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He explained how a market economy works, but he started from a question about why we feel for strangers. His two books are one argument.
He argued that philosophy had been describing the world when it should be changing it, and then described it more precisely than almost anyone.
Connection
Adam Smith the classical economists inherited and inverted Karl Marx — Marx worked through Smith line by line, accepting the labour theory of value he found there and turning the account of a self-regulating market into a case about who ends up owning the product.
Ideas
Words
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him.”
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Key Moments
1723 CE
Born in Kirkcaldy
1759 CE
Theory of Moral Sentiments
1776 CE
The Wealth of Nations
1790 CE
Death in Edinburgh
1849
Permanent exile in London
1867
Capital, Volume I published
Works
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Capital, Volume I