The Moral Market challenges one of the most familiar myths in economic life: that Adam Smith was the patron saint of unfettered free markets and self-interest. Patrick Ryan recovers the real Smith – a humane thinker, an admired lecturer, and a moral philosopher who believed that commercial societies depend not only on competition and innovation, but on prudence, justice, beneficence, and sympathy, judged through the inner moral lens he called the impartial spectator.
Smith got the great questions of his age right. He opposed slavery as both inhumane and economically unsustainable. He warned that monopolies corrupt both markets and character. And he criticised the East India Company as a dangerous fusion of private profit and political power. Far from being a theorist of greed, Smith believed that markets only endure when they are built on trust, fairness, and shared dignity.
This book is for readers who believe markets matter, but feel that today’s capitalism has drifted away from its moral foundations. By reintroducing Smith, explaining what he actually meant, and showing where modern assumptions have gone wrong, The Moral Market offers a simple, hopeful, and practical way forward – one that is recognisably Smithian, realistic, and rooted in decency.