国富论亚当斯密斯

The Wealth of Nations国富论

Adam Smith

Why Read It?

Many books are claimed to be classics or seminal works: The Wealth of Nations is indisputably both. It is a broad-ranging exploration of commercial and economic first principles. In it Adam Smith laid the philosophical foundations for modern capitalism and the modern market economy. There are few economists over the last 200 years—and fewer politicians of a free-market persuasion—who have not been influenced by it. Smith has helped shape the economic policies of British prime ministers and chancellors of the exchequer from the days of Lord North (1770–82) to those of Margaret Thatcher—and even Tony Blair.许多书籍都声称自己是名著或开创性的作品:国富论无疑两者皆是。这是一个商业广泛的探索和经济的第一原则。在本书中亚当斯密奠定了现代资本主义和现代市场经济的哲学基础。很少有经济学家在过去的200年——更不用说自由市场的政治家没有受到它的影响。斯密帮助英国首相和部长形成经济政策,自诺斯勋爵(1770年至1782年)

开始到撒切尔,甚至是布莱尔时期。

Getting Started

Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher. He was professor of logic and professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University, but left his university posts in order to travel on the continent as tutor to a young nobleman. In France he was greatly influenced by a school of philosophical economists known as the ‘physiocrats’. Returning to his native town of Kirkcaldy in Fife, he spent the next ten years preparing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which

was published—a significant coincidence perhaps—in the same year as the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, 1776.亚当斯密是一位苏格兰哲学家。他是格拉斯哥大学逻辑和道德哲学教授,后来他离开大学,做一个年轻的贵族家庭教师,在欧洲大陆各地旅行。在法国,他深受一个以重农著称的哲学经济学校影响。后来回到他的家乡柯科迪夫,他花了十年准备《进入的性质和国家财富》一书,并在1776年出版,同年美国签署了独立宣言。

His central thesis is that capital can best be used for the

creation of both individual and national wealth in conditions of minimal interference by government. The

‘invisible hand’ of free-market competition ensures, in his view, both the vitality of commercial activity and the ultimate good of all a nation’s citizens.他的中心论点是:资本只有在政府最小干扰的条件下才能最好地为个人和国家创造财富。在

他看来,自由市场竞争中'看不见的手',确保了商业活动的活力和国家公民获

得最大收益。

Contribution

1. The invisible hand

According to Smith, conscious and well-meaning attempts to better the lot of a nation and its population are generally doomed to failure. The unintended cumulative effects of self-interested striving are far more effective. As he puts it: ‘Every individual is continually exerting to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever he can command…[and] necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote