After 250 years Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is as relevant as ever
The fourth of July 2026 will mark 250 years since the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. It’s a birthday that America will mark with gusto, even if today the world’s focus is on the US for reasons other than its founding fathers’ commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But this is not the only semiquincentennial worth reflecting on in 2026. There is another, every bit as consequential as the birth of the United States and, what’s more, intimately related to it. I refer to the publication of The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith.
Events have overshadowed the occasion (the anniversary was on Monday) but despite a packed news agenda I couldn’t let it go unmarked in the pages of City PM. I first read The Wealth of Nations as an undergraduate, at a time when whatever political views I held were guided more by instinct than anything close to an intellectual foundation, and it had a profound effect on me.
I was never much of an academic and make no claim to be a Smith scholar, but, along with Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens, this was a book that I returned to often over the years that followed, microdosing on the ideas it contained and explained.
A girl who once came over to my City flat for dinner later confessed that she had doubts about me when she saw the book open on a table. Still, we’ve been married for eight years and while I can’t credit Smith for that I can at least say he didn’t scupper my chances.
Now, thanks to the Institute of Economic Affairs, anyone wanting to refresh their understanding of Adam Smith’s revolutionary philosophy can delve into a new essay by Mark Skousen, presidential fellow at Chapman University and author of The Making of Modern Economics. In The Genius of Adam Smith, Skousen demonstrates the transformational and enduring wisdom of a man who understood people just as much as much as he understood economics.
His ideas would provide the intellectual foundation on which America’s founding fathers built their country and his work is every bit as important today as it was 250 years ago.
As Skousen says, “Adam Smith came up with a way to achieve real prosperity for all: Give people their maximum freedom under conditions of competition and the rule of law.” It really is that simple.