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Adam Smith begins with a pin factory, where ten workers who divide the task among them make forty-eight thousand pins a day, and from there builds a complete…
Adam Smith begins with a pin factory, where ten workers who divide the task among them make forty-eight thousand pins a day, and from there builds a complete picture of how nations become rich: the division of labour, the role of money and prices, the accumulation of capital, the benefits of free trade, and the duties of government, from defence and justice to education.
Context and significance
Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations founded modern economics, and its line that we expect our dinner not from the benevolence of the butcher but from his regard to his own interest is famous. Smith also criticised monopolies and merchants who conspire against the public. Read it with his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and see his life.
About the author
Adam Smith (1723–1790) was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, studied at Glasgow and Oxford and became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. His Theory of Moral Sentiments made his name in 1759, and a few years later he travelled in France as tutor to a young duke, meeting Voltaire and the French economists.
Back in Scotland he spent ten years on An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), which explained the division of labour, markets and free trade and founded modern economics. He ended his life, with some irony, as a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh.