I feel like Smith's Invisible Hand is one of those misquoted and misappropriated concepts that was put in a dead man's mouth to distort his original meaning.

I believe when Smith spoke of an invisible hand, he meant a secret society that intervened in society and markets to advance it's own agenda.

"An invisible hand" if you will, or an All Seeing Eye, or anything of that nature.

People then came to distort that original meaning and co-opted his use of the invisible hand analogy to mean the "forces of the free-market"

This is like a 180 degree inversion of what Smith was advocating. Because the very nature of "markets being guided by an invisible hand" aka secret society goes against everything Smith ever hoped for a society. He advocated for a free and open society, ridded of taboos and restrictions.

I read wealth of nations through and through and to me it would seem "free-market theorists" aka planned economy zealots love nit-picking his work to justify their crazy plots and narratives, muh like salafists, evangelicals and taldumists all disgrace the quran, bible and torah with their wilfull or ignorant interpretations of these works.

All great works are always appropriated and subverted to make sure society stays bounded and controlled.

Smith was truly an enlightened man, it's a shame his vision of a free, fair and open society was twisted into a blueprint for the most efficient system of exploitation and slavery in the world.

Capitalism and free-market was not supposed to turn into the system of soft-slavery it became, but that's because everybody thought that the "secret hand" was an impersonal force of nature.

Nope. It was the effect of a concentrated and focused attempt at conquering the world through division.

Shame. The ideas of smith are still good, they just need re-interpretation for the 21 first century to move forward.

We're kind of passed the stage of technological evolution that Smith was addressing, but his points about not dividing labor too much and becoming idiots who can barely do anything else than push buttons and pull levels (tapping and swiping screens in this day and age) holds truer today than it ever did.

Great poat about a very important historical character. Smith along with Rousseaux are some of the ones who best embodied The Enlightenment