Between abstract conjectures and concrete historical analysis: Adam Smith's four stages theory reconsidered

This article reconsiders the status of the so-called four stages theory in Smith's work, and its relationship with the historical accounts of the Lectures on Jurisprudence and Book III of the Wealth of Nations (WN). The article discusses some recent contributions to the literature, which claim that the stadial theory is either a kind of fictitious economic model or a counterfactual thought experiment completely divorced from historical experience. These interpretations usually conflate the stadial theory and what Smith presents as the "natural progress of opulence" in book III of WN, and accordingly imply there is a separation between a priori theory (economic model) and empirical history in Smith's work. We will argue that, though the FST is indeed presented as a thought experiment, the progression depicted in it from shepperding to agrarian and then to commercial societies, in Smith's vision, was actually followed by Antient Greece and Modern Europe. And that, therefore, it should not be conflated with the model of the "natural progress of opulence", but rather that they fulfill different analytical roles in Smith's work.