Adam Smith's America : how a Scottish philosopher became an icon of American capitalism /
Glory M. Liu
Bok · Engelsk · 2022
| Omfang | xxxii, 346 sider : illustrasjoner
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| Utgave | 1.
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| Opplysninger | "This book tells the story of how Adam Smith, an imaginative moral philosopher from Scotland who never set foot on American soil, was nevertheless adopted as kind of founding father of American economic thought. It also tells the story of how his ideas, primarily as expressed in his seminal work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations-published coincidentally in 1776-have, over the course of more than 200 years, continually captured the attention of American minds and shaped American political beliefs. Adam Smith's ubiquitous presence in American political and intellectual culture is largely taken for granted. Of all of his idea, his image of "the invisible hand" is perhaps the most famous and pervasive in popular and political discourse, symbolizing the power of free markets-not government intervention-to solve a wide range of political, economic, and social problems. Thus, Smith's name and portrait can be found appended to various conservative-leaning think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute. And, at least for the American Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, the first document to embody the revolutionary ideals of the American founding was not Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, but rather Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. At the same time, it has been a persistent feature among Smith's defenders of the last several decades to prove that Adam Smith was not a crude advocate of laissez-faire capitalism or "Chicago-style economics." However, few scholars have asked or answered the question of how and why this narrow, politically-charged, and "Americanized" version of Smith's ideas came about in the first place. Glory Liu's book will be the first of its kind to trace the reception and influence of Adam Smith's ideas in American political thought and intellectual history. Combining extensive archival, historical, and contemporary sources, she will chart how Smith's ideas were read, taught, and appropriated from the eighteenth century to today. Broadly speaking, this book shows how the idea of Adam Smith as the "father of economics" and icon of a familiar political creed centered on rational self-interest and the power of free markets is an historical invention"--
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| ISBN | 9780691203812
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