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( The Wealth of Nations)
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776, during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. The work is also the first comprehensive defense of free market policies. It is broken down into five books between two volumes. The Wealth of Nations was written for the average educated individual of the 18th century rather than for specialists and mathematicians. There are three main concepts that Adam Smith expands upon in this work that forms the foundation of free market economics division of labour, pursuit of self interest, and freedom of trade. There are two important features of Smith's concept of the "invisible hand". First, Smith was not advocating a social policy (that people should act in their own self interest), but rather was describing an observed economic reality (that people do act in their own interest). Second, Smith was not claiming that all self-interest has beneficial effects on the community. He did not argue that self-interest is always good; he merely argued against the view that self-interest is necessarily bad. It is worth noting that, upon his death, Smith left much of his personal wealth to charity. On another level, though, the "invisible hand" refers to the ability of the market to correct for seemingly disastrous situations with no intervention on the part of government or other organizations (although Smith did not, himself, use the term with this meaning in mind). For example, Smith says, if a product shortage were to occur, that product's price in the market would rise, creating incentive for its production and a reduction in its consumption, eventually curing the shortage. The increased competition among manufacturers and increased supply would also lower the price of the product to its production cost plus a small profit, the "natural price." Smith believed that while human motives are often selfish and greedy, the competition in the free market would tend to benefit society as a whole anyway. This was later adopted as a universal principle by the laissez-faire economists of the 19th century.
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