invisible hand

Coined by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Influenced by and echoing earlier use as "the hand of God". See Etymology citations.

invisible hand (countable and uncountable, plural invisible hands)

1. (economics) A metaphor for the principle that in a free market, an individual pursuing his own self-interest also tends to promote the good of his community as a whole.
   • 1776 March 9, Adam Smith, “Of Restraints upon the Importation of Such Goods from Foreign Countries as can be Produced at Home”, in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. […], volume II, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, book IV (Of Systems of Political Oeconomy), page 35:

     By preferring the ſupport of domeſtick to that of foreign induſtry he intends only his own ſecurity; and by directing that induſtry in ſuch a manner as its produce may be of the greateſt value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other caſes, led by an inviſible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

   • 1982, Frank Hahn, Monetary and Inflation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, page 48:

     When Lucasians postulate that prices are ‘flexible’ they seem to mean that we can observe only Walrasian market-clearing prices. There is no nonsense here about the invisible hand doing any noticeable and comprehensible work: its task is accomplished by definition.

   • 2008 May 25, Robert H. Frank, “The Invisible Hand Is Shaking”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 14 August 2008:

     In short, Smith understood that the invisible hand is often benign, but not always.

   • 2014 July 29, George Monbiot, “The rich want us to believe their wealth is good for us all”, in The Guardian‎:

     Aha, they say, but extreme wealth is good for all of us. All will be uplifted by their god’s invisible hand. […]

   • 2014 November 6, Rob Nixon, “Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’”, in New York Times‎:

     Yet the carbon giants continue to reap $600 billion in annual subsidies from public coffers, not to speak of a greater subsidy: the right, in Klein’s words, to treat the atmosphere as a “waste dump.” ¶ So much for the invisible hand. As the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson observed, when it comes to the environment, the invisible hand never picks up the check.

   • 2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:

     However, the mainstream pro-capitalist position, especially as flat-out climate-change denialism becomes less common in the ruling class, is that the invisible hand and mighty forces of ‘entrepreneurialism’ will definitely lead to the ‘fixing’ of the problem.

Though Adam Smith's original reference discusses only domestic versus foreign trade, the concept is nearly always generalized economically beyond this narrow scope.