Just Finished Reading: The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith

This is my latest foray into the Penguin Great Ideas series. Yet again it’s an extract from a larger work – in this case the classic The Wealth of Nations written in 1776. Smith is, of course, the father of modern free market Capitalism and the first half of this short book outlines his ideas against any kind of protectionism or tariffs. So far so good – indeed his arguments seemed so obvious to me that I found the whole thing a bit boring.

The second part was, at least to my non-economic trained mind, completely inexplicable. What Smith appeared to be saying – and I never could quite decide if I’d picked up the wrong end of the stick – was that the only true industry that adds value to any product was agriculture and that manufacturing cannot, because of its very nature, add any value. Now I know this book was written at the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution but that idea is truly bizarre. You can see why I thought I had simply misunderstood the author! Anyway, general speaking this short extract of a volume either seemed to be stating what we now consider to be obvious or was either dead, but understandably, wrong. Not exactly the best book in this series but at least I managed to finish it.