Adam Smith, with "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"
published in 1776 is unanimously hailed as the founder of economics as a social science and
also of "economic liberalism" or "capitalism" as it is called to contrast it with "socialism", the
latter propagated by K. Marx at a later date.
The group of economists that followed A.Smith, including such notable names as
D.Ricardo, N.W.Senior, John Stuart Mill, culminating in Alfred Marshall (1890 ...