Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish economist and moral philosopher. He is most known in the United States as the author of The Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith’s writings have been cited to justify a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest economic ideology. Yet, unlike the modern economics profession, Smith was concerned about the moral operations of society as well as the intersection of moral concerns with economic and political ones.

​At the time of Smith’s analysis, the world was in the early stages of an emerging global economy. Nation-states were beginning to coalesce (the United States as a unified country had just been born) and compete through the expansion of global colonial empires. At the time of Smith’s writing, most of the world was still largely agrarian, with a fairly robust and growing mercantile network along with rudimentary manufacturing.  Although Smith could not have foreseen the modern corporate state–with its vast accumulations of power and wealth–some of his observations continue to have relevance today.