ON THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT - ADAM SMITH

From British and American Economic Essays by A.W.Bob Coats


Adam Smith, 1723—1790, a Scottish philosopher and economist, is the intellectual godfather of capitalism and of much of contemporary economic thought.

Smith laid the intellectual framework that explained the free market and still holds true today. He is most often recognized for the expression “the invisible hand,” which he used to demonstrate how self-interest guides the most efficient use of resources in a nation's economy, with public welfare coming as a by-product. To underscore his laissez-faire convictions, Smith argued that state and personal efforts, to promote social good are ineffectual compared to unbridled market forces.

Currents of Adam Smith run through the works published by David Ricardo and Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, and by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman in the twentieth.

Adam Smith is an author of Theory of Moral Sentiments. This work was about those standards of ethical conduct that hold society together and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which examined in detail the consequences of economic freedom. And his important study The Making of the English Working Class

Smith believed that economic development was best fostered in an environment of free competition that operated in accordance with universal “natural laws.” Because Smith’s was the most systematic and comprehensive study of economics up until that time, his economic thinking became the basis for classical economics.

From last posts we can lesr something about Keynes and other big names. Here we find some information about father of economy Adam Smith, but on he end I would like to mention one more name - Josef Schumpeter.

Schumpeter views were most influential among various heterodox economists, especially European, who were interested in industrial organization, evolutionary theory, and economic development, and who tended to be on the other end of the political spectrum from Schumpeter and were also often influenced by Keynes, Karl Marx,