The Essential Adam Smith
The Essential Adam Smith presents the ideas of Adam Smith, widely hailed as the founding father of economics. Viewed as a collection of his writings in plain language, it explores Adam Smith’s insights into morality and economics, while also tackling the current debate that has centered on Smith’s theory of the Invisible Hand – the self-regulating mechanism of a free-market economy, which has proved increasingly irrelevant in the face of structural unemployment and large-scale industry. But Heilbroner points out that the Invisible Hand, far more than a ghostly economic planner, was meant to provide the underpinnings for a workable system of social and moral order.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What is Political Economy?
Chapter 2: Sympathy, moral sentiments, and the impartial spectator
Chapter 3: The solitary islander and moral objectivity
Chapter 4: Justice and beneficence
Chapter 5: The marketplace of morality
Chapter 6: The division of labor
Chapter 7: Smithian political economy
Chapter 8: The invisible hand
Chapter 9: Self-interest, equality, and respect
Chapter 10: The role of government
Chapter 11: Government interventions in the economy
Chapter 12: Final assessment