Jesse Norman - Adam Smith Revisited

An interesting podcast.  The British Conservative, Jesse Norman, says Adam Smith wasn't the neoliberal or the libertarian that many on the left believe (or the right, I mightiness add). The interviewer mentions how Margaret Thatcher carried around all the fourth dimension inwards her handbag the Wealth of Nations, but Jesse Norman laughed at that proverb that many Conservative politicians tin sack quote 3 sentences from the Wealth of Nations but accept never read the book.

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is a run of genius, non but because it sets out many of the cardinal intellectual tools of political economic scheme – such every bit the sectionalization of labour or the thought of marketplace equilibrium - but because Smith was the offset somebody to set markets at the centre of economic science itself.

As such, our modern economic scheme owes much to him, however, the means nosotros conceive of them today has been stripped of its wider context, of human nature in addition to gild every bit a whole. In fact, according to British MP Jesse Norman, he was non the manlike somebody raise of neoliberalism or marketplace fundamentalism, every bit many on the left believe, nor an eloquent advocate of laissez-faire, complimentary markets in addition to enemy of marketplace intervention. He was much to a greater extent than complex than that.

Jesse Norman is the writer of a novel biography called Adam Smith: What He Thought in addition to Why It Matters, published yesteryear Allen Lane

ABC Radio

Jesse Norman - Adam Smith revisited