Adam Smith in His Time and Ours

This book is not a biography of Smith, which would probably be pretty boring. It is an examination of his ideas. Muller starts by placing the book in its intellectual context of earlier traditions. Than he turns to an examination of Smiths work as a whole. This is important because to often Smith is limited to The Wealth of Nations, which is only one element of his thought. Muller examines The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Lectures on Jurisprudence to form a more complete picture of Smith as a moral philisopher.

The most important element of this book is the demonstration that Smith was not a defender of unrestrained greed. Smith sought to defend and construct institutions that would channel individual self-interest into benefical results for the whole of society. Nor was he an enemy of government. While it is true that he thought government often proved a danger to the market because of the influence of what we call special interests, Smith did not reject government regulation totally. In fact he argued for regulation of banking and interest rates and advocated using the government to try and correct the negative effects capitalism had on the intellect of the people through public financed education.

Muller writes a compelling book demonstrating that Smith is not the proto-libertarian so many people claim. That in fact Smith would probably be quite dismayed at the uses to which his thoughts have been applied.