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Adam
Smith and the invisible hand!
Copying from the 1991 edition of the Grolier
encyclopedia CD-ROM, article "capitalism": "Underlying
capitalism is the presumption that private enterprise is the most
efficient way to organize economic activity. Adam Smith expressed this
idea in his Wealth of Nations (1776), extolling the free market in which
the businessman is 'led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was
no part of his intention.'"
Copying from the Project Gutenberg edition of Adam
Smith, Wealth of Nations: "But the annual revenue of every society
is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual
produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that
exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as
he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry,
and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest
value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue
of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends
to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By
preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own security ; and by directing that industry in such a
manner as its produce may be of the 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. Nor is it
always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing
his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more
effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known
much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is
an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few
words need be employed in dissuading them from it."
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