"The Wealth of Nations is in no sense a textbook. Adam smith is writing to his age, not to his classroom; he is expounding a doctrine that is meant to be of importance in running an empire, not an abstract treatise for academic distribution. The dragons that he slays (such as the Mercantilist philosophy, which takes over two hundred pages to die) were alive and panting, if a little tired, in his day. And finally, the book is a revolutionary one. To be sure, Smith would hardly have countenanced an upheaval that disordered the gentlemanly classes and enthroned the common poor. But the import of The Wealth of Nations is revolutionary, nonetheless."
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Classical economistsAcademics from ScotlandPhilosophers from ScotlandEconomists from ScotlandSociologists from Scotland
Original Language: English
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Sources
Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers 7th ed. (1999), Chapter III. The Wonderful World of Adam Smith
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
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Adam Smith
1723 – 1790
schottischer Moralphilosoph und Ă–konom
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