![]() In the US, congressmen invoked Smith’s name to bolster their positions on the tariff. ![]() ![]() Politicians found much in Smith to support their beliefs, but the ‘invisible hand’ had yet to become a catchphrase of capitalism. Politics became the arena in which his ideas – and economic ideas in general – were tried, tested and wielded. That founding-father status took Smith’s ideas far. Even when new textbooks and treatises on political economy were published, they were often compared with ‘the standard treatise on the Science of Political Economy’, in the words of one 19th-century American scholar.Īlso read: How Economics Is Forging Renewed Links With Social Sciences Initially, political economy was a branch of moral philosophy studying political economy would equip future statesmen with the principles for making a nation wealthy and happy.įrom the 1780s to the mid-19th century, The Wealth of Nations was often used as a textbook in political economy courses in the US. Smith would soon earn a reputation as the father of the science of political economy – what we now know as economics. Stewart’s effort marked the beginning of Smith’s association with ‘conservative economics’. She writes that he wanted to portray political economy as ‘an innocuous, technical sort of subject’, to help construct a politically ‘safe’ legacy for Smith during politically dangerous times. Stewart’s biography (first delivered as an eulogy in 1793, then published in 17) appeared in the wake of major events that terrified British audiences: the French Revolution of 1789, the Reign of Terror that followed and the sedition trials that followed in both England and Scotland.Īs the British historian Emma Rothschild has shown, Stewart’s depiction of Smith’s ideas cherrypicked in order to imbue political economy with scientific authority. Instead, Stewart shined a spotlight on what he believed was one of ‘the most important opinions in The Wealth of Nations’: that ‘Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.’ Stewart downplayed Smith’s more politically subversive moments, such as his blistering criticism of merchants, his hostility towards established religion, and his contempt for ‘national prejudice’, or nationalism. Smith’s first biographer, Dugald Stewart, deliberately portrayed him in the 1790s as an introverted, awkward genius whose magnum opus was an apolitical handbook of sorts. His complicated reputation today is the consequence of a long history of fighting to claim his intellectual authority. Whatever your political leanings, one thing is clear: Smith speaks on both sides of a longstanding debate about the fundamental values of modern market-oriented society.īut these arguments over Smith’s ideas and identity are not new. ![]() ![]() They question whether economic growth should be the most important goal, point to the problems of inequality, and argue that Smith’s system would not have enabled massive accumulations of wealth in the first place. To others, such as the Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Smith is the embodiment of a ‘neoliberal fantasy’ that needs to be put to rest or at least revised. In Smith’s now-iconic phrase, it’s the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, not the heavy hand of government, that provides us with freedom, security and prosperity. Its doctrine, his followers claim, is that unfettered markets lead to economic growth, making everyone better off. To some, the Scottish philosopher is the patron saint of capitalism who wrote that great bible of economics, The Wealth of Nations (1776). ![]()
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