Adam Smith and the Morphing of the Invisible Hand Metaphor

Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Gavin Kennedy): Malthus Was Not the Author of the 'Dismal Science'. Within this post about Malthus Kennedy writes:

…I agree that Ren’s exposition of the invisible hand that ‘The most common interpretation of the invisible hand is: in pursuing self-interest, individuals promote the common good’, but the trouble is that this is not what Adam Smith wrote.

It is what modern economists from the mid-20th century began to assert Adam Smith was the originator of such a theory, mainly to give justification to their theories of how markets work. Smith didn’t introduce ‘the invisible hand to economics’; Chicago economists did so indepedently of what is in Wealth Of Nations.

Adam Smith described how markets work in Books I and II of Wealth Of Nations without mentioning anything about invisible hands. Not a lot of economists either know nor believe that (and ignore it when advised of it, as I often do on Lost Legacy).

Usually the famous quotation about the ‘Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker’ supplying your dinner from their self interest (they get in return your money price enabling them to purchase what they want elsewhere) and they then add to it (without admitting what they are doing – normally we would call that ‘sleight of hand’) a quotation from Book IV of Wealth Of Nations that mentions the metaphor of the invisible hand on an entirely different subject (risk avoidance).

To say this is a deception may be thought to be a trifle extreme, but that is exactly what it is. A student behaving thus in a tutorial would be spoken to about such use of argument by the tutor….