The hopes for the free market that Smith never explicitly expressed.
In his later years, Adam Smith once told friends that he had always wanted to complete a work concerning human society as a whole, but regrettably no longer had the ability to do so. We cannot know exactly what its contents would have been, but based on various clues and interpretations, it may be regarded as a continuation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.
Author: GUDORDI | 2026-01-09
若你想見證自由巿場怎樣發揮力量，這（香港）就是你要去的地方。 If you want to see how the free market really works, this (Hong Kong) is the place to go。
──佛利民（Milton Friedman）
In the article ‘Where Do Order and Prosperity in Human Society Come From?’, the author proposed a bold viewpoint: that perhaps as early as his twenties, Adam Smith had already vaguely sensed that there might exist, within the universe, a force beyond what is immediately visible — one that exerts a profound yet largely unnoticed influence on the human mind and on interactions between people.
Once we are able to understand and grasp this force, we may gain an entirely new understanding of the potential of human society.
Another perspective for understanding Smith's ideas
If this were the case, Adam Smith may have already grasped important clues to unlocking the secrets behind social order and prosperity. However, he also understood clearly that such views would be regarded as heretical and unacceptable to society. At the same time, he had no intention of becoming another Galileo Galilei — a martyr sacrificing himself for truth.
From this perspective, Smith’s life may be understood as a careful and cautious attempt to change, through his own efforts alone, the misunderstandings and intellectual blind spots that humanity had carried for thousands of years. Perhaps this is another way of interpreting his two great works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.
In any case, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Smith’s entire life revolved around these two works. Yet he was an extremely prudent person, and judging from his writings, he rarely expressed his views too absolutely.
This then raises a more important question: did Smith believe that a free market could make society better? Based solely on the text, the answer is uncertain. However, in the author’s view, Smith had at least considered this possibility, and perhaps had reflected on it extensively — though his thinking may still not have reached the level of rigor he demanded of himself. This conclusion is mainly based on the following three points.
Smith always regarded himself as a moral philosopher.
Although most people regard Adam Smith’s greatest achievement as economics, Smith always saw himself primarily as a moral philosopher. His interest in economics may simply have been an extension of moral philosophy into the real world.
According to historical accounts, Smith consistently believed that The Theory of Moral Sentiments was a more important work than The Wealth of Nations, or that the latter should be viewed as a continuation of the former. The two major works, therefore, should be understood together.
In any case, after completing The Wealth of Nations, Smith continued revising The Theory of Moral Sentiments, making a total of five revisions during his lifetime. This clearly shows the importance he attached to that work.
Taken as a whole, Smith’s concern for the overall well-being of society was far greater than his concern for the creation of material wealth alone. Smith himself lived quite comfortably and had already achieved financial independence at a relatively young age. Some scholars believe that his main motivation for writing The Wealth of Nations was his hope that large numbers of impoverished people in society could be “lifted out of poverty” more quickly.
Smith revised *The Theory of Moral Sentiments* five times during his lifetime, demonstrating the importance he placed on this work. (Amazon)
The market in its broader sense is almost everywhere.
On the other hand, Adam Smith’s writings touched upon the concept of a “Free Commercial Society.” In Chapter 4 of Book I of The Wealth of Nations, he wrote:
“…Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant…”
Clearly, the market division of labor and exchange envisioned by Smith was not limited merely to goods or services. In a broader sense, elements of the market system exist in almost all social activities involving more than one person.
Here, the concept of a free commercial society already becomes quite apparent. As the historian of thoughts Jerry Z. Muller pointed out, Smith’s goal was not merely to make people wealthier, but to make people better (“about making men better, not merely better-off”).
Perhaps this is what Smith referred to in the revised edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments as the “system of natural liberty.”
