Adam Smith, 1723—1790, a Scottish philosopher and economist, is the intellectual godfather of capitalism and of much of contemporary economic thought.  Because he almost single-handedly created the analytic scaffolding upon which our economy is built today, I have dedicated this site to him in spirit.

One of the outstanding figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, his most famous work by far is [An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of] The Wealth of Nations, published in the remarkably fitting year of 1776.  According to The Encyclopedia of Economics, because of the breadth, clarity, and durability of his thought, he remains to this day "truly the alpha and omega of economic science."

Adam Smith was born in a small village in Kirkcaldy, Scotland (just north of Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth). His father died before he was born, and his widowed mother raised him until he entered the University of Glasgow at age fifteen. He later attended Balliol College at Oxford, graduating with an extensive knowledge of European literature and an enduring contempt for English schools.

After delivering a series of well-received lectures, he was made first chair [professor] of logic (1751), then chair of moral philosophy (1752), at Glasgow University, and in 1759 published his first major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  Although oft [mis-]characterized today as someone who trumpeted the virtues of self-interest, Smith in fact held a more nuanced view.  He could write both that:

"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 though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

and that

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

From 1764 through 1766 he enjoyed a highly lucrative position as personal tutor to the young duke of Buccleuch, a period spent living in and traveling through France and Switzerland.  During these travels Smith met and enjoyed extended conversations with such intellectual heavyweights of the period as Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Quesnay, and Montesquieu. For his service as tutor he earned a life pension, and he immediately chose to return to Kirkcaldy to write what would become The Wealth of Nations.

In his final years he was commissioner of customs at Edinburgh (his father had held the same position) and traveled in the same intellectual circles as David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, and even Benjamin Franklin.  A century before the American Civil War, he reasoned his way into a position as a strong advocate for abolition.

Adam Smith never married. He died in Edinburgh on July 19, 1790 at age 67; only after his death was it learned he had anonymously channeled a large portion of his income to charities.

Today Smith's reputation rests primarily on his explanation of how the division of labor immensely enhances productivity; on his cogent arguments on "the unreasonableness of restraints upon the importation from foreign countries of such goods as can be made at home;" and, perhaps most memorably, on his fundamental insight that earning income through one's labor also benefits society, because to earn income in a competitive market, one must produce something others value.

He expressed it thus in his enduring metaphor:  "By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."