Is Selfishness Good?

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. Smith was one of Scotland's greatest thinkers, a moral philosopher and pioneer of economic theory whose 1776 masterpiece has come to define classical economics. Based on his careful consideration of the transformation wrought on the British economy by the Industrial Revolution, and how it contrasted with marketplaces elsewhere in the world, the book outlined a theory of wealth and how it is accumulated that has arguably had more influence on economic theory than any other.

With:

Richard Whatmore Professor of Modern History and Director of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews

Donald Winch Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex

Helen Paul Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton

Producer: Thomas Morris.