One or Two Cheers for “The Invisible Hand”

Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is surely one of the genuine Great Ideas of history, both for its intrinsic intellectual content and for its durable influence on ideologies, politics, and public policies. The proposition that the alchemy of market competition transmutes the dross of personal selfishness into the gold of social welfare is still a powerful message in economics classrooms and in political debates. To be sure, since 1776 the doctrine has experienced ups and downs ...