It’s not infrequently said that Adam Smith “invented” capitalism with his publication The Wealth of Nations, but the more realistic truth (one stressed by Matthew Hennessey in Visible Hand) is that Smith reported on capitalism as it was revealing itself. That’s because profit-motivated human action is as natural as breathing, as opposed to something humans needed instruction in.
What arguably drives the mistaken narrative about the greatest economics book ever written (one that is probably the least read economics book ever written relative to purchases of same) is the popular notion that for something like two thousand years economic output was essentially flat, followed by big leaps born of the Industrial Revolution and other brilliant growth spasms. Some will tie the leaps to Smith’s articulations. The view here is they have it backwards, and not because Smith’s book isn’t brilliant, and not because the Industrial Revolution and what followed wasn’t brilliant. But because economic growth is people dividing up work, and as the world shrank in a figurative sense thanks to profit-motivated advances, more and more hands worked together on the way to soaring productivity. Worthless measures like GDP are near totally unequal to this truth.
Which brings us to Moscow during the Soviet era. What happens when the profit motive is illegal? As in what happens when human nature is suffocated? I found myself asking this while reading the recently deceased Martin Cruz Smith’s 1981 novel, Gorky Park. What inspired a read of what is a nearly 45-years-old was the obituaries for Smith when he died in July (July 11, 2025), and quotes from individuals like former Washington Post Moscow bureau chief Peter Osnos that with his novel, Smith conveyed “a feeling for the Soviet Union, its capital, its moods and its people.” My interest in Gorky Park was much more rooted in the life of Moscow than it was the suspense within the novel.
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