Chapter 1 of 6

Chapter i · Political economy

1776

Why are some nations rich?

Thinkers had circled the subject for centuries: Aristotle judged the endless pursuit of money unnatural, and in 1758 François Quesnay drew income flowing between farmers, landowners and artisans in his Tableau économique. In 1776 Adam Smith, who had held the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow, argued in The Wealth of Nations that the division of labour was the main cause of prosperity. In 1817 David Ricardo made the split of income between rent, profit and wages the principal problem of the subject, and in 1867 Karl Marx published Capital, subtitled a critique of political economy.