed (claimed) that ‘growth’ will benefit all classes.  But the historical record of neo-liberalism demonstrates this to be a myth, with successive ‘booms’ not only leading to cyclical busts but heightened levels of inequality between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ (precarious) workers.  Gordon Brown’s ‘longest boom’ was followed by the longest recession and period of austerity.  On what basis do proponents of growth claim that a new spurt of ‘economic growth’, based on AI technologies, will somehow, miraculously, lead to an alternate outcome (greater equality) this time around? Or, more predictably, will it lead to just another ‘bust’?  Isn’t AI going to exacerbate the current migration of labour power as it restructures the world by garnering even more skill and wealth in a few, already overdeveloped, places? The moral of the tale: if you don’t fancy dealing with a migration crisis then stop accumulating ‘capital’, because that’s not progress.

by doctormcgrail

Exploiting “low science capital”

The university access programme I teach on (for several years now) is currently being expanded to cover (natural) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses. Previously it only covered arts, humanities and social sciences. The expansion is to be welcomed since there should be routes into the ‘natural sciences’ for adult returners at any university and not just the ‘cultural’ realm. Plus, it would be good to have more interplay between natural and social scientists (and, of course, sciences).

The inaccurate ‘adoption’ of natural scientific ideas within social science and theory (or discourse) has been widely and famously criticised, via well-known examples which now include late-19th century ‘Social Darwinism’ (or evolution understood as ‘survival of the richest’) and the late-20th century Alan Sokal ‘hoax’, involving Sokal’s submission of a tongue-in-cheek paper to the postmodern journal Social Text (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/). Whilst media coverage of the latter focused on the journal’s editors not being able to tell genuine from false ‘social science’ (or ‘sociology’), Sokal’s subsequent work made it clear that, as a physicist, what most upset or concerned him was inaccurate appropriation of natural scientific concepts by those who didn’t understand (nor desire to understand) them and, instead, turned such concepts into mere “jargon”, or as The Atlantic magazine put it, in 2018, “jabber”.

The argument of the physical or natural scientists is that their concepts are based in a reality which human ‘thinking’ can reflect (correspond to) but not construct, and hence it is folly to claim that concepts rooted in properties external to human will – the properties of the physical world, such as the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere – are somehow ‘socially constructed’. In this fashion Sokal did contemporary social sciences a service by simply reminding us of Thomas Reid’s aim in developing Scottish Common Sense philosophy, which was to save philosophy from becoming “ridiculous” (Broadie in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid).

Of course, what is good for the goose must be good for the gander!  Hence, it is always interesting to see natural scientists adopt what are socially-constructed languages, concepts and belief-systems!

As part of my department’s expansion of access routes into natural degrees, new staff with natural ‘science’ qualifications (I’ll drop the pretence that social sciences are treated as ‘science’ from this point on) had to be recruited, along with a new Head of Educational Transitions. So far, so good. On completion of the recruitment process the candidates were introduced to the wider department – a procedure that involved presentation of personal statements about what the new staff hoped to achieve. There should be nothing surprising in this induction process, but what caught my eye was reference, by one presentation, to how the target audience of prospective students was to be understood or, if you prefer, framed; this was as individuals with “low science capital”.

If the phrases “low science knowledge” or “little scientific understanding (and/or awareness)” had been used then I would not have perceived a problem. But the word “capital” in the phrase indicated the adoption of societal “jargon” (or ‘jabber’) by a natural scientist who doesn’t know what the word means, other than what it means to ‘laypersons’ (not social scientists) around them in everyday general use, no doubt where the term has been ‘picked up’. But capital is not, you (will) see, within Sokal’s definition of ‘science’, that is, pertaining to:

“an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in “eternal” physical laws”.

(Sokal)

What my colleague intended, at heart, was that there are students or potential students with little (maybe ‘no’) understanding of science, and that their role (our department’s role) is to build such knowledge and awareness through education. These students would, no doubt, also lack skills and ‘academic literacies’, or general attributes and capacities (mental and physical) which can be built upon, via practice and repetition (say, in doing lab work and writing reports), in an effort to turn them into ‘scientists’. This is all well and good.

However, usage of the word ‘capital’ managed to sneak in, like a Trojan Horse, a whole set of other connotations. On gaining their new attributes, capacities and skills, our trained up students will go forth (with these additional elements and extensions to self) to exploit them (and themselves) as ‘capital’. After all, what does it mean to have ‘low capital’, whether of the scientific or any other variety (social; financial; industrial; cultural)? That is, we won’t be turning students into scientists per se, but scientists for sale! They will be employable scientists, scientists on the market, and scientists with a ‘load of’ or ‘lots of’ capital.

This usage of the term ‘capital’ is not surprising, nor should it be. It is typical of early 21st century Scotland where the sociological terminology of sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu has been broadly adopted and spread into popular culture, including mainstream mass research events like the BBC’s ‘class calculator’: a website where you fill in your details and the computer informs you which (of 7) social classes you ‘belong to’, based on your self-reported accumulation of capitals – social, cultural and financial.

Where ‘scientific capital’ fits into this realm of capitals I am uncertain, but it probably sits somewhere between cultural and financial. The cultural bit is that you can ‘talk’ science and therein impress potential employers, who also happen to ‘talk’ science and see themselves (well, a younger version of themselves) in the ‘candidate’ (i.e. you) – ‘cultural capital’, by the way, never gets beyond thinking in terms of hierarchical systems as the candidate is always flogging themselves to someone or something, like ‘the market’. The financial bit is that once you’ve landed a job in ‘science’ you are more highly valued than you were before. Neither quite explain ‘science capital’ since there is an aspect of just enjoying the knowledge, which somehow has to be treated or recognised as ‘capital’! Nevertheless, no matter which ‘type’ of capital we are considering or thinking of they all share one thing in common, namely, that all forms of capital are possessions. The student who studies ‘science’ will end up possessing science and move from having “low” to “high” science capital.

But the cultural context to this usage of the term ‘capital’ merely indicates the folly of the culture.

Capital as a Social Relation, and not a ‘Thing’

The whole of Chapter 1 of Marx’s opus Capital (1867) can be thought of in terms of making one core point: capital is a human relationship and not a ‘thing’ (to be possessed), but the social process (relation) which produces capital also entails commodity fetish whereby relations between people appear (or take the form) of relations between things.  Marx makes the joke about never having seen a coat walk into a shop and exchange itself for a roll of linen.  What is actually taking place is the exchange of labour (effort) of the tailor in return for that of the weaver (a la Adam Smith’s labour theory of value, presented at the start of the Wealth of Nations). It might look as if the tailor ‘possesses’ coats for sale, but it is really the tailor who is possessed by the need to continuously produce coats, which they have no personal need for, just in order to ‘exist’.

The duality (relation-appearing-as-thing, and vice versa, thing-appearing-as-relation) does not exist purely ‘in the mind’. Hence, Smith provided two definitions of ‘capital’. First, he defines capital as all the ‘things’ in society, produced by humans (i.e. not natural products like metals in the ground or wild fish), covering buildings, bridges, machines, existing stock (raw materials), etc. As Isaac Rubin notes, this is the ‘wrong’ definition – it describes the appearance of ‘things’. Basically, capital has to, at some point in its reproductive cycle, take the form of useful (wanted) ‘things’, though these can include intangibles such as insurance, a story, a song, a poem, or an idea (a patent). But this ‘form’ taking is always momentary and passing to what capital is – a relationship. Second, Smith defines capital as a ‘fund’ which produces a ‘return’. For Rubin this is the ‘correct’ definition and reveals the fundamentals about what capital is – a human relationship where, to use Smith’s phrasing, one person ‘shares in’ the effort of another.

A Quick and Easy Example

Let’s say you go out with a friend for a drink and they end up in such a state that they need to stay the night with you (sleeping on your sofa). In this instance your sofa is nothing but a useful object. The next day the two of you go out again and the same thing happens. You enjoy your new routine and before long you have a new housemate.

At this point you decide that you don’t mind your friend staying with you, but they are going to have to give you something for the use of your sofa, namely, ‘rent’ in the form of money (say £10 per night – the amount does not matter). At this point your sofa goes through a magical transformation into a piece of capital. It is no longer a merely useful object – having a use value – but has taken on the means of raising or making a ‘return’ (in the monetary form) in the form of ‘rent’ (which meets Smith’s second definition). The sofa, despite being owned by you with no change to its material form, now has an exchange value attached to it. The sofa is now a piece of ‘capital’ – or part of a social relationship of monetary exchange – which ‘earns’ you £10 a night. Of course, it is your friend who has to ‘earn’ the £10 each day to pay you the ‘rent’. It is the changing form of your relationship with your ‘friend’ (now in inverted commas) which has translated the sofa from simple useful object to piece of capital. The sofa’s definition as capital rests on a particular and peculiar kind of social relationship and not on its material form. It has to be noted, since this is very significant, that your ‘friend’ is no longer your friend (or just your friend) because your relationship is now one of landlord to tenant!

Thus, capital is a social relationship and not a ‘thing’. Students, or anyone, with ‘low science capital’ do not lack possession of a ‘thing’ but stand ‘low’ in a social relationship where they can get very little (or nothing at all) in exchange for their skills (their labour power). Subsequently, aiming to raise or enhance such a person’s ‘science capital’ (make them a saleable commodity) is a different goal or purpose than wanting to advance their socially-useful knowledge in a ‘universalist’ sense (to the betterment of ‘humanity’ or society as whole, or even to their own emancipated sense of self). Rather, the goal in discussing ‘low science capital’ is to feed the market with what the market (a peculiar form of social relationship) wants and, of course, raise the ‘return’ that can be had on any ‘investment’ made in such science education and science students (even when they themselves are to be one of the many ‘beneficiaries’ of their own exploitation).

Moral of the Tale

As Sokal notes, inaccurate appropriation of scientific concepts compounds human ignorance. This point backs up Adam Smith’s reflection on the negative influences of the division of labour, which are apt to make us all stupid and ignorant. It is also a reminder of the need for a broad-based ‘generalist’ education as one means of overcoming the social problems of the (social) division of labour.