ABSTRACT
Looking back, it is clear that Adam Smith has been kidnapped. It happened some time after his death in 1790 as Wealth of Nations was turned into an Employers’ Gospel by right-wing economists and ideologists. As Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary, 30 July 1886:
The Political Economy of Adam Smith was the scientific expression of the impassioned crusade of the 18th century against class tyranny and the oppression of the Many by the Few. By what silent revolution of events, by what unselfconscious transformation of thought, did it change itself into the ‘Employers’ Gospel’ of the 19th century?
