 He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” Smith not only excoriates division of labor and "homo economicus" but even prefigures Marx’s theory of alienation of labor.Thus, his opening paragraph sets up the standard conception of work specialization only to shatter it later on.Economists in the late 19th century—such as Francis Edgeworth, William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, and Vilfredo Pareto—built mathematical models on these economic assumptions.