Who is the real Adam Smith?

Neoliberalism claims Adam Smith as its founding father, but that claim is built on a lie. Smith's first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), placed empathy and sympathy for others at the very heart of economic life. That foundation was deliberately discarded by the Chicago School in the 1970s, who weaponised a single phrase, the "invisible hand," which was hardly used across his entire body of work, to justify a radical ideology of selfish individualism that Smith himself would have rejected. The result is an economic model that treats fear, insecurity, and social division as acceptable costs of doing business.

 

But Smith understood something today's neoliberal economists refuse to accept: our well-being is interconnected. When others suffer, we all suffer. Addressing economic insecurity isn't charity; it's an economic necessity.

This video makes the case for a return to Smith's original insight: that care, empathy, and collective well-being must be the foundations of political economy, and not the pursuit of personal wealth at any cost. If we want an economy that works for everyone, we need to reclaim Adam Smith from those who misrepresented him.