Using a large number of Scottish writers the themes of are all discussed. The distinctive Scottish contribution to the clash between natural liberty and socialist ideas is set out.[...]

A forgotten book by one of history's greatest thinkers reveals the surprising connections between happiness, virtue, fame, and fortune. "A great book. Makes you feel better about life, humanity, and yourself". (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan). Adam Smith became the patron saint of c[...]

Adam Smith is now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and the freedom of the individual? Or [...]

Adam Smith (1723-90) is celebrated all over the world as the author of "The Wealth of Nations" and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas--that of the "invisible hand" of the market and that "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinn[...]

Adam Smith (1723-1790) has been adopted by neoconservatives as the ideological father of unregulated business and small government. His "invisible hand" has become a commanding shorthand for politicians promoting laissez-faire economics, but Smith never used it in reference to free-market capitalism[...]

A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time Adam Smith (1723-1790) is now widely regarded as the greatest economist of all time. But what he really thought, and the implications of his ideas, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent a[...]

For most of the two hundred years or so that have passed since the publication of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's writings on political and economic questions have been viewed within a liberal capitalist perspective of nineteenth- and twentieth- century provenance. This essay in interpretation s[...]

Adam Smith is best known as the founder of scientific economics and as an early proponent of the modern market economy. Political economy, however, was only one part of Smith's comprehensive intellectual system. Consisting of a theory of mind and its functions in language, arts, science, and social [...]

Introduction by Robert Reich
Commentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner
Adam Smith's masterpiece, first published in 1776, is the foundation of modern economic thought and remains the single most important account of the rise of, and the principles behind, modern capitalism. Written in cl[...]