# Read the first page of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith Read the opening of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith free, no signup. The foundational argument for markets, specialization, trade, and national wealth. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-wealth-of-nations-adam-smith - Genre: Economic thought - Year: 1776 - ISBN: 9780141908199 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780141908199&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780141908199 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780141908199 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION ADAM SMITH’S literary output brought him great fame during his own lifetime; a reputation initially founded on The Theory of Moral Sentiments and firmly consolidated by his major work. When The Wealth of Nations was first published in March 1776 David Hume wrote to his old friend in terms of the greatest praise, while qualifying his hopes by remarking that ‘the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular’. (Corr., letter 150.) Strahan, Smith’s publisher, wrote very much in the same vein when commenting that the sales of the book had been much more ‘than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose’. (Corr., p. 193 n.) But despite the doubts of Smith’s friends, the book sold well, perhaps because the general ‘philosophy’ which it contained was so thoroughly’ in accord with the aspirations and circumstances of the age. In a work which did not eschew the weapons of rhetoric and irony, Smith stated his famous theme of economic liberty with telling force, and in a manner which apparently caught and held the attention of some contemporaries. Indeed, the arguments of The Wealth of Nations seemed to lend a certain sanctity to the self-interested pursuit of gain, by showing that such activity was productive of benefit to society at large; by demonstrating that the enterprise of individuals was capable, when left free of regulation, of carrying the standard of material well-being to heights hitherto impossible and scarcely calculable. In the words of one (rather bitter) critic, Smith seemed to have provided a great ‘masked battery’,1 whose fire could be used to support the pretensions of the emergent mercantile or manufacturing interests (whose motives Smith often doubted) and to sweep away those institutional obstacles to which every society or economy in a process of transition is inevitably subject. To some contemporaries Smith’s message was both powerful and attractive, while to ourselves, armed with the benefit of hindsight, he appears as the herald if not the prophet of a new order. Yet Hume was undoubtedly correct in stating that the book requires ‘attention’, the reason being that The Wealth of Nations, which so frequently has the air of a tract for the times, is in reality a considerable analytical performance. The economic ‘analytics’ are contained in the first two books and would appear to be particularly worthy of our attention for a number of reasons, few of which in all probability explain the immediate impact of the work, although they may explain its continuing importance. Smith was concerned with a type of economy recognizably ‘capitalist’ in outline, and his purpose was to expose the basic laws of motion which govern its operation. In successfully undertaking this revolutionary task, Smith left us a book of lasting relevance: a book which contains in effect a great system of thought, constructed by first analysing individual problems (such as the determinants of price, or distribution) before going on to demonstrate their mutual connexion and thus the interdependence of all economic phenomena. Looked at in this light, Smithian economics in fact provides the reader with the analytical means of understanding the modus operandi of a particular type of economy, and with a body of theory which falls exactly within his own definition of the nature and purposes of the intellectual system: Systems in many respects resemble machines. A machine is a little system, created to perform, as well as to connect together, in reality, those different movements and effects which the artist has occasion for. A system is an imaginary machine, invented to connect together in the fancy those different movements and effects which are already in reality performed. (Astronomy, IV.19.)2 It is probably no more than the truth to suggest that Smith’s real sophistication is to be seen in the vast analytical system with which he provided us, rather than in his contribution to individual areas of economic analysis. It is certain that the systematic character of Smith’s formal economics is of great historical importance, not merely because of the extent of his coverage but also because he in fact provided the foundation of a great edifice, which has been extended rather than destroyed by those who followed. ## Books with a similar feel - [Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser](https://uncovered.ink/read/fast-food-nation-eric-schlosser.md) - [Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. 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