The Wealth of Nations

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, usually known by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is a treatise by the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, published on 9 March 1776, examining the political and economic principles by which commercial and industrial societies generate wealth. Writing against the feudal and mercantilist institutions still shaping the European economy of his time, Smith argued that these systems rested on mistaken political and economic conceptions among European elites, and instead proposed that wealth is created through free exchange and competition between individuals and the increasing productivity made possible by the division of labour, a process he likened to an invisible hand guiding self-interested individuals toward the unintended benefit of national wealth. The treatise also criticized slavery, rent-seeking by landed interests, primogeniture, entails, public debt and military expenditure for imperialistic purposes. Though it did not immediately transform policy, it became one of the most influential books in modern history, providing the theoretical foundation for the economic policies that prevailed through the nineteenth century and for classical political economy generally, and later drew both allegiance from liberal economic schools and critique from Marxian economics, which nonetheless adapted many of its analytical concepts.