Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”

22 May Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”

Globalization does not occur in a vacuum—that is to say, there is more to it than innovations in communication and transportation. It requires, for example, the widespread implementation of economic doctrines like the liberalist, free-market one. Adam Smith (1723–90) was influential in promoting such liberalism, exhorting the virtues of government non-interference in the economy and promoting free-trade. Smith’s masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, explains his laissez-faire ideology. It was this that pushed globalization. He viewed the mercantilist state—which dominated Western European economic policy at the time—as an enemy of economic freedom because of the way that it imposed tariffs, granted monopolies, and burdened business with taxes. His metaphor of the “invisible hand” supposedly showed that free trade and enterprise could connect far-off economies and that this, in turn, would decrease the use of military force and create a more peaceful international landscape.