Even today — in blithe disregard to his actual philosophy — Smith is generally regarded as a conservative economist, whereas in fact, he is more avowedly hostile to the motives of businessman than most New Deal economists.
Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter III, “Adam Smith,” p. 62
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Robert Heilbroner
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However, in Heilbroner’s day, a fair number of leftists cited Smith’s expressions of that hostility to justify state intervention, despite Smith’s arguments that a liberal order would itself be sufficient to hold businessmen in check. Heilbroner himself was an interventionist, though more honest than were and are the typical interventionist who represent themselves as economists.