- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (13 April 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1861979053
- ISBN-13: 978-1861979056
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 2.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,155,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"'Concise, elegant and sympathetic...he has done Smith a service' Spectator 'The perfect celebration of a man who did so much to alter modern economic thinking' Daily Telegraph 'Crisp and enjoyable... a mastery of the little details' Financial Times Magazine"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
A brilliant and controversial study by a master of the great Scottish philosopher and economist and his search for a just foundation for modern commercial society. The Scottish Philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) was long ago adopted as the father of a neo-conservative ideology of unregulated business and small government. Politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promoted Smith's famous 1776 book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations as the bible of Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire. In the past ten years, modernising leftists such as Gordon Brown have tried to kidnap Smith for the reformed socialism of Britain's New Labour. In this vigorous, crisp and informal book, James Buchan shows that Smith fits no modern political category and that much of what politicians and economists say about him is false. After twenty-five years of studying Smith and his world, Buchan shows that The Wealth of Nations and Smith's 1759 masterpiece, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, are just the brilliant fragments of one of the most ambitious philosophical enterprises ever attempted: the search for a just foundation for modern commercial society both in private and in public. As befits the most accessible of all philosophers, this biography does entirely without jargon.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful little myth buster, 5 April 2008
By H. Schneider "Hamlet" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Adam Smith: and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty (Hardcover)
Surprise in my shelf. I can't recall that I bought this book. I think it was a gift from the Economist for letting them pester me with a survey some time ago. It does not seem to be in the normal book trade. Is it a short version of a longer bio on Smith that came out later? Don't know at the moment.
Buchan's message is that Smith has been misappropriated by all sides.
Advocate of laissez faire? He did not use these words anywhere. Praising the invisible hand for the strengths of capitalism? The term 'invisible hand' shows up 3 times in the whole oeuvre, but never means what we assume it meant. We might as well have selected Defoe's working girl Moll Flanders for starting economics. She also spoke of the 'invisible hand'.
Smith was no free trade doctrinaire. He was not an economist, such a thing did not exist yet. He did not write about capitalism, such a concept was still unheard of.
It seems that the former British finance minister and current prime minister, who happens to be a country man of Smith, and happens to be called Giordano Bruno or something like that, has made an effort to claim Smith for some kind of Caledonian Socialism. Buchan dismisses such silliness.
Buchan makes a strong effort to launch Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as a philosophical effort of equal importance with the Wealth of Nations. Possibly you need a more detailed bio if you really want to dig in. Buchan published one a year after this little book. Anyway, if you find this one somewhere, don't despise it.
(Buchan thinks that British economists and journalists are as literate and knowledgeable as English footballers. Can't help giggling, thinking about the standard Beckham interview...)
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