Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

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The following are links to the actual text of the Wealth of Nations. After the Introduction below, please click on the link or chapter that you wish to read. Thank you.

Justin Nicolas
Department of Sociology
PUP

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
The Wealth of Nations
ByADAM SMITH

Written: 1766 - 1776 First Published: 1776 Source: The Wealth of Nations, The Modern Library, © 1937 Publisher: Random House, Inc. Transcription/Markup: Brian Basgen, 2000

Introduction

Having spent 10 years putting together this material in sum, Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations had an enourmous impact among the rising bourgeois of Europe and the freshly independent United States of America.
The institutions of Fuedalism, largely still surviving throughout Europe in 1776, placed a variety of restrictions and impedements on the rising industrial bourgeoisie — US revolutionists had ardently broken from it in the same year. Smith's work provided the theoretical cannon shot for the chorus of growing bourgeois to strike back against Fuedalist bureacracy and philsophy; giving them a philosophical manifesto behind which to stand, and an idealised government towards which to fight for. Smith was convinced that Fuedalism's controls over the further development of Europe's economies would strangle industrial growth; and explained that the only correct way to practice economics was to do it by the dictates of capitalism, not the now defunct fuedalism.
This work has been transcribed from the revised fifth edition, the last print made in Adam Smith's lifetime. Footnotes may not be completely transcribed; the edition used to transcribe this work had the editor's footnotes integrated without any differential marking, making any distinguishing between the authors' and editors' notes nearly impossible. Note that the word "On" was used in place of the old-english word "Of" in Chapter beginnings.
Introduction
Book I: On the Causes of Improvement in the Productive Powers. On Labour, and on the Order According to Which its' Produce is Naturally Distributed Among the Different Ranks of the People.
On the Division of Labour
21 k
On the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour
11 k
That the Division of Labour is limited by the Extent of the Market
14 k
On the Origin and Use of Money
16 k
On the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or their Price in Labour,and their Price in Money
41 k
On the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
18 k
On the Natural and Market Price of Commodities
22 k
On the Wages of Labour
56 k
On the Profits of Stock
26 k
On Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock (in three parts)
110 k
On the Rent of Land (in six parts)
184 k

Book II: On the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock
Introduction
6 k
On the Division of Stock
19 k
On Money considered as a particular Branch of the general Stock of theSociety, or of the Expense of maintaining the National Capital (in two pages)
113 k
On the Accumulation of Capital, or of Productive and Unproductive Labour
47 k
On Stock Lent at Interest
21 k
On the Different Employment of Capitals
39 k

Book III: On the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations
On the Natural Progress of Opulence
13 k
On the Discouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of Europeafter the Fall of the Roman Empire
28 k
On the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns after the Fall of theRoman Empire
27 k
How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvementof the Country
32 k

Book IV: On Systems of political Economy
Introduction
2 k
On the Principle of the Commercial, or Mercantile System
55 k
On Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of such Goodsas can be produced at Home
49 k
On the extraordinary Restraints upon the Importation of Goods of almost allkinds from those Countries with which the Balance is supposed to bedisadvantageous (in two parts)
66 k
On Drawbacks
14 k
On Bounties (in two pages)
99 k
On Treaties of Commerce
29 k
On the Motives for establishing new Colonies (in four pages)
213 k
Conclusion of the Mercantile System
50 k
On the Agricultural Systems, or of those Systems of Political Economywhich represent the Produce of Land as either the sole or the principalSource of the Revenue and Wealth every Country
64 k
Appendix
10 k

Book V: On the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth
On the Expenses of the Sovereign or Commonwealth (in six pages)
302 k
On the Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society (in seven pages)
238 k
On Public Debts (in three pages)
110 k