We join our friends at Liberty Matters in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the publication of Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations through a six-part weekly essay series.
In this third essay, Dennis C. Rasmussen explores the third volume of The Wealth of Nations, in which Smith uses stories of economic and political development to explain how commercial societies liberate the ordinary people who live in them from dependence and war. From the article:
If I were asked to name the most important passage in Adam Smith’s Collected Works, my choice would be the climactic argument in Book 3 of The Wealth of Nations. “Commerce and manufacture gradually introduced order and good government, and with it came personal freedom and security to the inhabitants of this country, who had previously lived in a state of almost continuous war with their neighbors and in a subservient dependence on their superiors. This, although the least, is the most important of all influences” (WN III.iv.4). Smith, of course, is best known as a defender and promoter of commercial society, and this is his clearest and most emphatic statement of what he considered so beneficial about this type of society: The promotion of liberty and security is the most important of all the effects of commerce. To understand how, in Smith’s view, exactly commerce helps promote freedom and security, and why it is so important to do so, it is helpful to take a step back and look at the broader story of volume three.
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