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    Smith in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Smith in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Smith in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Ebook107 pages42 minutes

    Smith in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes

    By Walther Ziegler

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    About this ebook

    It was, of all people, to a Scottish philosopher of morality that there fell the role of intellectual forefather of capitalism. It was Adam Smith who was the first to recognize and describe, in 1776, the basic principle of the market economy. His magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, is still looked on today as “the Bible of capitalism”. And indeed, for a period of ten years it was, after the Bible itself, the most-translated book on earth. Smith created the “magic formula” of the free play of supply and demand and his theory of “the invisible hand” spread like wildfire around the world, remaining still today the core of the capitalist market model. What is more, Smith provided a philosophical justification for capitalism in the form of a theory of human nature: Man, he argued, is by nature egoistic and self-interested. And nothing suits such a being so well as a market economy, because it gives everyone the chance to increase their wealth. But this, in the end, benefits all, since each of us, working at improving his or her own quality of life, is led willy-nilly, as if by an “invisible hand”, to promote also the welfare of society as a whole. Do egoistic energies really tend to be transformed into social prosperity in this way? How does the market model work? Can one really simply let the economy run its course? Is capitalism “natural”? The book Smith in 60 Minutes explains the incisive theories of this philosopher and economist in a clear and comprehensible way, using over 50 key passages from Smith’s own works. The final chapter on “what use Smith’s discovery is for us today” discusses both the triumphal progress of Smith’s market model and the catastrophic crises that capitalism’s triumph has brought with it. A thorough knowledge of Smith is indispensable for politicians, bankers and economic policy leaders. But really anyone who lives in a market economy – and there are few, today, who don’t – should be familiar with Smith’s basic ideas. The mechanism of the “invisible hand” and the free play of supply and demand are more than just theories. They form the very heart of the capitalist world and it is indispensable to know the economic and philosophical foundations of the social order in which we live. The book forms part of the popular series Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks on Demand
    Release dateJul 19, 2016
    ISBN9783741230059
    Smith in 60 Minutes: Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes
    Author

    Walther Ziegler

    Walther Ziegler est professeur d'université et docteur en philosophie. En tant que correspondant à l'étranger, reporter et directeur de l'information de la chaîne de télévision allemande ProSieben, il a produit des films sur tous les continents. Ses reportages ont été récompensés par plusieurs prix. En 2007, il a prit la direction de la « Medienakademie » à Munich, une Université des Sciences Appliquées et y forme depuis des cinéastes et des journalistes. Il est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages philosophiques, qui ont été publiés en plusieurs langues dans le monde entier. En sa qualité de journaliste de longue date, il parvient à résumer la pensée complexe des grands philosophes de manière passionnante et accessible à tous.

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      Book preview

      Smith in 60 Minutes - Walther Ziegler

      My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the English editions of this series of books.

      My special thanks go to my translator

      Dr Alexander Reynolds.

      Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the needs of English-language readers.

      Inhalt

      Smith’s Great Discovery

      Smith’s Central Idea

      The Four Stages of History

      The Division of Labour

      Free Trade

      The Free Play of Supply and Demand

      The Invisible Hand

      The Duties of the State

      Taxes as an Instrument for Redistributing Wealth

      Of What Use is Smith’s Discovery for Us Today?

      Smith’s Great Vision – Prosperity for All!

      The System of Natural Liberty – Smith’s Warning Against the Planned Economy

      Global Economic Crises – the End of the ‘Invisible Hand’?

      From Night-Watchman State to Welfare State – The Legacy of Adam Smith

      Bibliographical References:

      Smith’s Great Discovery

      It was, of all people, a Scottish philosopher of morality that became the intellectual forefather of capitalism. Adam Smith was the first to recognize and describe, in 1776, the basic principle of the market economy. His magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, is still spoken of today as the Bible of capitalism. And indeed, for a period of ten years it was, after the Bible itself, the most-translated book on earth.

      Overnight, this nine-hundred-page work made Smith (1723-1790) the founder of a whole new science: political economy, nowadays usually referred to just as economics. In it he described for the first time the central mechanism of capitalism and created the magic formula of the free play of supply and demand. His theory of the invisible hand spread like wildfire around the world and remains still today the core of the capitalist market model.

      But Smith did much more than just exactly describe the functioning of capitalism. He also provided philosophical reasons why the free-market economy is the best of all possible economic systems. His explanation is as simple as it is astounding. Each human being, he argues, is egoistic by nature; everybody aims, in the first instance, to achieve his or her own interests. The free-market economy concords with this all-too-human disposition – one might even say: this natural human drive – by giving everyone the chance to increase their wealth. But whoever, Smith goes on, works industriously to improve the quality of his own life in fact promotes, indirectly and without intending to, the good of society as a whole:

      Thus, argues Smith, the capitalist production process transforms, as if it were a process guided by an invisible hand, the entrepreneur’s egoistic concern for personal profit into something that benefits all. The many competing producers think, indeed, only of their own profit; but the sum of their actions ensures that there are always enough reasonably-priced goods on supermarket shelves. One achieves this simply by allowing economically active people a free hand. Smith thus called for the abolition of customs duties and guild restrictions, preparing the way for the economic liberalism that characterizes the global economy today:

      This championing of unlimited free competition is all the more astonishing given that Smith was born

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