Contemplating the Real Adam Smith vs. the Fake Adam Smith

Free to Choose Media, the people who brought Milton Friedman into public prominence through the PBS documentary series Free to Choose, have recently released a free version of their documentary series, The Real Adam Smith, along with free DIY screening kits. The series on which the enterprise was built helped create a global free-market revolution. But that revolution was at best incomplete and at worst distorted by a misunderstanding. That misunderstanding is that capitalism has nothing to do with morality, and may even depend on the vice of selfishness. This has been a useful cudgel by which the Left has been able to morally discredit the intellectual roots of the free-enterprise system. One of the most effective anti-capitalism films ever made, Wall Street, popularized the notion that capitalism depends on the (anti) ethical premise that 'greed is good'. Adam Smith is typically called forth as chief witness for the prosecution in proving that capitalism is guilty of promoting greed.