George Scialabba explains that the free-market philosopher "at least had a moral imagination, unlike most of those who now claim his legacy." A brief rundown from his 2011 review of Nicholas Phillipson's Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life:
Like Hume, Smith was firmly on the side of the workers, a robust partisan of full employment and high wages.
What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves well fed, clothed, and lodged.
And another sarcasm against early capitalist apologetics, which applies equally well to later ones:
That a little more plenty than ordinary may render some workmen idle, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have that effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are in good health, seems not very probable.
Smith straightforwardly supported the principle underlying progressive taxation:
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.
Nor was Smith a proponent of the minimal state. Government has the duty of "erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works which may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society," but which "are of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals."
Adam Smith on the self-deception of politicians here.
The Dish 