Adam Smith

250 Years Later, The Wealth of Nations Still Has Lessons To Offer the Political Class

Governments have yet to accept that free societies are also prosperous societies.

J.D. Tuccille | 3.9.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustration: Cadell and Davies (1811), John Horsburgh (1828) or R.C. Bell (1872)/Adam Smith/BEIC Foundation/Wikimedia Commons)

Few books can be said to have withstood the test of time 250 years later, but Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (usually shortened to The Wealth of Nations), published for the first time in 1776, certainly has. At a time when even the governments of nominally free countries once again dabble with guiding economies, and the president of the United States rails against trade as if it's a team sport where some countries are winners and others are losers, Smith's book reminds us that unfettered societies are both good and productive, and that free trade produces the best outcomes for all.

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'Every Individual…Can In His Local Situation Judge Much Better Than Any Statesman'

Smith is often referred to as the "father of capitalism" as if he designed an economic system as a thought experiment. But that's not the case. Instead, he described what he saw working in the voluntary interactions of people around him, and the government policies that got in the way of prosperity.

As Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations:

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is........

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