Brad DeLong defends Adam Smith

My favorite part:

In The Wealth of Nations, at least, Smith believes that he has an extraordinarily penetrating and largely new insight: that the market economy--the "system of natural liberty," he calls it--as an immensely powerful and benevolent social mechanism for promoting general prosperity. This is, Smith believes, cause for a revolution in how we should think about Political Oeconomy. The power and benevolence of the market is not the only important consideration to take into account in thinking about questions of Political Oeconomy, but it is the most important consideration--as important, relatively speaking, as is the gravity of the sun in calculating the motions of the planets. Just as you cannot ignore the influence of Jupiter or even the Earth when calculating the orbit of Mars, so you cannot ignore considerations of civic humanism or employer collusion or monopoly in thinking about Political Oeconomy. But to not give pride of place to Smith's love of the "system of natural liberty" is to be false to Smith's thought. And the guy deserves more respect than that.

Read more here.