TheMarketForIdeas

We know very little about the man Adam Smith. We do not even know the famous Scotsman’s birthday. All we know is the date of his baptism, June 5, 1723 (Julian calendar), which means that, according to our Gregorian calendar, he was baptized on June 16. He never knew his father, a customs official, who died at the age of 44, just a few months before Adam Smith was born.

The most important person in his life was his mother, who not only raised him, but with whom he lived until her death in 1784. Smith never married. We only know that he fell in love twice, but his feelings were not reciprocated, which may have been due to the fact that he was considered rather unattractive.

At the age of 17, he began six years of study at Oxford, but wasn’t impressed by the university. He later spoke disparagingly of his professors, whom he considered lazy. Before the age of thirty, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University and published his first major work, The Theory of Ethical Sentiments. He published only two major works in his entire life, with The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, being by far the better known. He wrote more books, but he had the manuscripts burned before his death, so we have only these two books and a number of his essays and transcripts of his lectures.

Among those who have never read Smith’s books, he is sometimes seen as a proponent of extreme selfishness, even, perhaps, as the spiritual father of the Gordon Gekko style extreme capitalist, who exclaims “Greed is good!” in the movie Wall Street. However, this is a distorted image that stems from the fact that Smith strongly emphasized the self-interest of economic subjects in his book The Wealth of Nations. But this picture is most definitely a misrepresentation. 

Empathy as a fundamental concept 

The first chapter of his book Theory of Moral Sentiments begins with a section “Of Sympathy,” in which he defined sympathy as “fellow-feeling with any passion whatsoever.”[1] Today we would probably use the word “empathy”: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.”[2]

Smith’s sympathy was especially for the poor. Smith drew income from various sources that added up to 900 pounds a year, which was three to four times the salary of a university professor.[3] But when Adam Smith’s last will and testament was read, it left his nephew David Douglas feeling distinctly disappointed. Receiving far less than he had hoped for, the will confirmed what Smith’s friends had long suspected: Smith had donated almost his entire fortune to the poor, mostly in secret. His generosity had, in fact, even resulted in Smith getting into money trouble himself at one point.[4]

If you read his two main works, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiment, you will be hard pressed to find a single passage where he speaks positively about the rich and powerful. Merchants and landlords are almost exclusively painted in a negative light, primarily as people who want to assert their selfish interests and strive to create monopolies.

“Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those other people.”[5] Or: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”[6]

There are more positive sentences about capitalists in Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto than anywhere in the works of Adam Smith. The bourgeoisie constantly creates more powerful forces of production than all past generations combined, Marx and Engels write with admiration.

There is no trace of such admiration in Smith’s work; instead, the rich are the target of caustic criticism. Defenders of Smith argue that this does not reflect any kind of general resentment against entrepreneurs or the rich, but rather Smith’s advocacy of free competition and opposition to monopolies. That is certainly one aspect, but still, reading his two major works, one gets the impression that, ultimately, Smith dislikes the rich as much as he dislikes politicians. Even Adam Smith was not free of the resentment traditionally harboured by intellectuals against the rich.[7] 

Sympathy for the fate of the poor 

Conversely, however, there are many passages that exhibit sympathy for the condition of the “poor,” whereby he did not restrict himself to the poor in the strictest sense of the word, but also the “not rich,” “that is, the condition of the vast majority of the population who must exchange labour for wages in order to earn a living.”[8] In Adam Smith’s America, Glory M. Liu reviews the reception of Adam Smith and the state of research: “There is an almost unanimous agreement that, for Smith, the most important feature of commercial society was that it improved the condition of the poor.”[9]

There is a famous passage from The Wealth of Nations: “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of so much of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”[10]

Today, these words are sometimes misinterpreted to claim that Smith advocated government-led redistribution of wealth. That was not his intention and he was certainly not calling for social revolution. But poverty, according to Smith, was not pre-ordained. Above all, though, he did not trust governments. In Chapter 8 of The Wealth of Nations, along with the sentences quoted above, he points out that the only way to raise living standards is via economic growth.

Continuous economic growth is the only way to raise wages; a stagnant economy leads to falling wages. Elsewhere, he writes “famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth.”[11] How right he was is something we know full well 250 years later, after hundreds, if not thousands, of failed attempts to control inflation with price controls.

The “liberal reward of labour,” Smith wrote, is “the effect of increasing wealth” and repeatedly stressed “while the society is advancing to the further acquisition ... that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state.”[12]

Karl Marx, on the other hand, believed he had discovered various economic “laws” that would necessarily lead to the downfall of capitalism, such as the “tendency of the rate of profit to fall” or the impoverishment of the proletariat. In his major work, Capital, Marx formulated this as follows:

“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds . . . But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation.”[13]

When The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, capitalism was still in its infancy and the overwhelming majority of people lived in extreme poverty. And poverty meant something very different then than it does today. People were lean and small-boned – throughout history, the human body has adapted to inadequate caloric intake. “The small workers of the eighteenth century,” Angus Deaton writes in his book The Great Escape, “were effectively locked into a nutritional trap; they could not earn much because they were so physically weak, and they could not eat enough because, without work, they did not have the money to buy food.”[14]

Some people rave about the harmonious pre-capitalist conditions when life was so much slower, but this sluggishness was mainly a result of physical weakness due to permanent malnutrition.[15] It is estimated that 200 years ago, about 20 percent of the inhabitants of England and France were not able to work at all. “At most they had enough energy for a few hours of slow walking per day, which condemned most of them to a life of begging.”[16]

In 1754, one English author reported: “Far from being well-to-do, the peasants in France do not even have the necessary subsistence; they are a breed of men who begin to decline before they are forty . . . With the French labourers, their external appearance alone proves the deterioration of their bodies.”[17] The situation was similar in other European countries. The renowned French historian Fernand Braudel states: “These then are the facts that go to make up the biological ancien regime we are discussing: a number of deaths roughly equivalent to the number of births; very high infant mortality, famine; chronic undernourishment; and formidable epidemics.” In some decades, even more people died than babies were born.[18] People’s “possessions” were limited to a few rudimentary items, as seen in contemporary paintings: a few stools, a bench and a barrel doing service as a table.[19]

Before capitalism emerged, most people in the world were living in extreme poverty. In 1820, around 90 percent of the global population was living in absolute poverty. Today, the figure is less than 9 percent. And most remarkably: In recent decades, since the end of communism in China and other countries, the decline in poverty has accelerated to a pace unmatched in any previous period of human history. In 1981, the absolute poverty rate was 42.7 percent; by 2000, it had fallen to 27.8 percent, and today it is below 9 percent. 

Smith has been proved right 

Smith predicted that only an expansion of markets could lead to increased prosperity – and this is precisely what has happened since the end of socialist planned economies. In China alone, the introduction of private property and market reforms have reduced the number of people living in extreme poverty from 88 percent in 1981 to less than one percent today. When I asked free-market economist Weiying Zhang of Peking University how relevant Smith was for China, he replied: “China’s rapid economic development over the past four decades is a victory of Adam Smith’s concept of the market.” Contrary to prevailing interpretations in the West, economic growth and declining poverty in China was not “because of the state, but in spite of the state,” explained Weiying Zhang, and was caused by the introduction of private property.

Another recent example of the superiority of the market economy is Vietnam.[20] From a country that, before the launch of the Doi Moi free-market reforms in the late 1980s, was unable to produce enough rice to feed its own population, it has become one of the world’s largest rice exporters – and a major electronics exporter.

With a per capita GDP of US$98, Vietnam was the poorest country in the world in 1990, behind Somalia (US$130) and Sierra Leone (US$163). Before the economic reforms began, every bad harvest led to hunger, and Vietnam relied on support from the UN’s World Food Programme and financial assistance from the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. As late as 1993, 79.7 percent of the Vietnamese population was living in poverty. By 2006, the rate had fallen to 50.6 percent. Today, it is only five percent.[21]

Vietnam is now one of the most dynamic countries in the world, with a vibrant economy that creates great opportunities for hardworking people and entrepreneurs.

The fact that economic growth – and not, say, redistribution or rule by government edict – points the way out of poverty has been confirmed time and again in recent decades. In 1989, Poland was one of the poorest countries in Europe. The average Pole earned less than US$50 a month – which wasn’t even equivalent in value to one-tenth of what people in the Federal Republic of Germany were earning. Even taking into account differences in purchasing power, in 1989 a Pole earned less than one-third as much as a West German. Poles were poorer than an average citizen of Gabon, Ukraine, or Suriname. Poland’s income lagged behind even its communist peers: its GDP per capita amounted to only half of the level of income in Czechoslovakia.[22]

In 2017, the economist Marcin Piatkowski published a book, Europe’s Growth Champion, in which he takes stock of 25 years of Polish reforms: “Yet, twenty-five years later it is Poland that has become the unrivalled leader of transition and Europe’s and the world’s growth champion. Since the beginning of post-communist transition in 1989, Poland’s economy has grown more than in any other country of Europe. Poland’s GDP per capita increased almost two-and-a-half times, beating all other post-communist states as well as the euro-zone.”[23]

According to data from the World Bank, GDP per capita in 1989 was 30.1 percent of the corresponding figure in the U.S. and had risen to 48.4 percent of the U.S. level by 2016. Such gains made themselves felt in people’s lives. The income of Poles grew from about USD 10,300 in 1990, adjusted for purchasing power, to almost USD 27,000 in 2017.[24] In comparison with the EU-15, the income of Poles was less than one-third in 1989 and had risen to almost two-thirds in 2015. 

Distrust of the state 

While Karl Marx believed that the condition of the poor could only be improved by abolishing private property, Smith believed in the power of the market. He was not an advocate of a libertarian utopia without the state – he believed that governments had important functions to fulfil. Nevertheless, in 1755, two decades before The Wealth of Nations appeared, he warned in a lecture:

“Man is generally considered by statesmen and projectors as the materials of a sort of political mechanics. Projectors disturb nature in the course of her operations in human affairs; and it requires no more than to let her alone, and give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends, that she may establish her own designs… All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.”[25]

These were indeed prophetic words. The biggest mistake planners have always made was clinging to the illusion that you can plan an economic order on paper. They believe that an author, sat at a desk, can fashion an ideal economic order and that all that remains is to convince enough politicians to implement this new economic order in practice.

Hayek later called this approach “constructivism,” saying, “The idea of rational people sitting down together to consider how to remake the world is perhaps the most characteristic outcome of those design theories.”[26] According to Hayek, the anti-rationalist insight into historical events that Smith shared with other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Ferguson “enabled them for the first time to comprehend how institutions and morals, language and law, have evolved by a process of cumulative growth and that it is only with and within this framework that human reason has grown and can successfully operate.”[27]

In the manner of an economic historian, Smith described economic development rather than outlining an ideal system.

Planned economics is enjoying yet another revival. Climate protection advocates and anti-capitalists are demanding that capitalism be abolished and replaced with a planned economy. Otherwise, they claim, humanity has no chance of survival.

In Germany, a book called Das Ende des Kapitalismus (English: The End of Capitalism) is a bestseller and its author, Ulrike Hermann, has become a regular guest on all the talk shows. She openly promotes a planned economy, although this has already failed once in Germany – just like everywhere else it has been tried. Unlike under classical socialism, in a planned economy, companies are not nationalized, they are allowed to remain in private hands. But it is the state that specifies precisely what and how much is produced.

There would be no more flights and no more private motor vehicles. The state would determine almost every facet of daily life – for example, there would no longer be any single-family houses and no one would be allowed to own a second home. New construction would be banned because it is harmful to the environment. Instead, existing land would be distributed “fairly,” with the state deciding how much space is appropriate for each individual. And the consumption of meat would only be allowed as an exception because meat production is harmful to the climate.[28]

In general, people should not eat so much: 2,500 calories a day are enough, says Herrmann, who proposes a daily intake of 500 grams of fruit and vegetables, 232 grams of whole meal cereals or rice, 13 grams of eggs, and 7 grams of pork. “At first glance, this menu may seem a bit meagre, but Germans would be much healthier if they changed their eating habits,” reassures this critic of capitalism.[29] And since people would be equal, they would also be happy: “Rationing sounds unpleasant. But perhaps life would even be more pleasant than it is today, because justice makes people happy.”[30] 

The invisible hand 

Smith is often criticized today for highlighting the importance of self-interest. He emphasized the importance of selfishness, precisely because people need help from other people all the time. However, he thought that in doing so, people could not rely solely on the goodwill of others. It is in this context, by the way, that he also employed the term “invisible hand,” for which he became so famous, although this phrase only appears three times in Smith’s entire body of work (by the way, this is similar to Schumpeter and the phrase “creative destruction,” which he only used twice):

“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it …. and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”[31]

The economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized that it is a mistake to contrast egoistic and altruistic actions. Fortunately, he explains, “The power to choose whether my actions and conduct shall serve myself or my fellow beings is not given to me . . . If it were, human society would not be possible.”[32] And Friedrich August von Hayek described as Adams Smith's greatest contribution to scientific thought – pointing far beyond economics – “his notion of a spontaneous order that creates complex structures like an invisible hand.”[33]

Totalitarian ideologies seek to diminish the “I.” They want nothing more than to subordinate it to the “we,” as demonstrated by two of the maxims of National Socialism: “Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles” (“You are nothing, your people are everything”) and “Gemeinwohl vor Eigenwohl” (“Public interest before self-interest.”) In a speech in November 1930, Adolf Hitler said: “In the entire sphere of economic

life, in the whole of life itself, one will have to do away with the idea that the benefit of the individual is the essential thing and that the benefit of the whole is built on the benefit of the individual, i.e., that the benefit of the individual is what gives rise to the benefit of the whole in the first place. The reverse is true: the benefit of the totality determines the benefit of the individual . . . If this principle is not recognized, then a selfishness must inevitably set in and tear the community apart.”[34]

This conviction unites all totalitarian thinkers, revolutionaries and dictators, from Robespierre in the French Revolution to Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Hannah Arendt, one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, wrote in her work On Revolution: “It was not only in the French Revolution but in all revolutions which its example inspired that the common interest appeared in the guise of the common enemy, and the theory of terror from Robespierre to Lenin and Stalin presupposes that the interest of the whole must automatically, and indeed permanently, be hostile to the particular interest of the citizen.”[35] Yes, absurdly, Arendt claims that selflessness is the highest virtue, and the value of a man may be judged by the extent to which he acts against his own interest and his own will.[36] 

Criticism of Adam Smith 

Smith was a pioneer whose work provided a foundation for later liberal economists to build upon – Hayek and Mises held him in high esteem. But Smith’s work has also been subjected to sharp criticism from within the circle of free-market economists. The libertarian American economist Murray N. Rothbard, who in his monumental work Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, minces no words in his vilification of Smith, arguing that Smith was by no means the advocate of free-market economics he has commonly been portrayed as. In fact, Rothbard alleges that Smith’s erroneous labour theory of value makes him the forerunner of Karl Marx and claims that Marxists would certainly be justified in citing the Scottish philosopher and hailing him as the ultimate inspiration of their own founding father.[37] According to Rothbard, Smith failed to understand the economic function of the entrepreneur and even fell short of the insights provided by economists such as Richard Cantillon,[38] supported state-imposed caps on the rate of interest, heavy taxes on luxurious consumption and extensive government intervention in the economy.[39] On a personal level, Rothbard says Smith was also untrustworthy because he had previously campaigned for free trade but spent the last twelve years of his life as a commissioner of Scottish customs.[40]

Much of this criticism is certainly justified, and yet it would be wrong to call Adam Smith a left winger. Even the American philosopher Samuel Fleischacker, who emphasizes Smith’s leftist tendencies, concedes Smith would not necessarily identify with contemporary social democrats or defend the modern welfare state.[41]

Against this criticism stand Smith’s deep distrust of government intervention in the economy and his almost boundless faith in the “invisible hand” that steers markets in the right direction. When the economy is ruined, it is, according to Smith, never by entrepreneurs and merchants, but always by the state: “Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct,” he wrote in his major work The Wealth of Nations.[42] And he added optimistically: “The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government and of the greatest errors of administration. Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor.”[43]

The metaphor says a great deal: Private economic actors represent healthy, positive development, while politicians obstruct the economy with their nonsensical regulations. Adam Smith would have been very sceptical today if he could see governments in Europe and the United States increasingly intervening in the economy and politicians who believe they are smarter than the market.

One of Smith’s shortcomings was that he did not understand the economic function of the entrepreneur, which was later so brilliantly elaborated by thinkers such as Joseph Schumpeter. Erroneously, he saw the entrepreneur primarily as a manager and business leader rather than as an innovator. Smith recognized the importance of “empathy,” but he did not equate it with entrepreneurship at any point in his work. Today, we see in Steve Jobs and other entrepreneurs who understand the needs and feelings of their customers better and earlier than the customers themselves, that empathy – and not “greed” – is indeed the basis of entrepreneurial success and the foundation of capitalism.

Smith’s failure to understand the role of the entrepreneur and his evident resentment of the rich are indeed characteristics that Smith shares with those on the left of the political spectrum. However, this does not at all apply to his advocacy of improved conditions for workers. For, according to Smith, improving the situation of ordinary people would not come about through redistribution and excessive state intervention, it would be the natural result of economic growth, which in turn needed one thing above all: economic freedom. To the extent that economic freedom prevails and markets expand, people’s standard of living will also rise. Three hundred years after Smith’s birth and some 250 years after the publication of his magnum opus, we know that the moral philosopher and economist was right: Private property and the market economy are the foundations of growth, and if the state does not interfere too much in the economy, everybody’s lives will improve, especially those of the poor.

Proponents of capitalism have failed to place precisely these correlations at the heart of their defence of the market economy: It is not primarily the strong who need the market economy, because they will somehow manage in any system, it is the weak and the poor, whose only chance to improve their living conditions is in a free market economy. 

Bibliography: 

Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. Penguin Books. London, 1977.

Aßländer, Michael S. Adam Smith zur Einführung. Junius Verlag. Hamburg, 2007.

Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life. William Collins Sons & Co Ltd. London, 1985.

Deaton, Angus. The Great Escape. Health, Wealth, and the Origins of

Inequality. Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford, 2013.

Fleischacker, Samuel. Adam Smith. Routledge. London and New York, 2021.

Gilbert, Geoffrey, “Adam Smith on the Nature of Poverty,” in Review of Social Economy, Fall 1997, Vol. 55, No. 3, 273–291.

Hayek, Friedrich August von. “Die überschätzte Vernunft,” in Friedrich August von Hayek. Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissen. Aufsätze zur Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftslehre. Edited by Viktor Vanberg. Mohr Siebeck. Tübingen, 2007, 109–136.

Hayek, Friedrich August von. The Constitution of Liberty, The Definitive Edition. The University of Chicago Press. London, 2011.

Hermann, Ulrike. Das Ende des Kapitalismus. Warum Wachstum und Klimaschutz nicht vereinbar sind – und wie wir in Zukunft leben werden. Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Cologne, 2022.

Liu, Glory M. Adam Smith’s America. How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism. Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford, 2022.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics). Penguin Books. London, 1976.

McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen; Carden, Art. Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich. How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London, 2020.

Mises, Ludwig von. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Liberty Fund. Indianapolis, 1981.

Norberg, Johan. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Oneworld Publications. London, 2017.

Rothbard, Murray N. Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 1. Ludwig von Mises Institute. Auburn, Alabama, 2006.

Piatkowski, Marcin. Europe’s Growth Champion. Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2018.

Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Penguin Group. London, 2009.

Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. David Campbell Publishers. London, 1991.

Smith, Adam. Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Edited by W.P.D, Wightman and J.C. Bryce. Liberty Fund, 1990.

Streminger, Gerhard. Adam Smith. Wohlstand und Moral. Eine Biographie. C.H. Beck Verlag. Munich, 2017.

Zitelmann, Rainer. The Power of Capitalism. LiD Publishing Limited. London, 2019.

Zitelmann, Rainer. Hitler’s National Socialism. Management Books 2000. Oxford, 2022.

Zitelmann, Rainer, Der Aufstieg des Drachen und des weißen Adlers. Wie Nationen der Armut entkommen, Finanzbuch Verlag, München 2023. 

Notes:

[1] Smith, Theory, 15.

[2] Smith, Theory, 13.

[3] Streminger, Smith, 207.

[4] Aßländer, Smith, 41; Streminger, Smith, 220–221.

[5] Smith, Wealth, 201.

[6] Smith, Wealth, 232.

[7] For more on the subject of intellectuals and capitalism, see Zitelmann, The Power of Capitalism, Chapter 10.

[8] Gilbert, Adam Smith on the Nature and Causes of Poverty, 281.

[9] Liu, Adam Smith’s America, 295, footnote 18.

[10] Smith, Wealth, 181.

[11] Smith, Wealth, 465.

[12] Smith, Wealth, 72.

[13] Marx, Capital, Volume I, 763.

[14] Deaton, 92.

[15] McCloskey, Carden, 41.

[16] Norberg, Progress, 12.

[17] Quoted in Braudel, 90–91.

[18] Braudel, 91-92.

[19] Braudel, 283.

[20] For more on Vietnam, see Zitelmann, Der Aufstieg des Drachen.

[21] Zitelmann, Der Aufstieg des Drachen, 96.

[22] Zitelmann, Der Aufstieg des Drachen, 43.

[23] Piatkowski, 127.

[24] Piatkowski, 114–115.

[25] Smith, quoted in Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 322.

[26] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 113.

[27] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 112.

[28] Hermann, 250.

[29] Hermann, 261.

[30] Hermann, 253.

[31] Smith, Wealth, 399.

[32] Mises, Socialism, 357.

[33] Hayek, “Die überschätzte Vernunft,” 117.

[34] Hitler, speech given on November 13, 1930, quoted in Zitelmann, Hitler’s National Socialism, 301.

[35] Arendt, 79.

[36] Arendt, 79.

[37] Rothbard, 435.

[38] Rothbard, 451.

[39] Rothbard, 466.

[40] Rothbard, 468.

[41] Fleischacker, 287.

[42] Smith, Wealth, 305.

[43] Smith, Wealth, 306.