Enlightenment & Revolutions
Adam Smith
1723–1790 · Political economy
Exchange coordinates strangers. The state need not direct it.
In their words
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner.”
The Wealth of Nations attacked the mercantile system of monopoly, subsidy and imperial war as a conspiracy of merchants against consumers. Smith traced prosperity to the division of labor and voluntary exchange, warned that regulation is written by the interests it governs, and set out the simple system of natural liberty. He was no utopian, allowing a narrow domain for defense, justice and public works, which makes the rest of his case harder to dismiss.
Why it matters for freedom
He described an economy that coordinates itself, and warned that businessmen who meet usually plot against the public.
Who they stood against
mercantilism and the merchants who wrote the laws to favor themselves