The division of labour, he stressed, had come about as the “consequence of a certain propensity in human nature…to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” It was a “propensity,” not an exercise in unbridled rationality. He also pointed out that the business of the market was achieved by a rough “higgling and bargaining” and continued despite the “folly and impertinence” of government policy. Smith was, in fact, in Moral Sentiments, a keen analyst of human irrationality. One prevalent but bogus critique is that the validity of the Hand depends on the (naïve) belief that economic actors are rational and markets are perfect. Here is the Invisible Hand in all its productive but taken-for-granted glory. “Without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands,” wrote Smith, “the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated.” Producing the rest of the workman’s attire, and his tools, home, furniture and utensils, similarly required vast interconnected industries. To accommodate the labourer’s simple needs, Smith observed, required an amount of cooperation that “exceeds all computation.” Smith took as his prime example the labourer’s plain woollen coat, which, “as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen.” Smith enumerated all the parts of the wool industry, all the merchants and carriers, all the elaborate machinery-from ships and mills to looms and furnaces-that would have been involved. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Smith’s most important indirect reference lies in his example of how the market provides for even the most humble labourer. Lectures on Political Economy, Vol 1, Part 3. Elements of a Philosophy of the Human Mind, ed. Adam Smith’s Philosophy: The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order. New Edition, Revised, Corrected, and Improved. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations with A Life of the Author, An Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations, ed. Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown: Archibald Constable and Co. Erasing the Invisible Hand: Essays on An Elusive and Misused Concept in Economics. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, May 1994, 319–322. Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, from the MSS. A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality. The Scope and Method of Economics, RES 769, p. In Adam Smith’s Invisible Hands: Comment on Gavin Kennedy. History of Economic Ideas XVIII (3): 105–119. Paul Samuelson and the Invention of the Modern Economics of the Invisible Hand. Journal of the History of Ideas 72 (1): 29–49. Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible Hand. What Did Adam Smith Mean by the Invisible Hand? Journal of Political Economy 108 (3): 441–465. Richard Cantillon’s Essay on the Nature of Trade in General: A Variorum Edition, ed. Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, in Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, vol. Philosophy and Political Economy in Some of Their Historical Relations. New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd ed. The Invisible Hand in Economics How Economists Explain Unintended Consequences. The Science of Wealth Adam Smith and the Framing of Political Economy. General Competitive Analysis, Holden-Day, p. The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, vol.
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