Page 57 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

46 Chapter One

similar ambition undoubtedly directed Innis in his warnings against undue
present-mindedness and space bias. Because they did not resign themselves
to the seemingly inevitable, these two critical writers were in truth more ide-
alist, more optimistic, and less cynical than the scores of their “administra-
tive” colleagues who were then contracting with the military-industrial estab-
lishment. Such optimism, idealism, and integrity are at the very root of
critical political economy.

NOTES

1. The opening paragraphs of this section draw upon chapter 2 of my book Culture
of Ecology: Reconciling Economics and Environment (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2006).
2. Cf. Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication (Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications, 1996), 25. Also, Robert W. McChesney, “The Political
Economy of Communication and the Future of the Field,” Media, Culture and Soci-
ety 22, no. 1 (2000): 110.
3. Innis, for example, regarded Adam Smith as “the Mount Everest of political
economy.” Harold Innis, “The Passing of Political Economy” (1938; reprint, Harold
Innis, Staples, Markets, and Cultural Change, ed. Daniel Drache, Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 439.
4. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776; reprint, ed. Edwin Cannan, New York: The Modern Library, 1937), 395.
5. Smith wrote several books, these two being, however, the most famous. See
Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition: From
Leonardo to Hegel (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 342.
6. Roger Backhouse, The Ordinary Business of Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2002), 123; Warren J. Samuels, The Classical Theory of Economic Pol-
icy (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1966), 21–97; D. D. Raphael and A.
L. Macfie, “Introduction,” in Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indi-
anapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1982), 21.
7. In Smith’s Preface to the sixth edition of Moral Sentiments he did remark that
the two volumes were intended to be part of a “tripartite system of social science cov-
ering the domains of moral rules, government and law, and market.” Warren J.
Samuels, personal communication, December 21, 2003. See also Backhouse, The Or-
dinary Business of Life, 123.
8. Smith wrote: “Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a self-
ish principle. When I sympathize with your sorrow . . . I consider what I should suf-
fer if I was really you. . . . My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not
in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish.” Adam Smith, The
Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; reprint, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, In-
dianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1982), 317.