ABSTRACT
Economic liberalism is a convenient name for one family of ideas. It is based on a wider ideal of personal freedom of which the economic aspect is only part. To an economic liberal, what has gone wrong with the movement to market economics in our day is not that it is too extreme or not extreme enough, but that it has been divorced from a wider commitment to personal freedom. The Adam Smith self-interest doctrine takes its place as one of the more surprising prima facie subordinate maxims of conduct in a broadly utilitarian system of public morality. Its essence is that, in some areas and under certain conditions, the use of markets avowedly based on self-interest will prove more beneficial than an overt attempt to achieve the public good directly. The background economic condition and policies, required for the Invisible Hand to operate have been much elaborated upon by Smith and his successors to the present day.
