Classical liberal thought and heritage continues to inspire discussion and debate in our time. The basic ideas of a free society and freedom to act as individuals are reinvented and discovered by every new generation and scholarly inquiry. In our time, governments seem to gain more power, and are asked to answer many problems. Adam Smith’s ”liberal plan” – ”allowing every man to pursue his own intererst his own way” – must have a place in any liberal society. But how large a place should it have?
At 250 Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nation remains foremost in defining a liberal society and the value of a free economy. It teaches that voluntary processes, notably in economic exchange, contain principles that tend to prompt individual effort toward socially beneficial actions. But Smith also taught that the invisible hand of free enterprise operates within a framework of culture and institutions.
