You’ll not find “the invisible hand” in wealth of nations as a major concept. It was a throw away phrase that wasn’t a central part of his writing.
You’ll not find “the invisible hand” in wealth of nations as a major concept. It was a throw away phrase that wasn’t a central part of his writing.
So many Smith apologists. I don't believe he should be demonized, and perhaps I am guilty of this by mentioning his name and 'satanic' in the same sentence, but he decidedly should not be lionized either. So many are drunk with history and shirk the work to evolve and transcend it. It doesn't matter if Adam Smith had morality and consideration, those are not ideals his writing ultimately bred, what matters are the free market ideals he clearly encouraged long ago, are now wildly out of control.
He described a natural process, he didn't invent it.
The invisible hand in markets is a natural property with an effect that's dependent on the environment the market operates within. He may be the first person to describe the process in writing (that we know of), but human beings have been experiencing the effects of this since we first attempted to trade with one another.
Have you actually read The Wealth of Nations?
He didn't encourage free market ideals, though! He warned us about them!
He encouraged relatively free international trade rather than mercantilism, and and a lot of people have turned that into being an advocate for "capitalism" against a preceding system, never paying attention to the fact that mercantilism was an international trade policy response by nations with emergent capitalist economies trying to figure out how best to operate within that system, not an alternative (much less predecessor) economic system.
AFAICT this is (like a lot of the modern mythology of capitalism) started as a response (in the sense of an attempt to build a similar-but-opposed structure, not a response in conversation like a rebuttal) 19th Century anti-capitalist critics (and, in particular, Marx), part of which was setting Smith up as the preceding and opposing figure; a kind of capitalist Christ so that Marx could be the anti-Christ.