Robert L. Heilbroner
Discover how thinkers like Adam Smith and Karl Marx tried to decipher the radical new machinery of the capitalist market system and the social order it created.
The birth of the market system marked a revolutionary departure from societies governed by tradition or coercion, shifting social organization toward the decentralized pursuit of individual profit.
Adam Smith argued that the chaos of individual self-interest is organized by the invisible hand of competition, which regulates prices and directs labor toward meeting society's needs.
The optimism of early capitalism was challenged by Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, who warned that population pressure and rising rents could trap the working class in persistent misery.