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While popular sentiment holds Adam Smith to be the founding father of capitalism, free markets, and free trade, many scholars question the degree to which Smith can properly be considered an unalloyed supporter of laissez-faire politics. Some scholars go so far as to claim that Smith is closer to being an egalitarian progressive liberal than he is to being a classical liberal. In this paper, James R. Otteson defends the view that Smith is properly seen as a supporter of political individual liberty. Otteson argues that Smith, as a realist, saw the potential hazards involved with commercial societies, but his insistence on liberty, along with his belief in the beneficial powers of both moral and economic markets, put him much more in the camp of classical liberal than progressive liberal.