Tangan tak terlihat

Dalam ekonomi, tangan tak terlihat (invisible hand) adalah metafora yang dipakai Adam Smith untuk menyebut manfaat sosial yang tak terduga-duga berkat tindakan individu. Frasa ini digunakan Smith dalam penjelasannya mengenai pemerataan pendapatan (1759) dan produksi (1776). Frasa tersebut hanya muncul sebanyak tiga kali dalam tulisan-tulisannya, namun mampu merangkum gagasannya bahwa upaya seseorang untuk mengejar kepentingan pribadinya dapat memberikan manfaat bagi masyarakat apabila tindakan mereka secara langsung bertujuan untuk memakmurkan masyarakat. Smith mungkin mendapatkan dua penjelasan frasa ini dari Richard Cantillon yang mengembangkan kedua penerapannya dalam model kekayaan terisolasi Cantillon.

Smith pertama kali memperkenalkan konsep ini dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) dan mengaitkannya dengan pemerataan pendapatan. Dalam tulisannya, gagasan tentang pasar tidak dibahas, dan kata "kapitalisme" tidak pernah digunakan. Saat ia menulis The Wealth of Nations tahun 1776, Smith telah mempelajari model ekonomi Physiocrat Prancis selama beberapa tahun. Dalam bukunya tersebut, tangan tak terlihat cenderung dikaitkan dengan produksi dan pemanfaatan modal untuk mendukung industri domestik. "Tangan tak terlihat" hanya muncul sekali dalam The Wealth of Nations, tepatnya di Book IV, Chapter II, "Of Restraints upon the Importation from foreign Countries of such Goods as can be produced at Home."

Gagasan mengenai perdagangan dan bursa pasar yang secara otomatis mengalihkan kepentingan pribadinya demi kemaslahatan masyarakat merupakan gagasan utama yang membenarkan pemikiran ekonomi laissez-faire; pemikiran ini adalah bagian dari ekonomi neoklasik. Perselisihan terbesar antara berbagai ideologi ekonomi dapat dipandang sebagai perselisihan mengenai seberapa kuatkah "tangan tak terlihat" itu. Dalam model alternatif, kekuatan-kekuatan yang mulai berkembang pada zaman Smith, seperti industri berskala besar, keuangan, dan periklanan, mengurangi keefektifan tangan tak terlihat.

Teori Sentimen Moral

Kemunculan pertama dari tangan tak terlihat terjadi dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Bagian IV, Bab 1, di mana ia menggambarkan pemilik tanah yang egois didorong oleh tangan tak terlihat untuk mendistribusikan hasil panennya kepada mereka yang bekerja untuknya:

The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest … [Yet] the capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires … the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice...The rich...are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society...

Di sisi lain dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith menggambarkan hasrat manusia untuk dihormati oleh anggota masyarakat dimana ia hidup, serta keinginan manusia untuk merasakan bahwa mereka adalah makhluk terhormat.

The Wealth of Nations

Bagian dari buku The Wealth of Nations (1776) yang menggambarkan generasi seperti apa di masa depan yang akan mempertimbangkan "tangan tak terlihat" Smith tidaklah benar-benar menggunakan istilah tersebut. Proses dimana persaingan pasar menyalurkan kepentingan individu dijelaskan dengan jelas dalam Buku I, Bab 7.

Adam Smith menggunakan metafora dalam Buku IV, Bab II, paragraf IX dari The Wealth of Nations.

But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic 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. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

Kegunaan lain dari frasa oleh Smith

Hanya dalam Sejarah Astronomi (ditulis sebelum tahun 1758) Smith berbicara tentang tangan tak terlihat, yang merujuk pada fenomena alam yang tidak dapat dijelaskan:

Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters.

Dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) serta dalam The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith berbicara tentang sebuah tangan tak terlihat, tidak pernah dari the invisible hand. Dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith menggunakan konsep untuk mempertahankan teori "menetes ke bawah", konsep ini juga digunakan dalam teori pengembangan neoklasik: kerakusan orang kaya memberi makan orang miskin.

The rich … consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand [emphasis added] to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

Smith berkunjung ke Prancis dan kenalannya para Ekonom Prancis (dikenal sebagai Physiocrats) mengubah pandangannya dari optimasi mikroekonomi ke pertumbuhan makroekonomi sebagai akhir dari Politik Ekonomi. Jadi kerakusan pemilik tanah dalam The Theory of Moral Sentiments ini dikecam dalam Wealth of Nations sebagai tenaga kerja yang tidak produktif. Walker, presiden pertama (1885 92) dari American Economic Association sependapat menyatakan bahwa:

The domestic servant … is not employed as a means to his master's profit. His master's income is not due in any part to his employment; on the contrary, that income is first acquired … and in the amount of the income is determined whether the servant shall be employed or not, while to the full extent of that employment the income is diminished. As Adam Smith expresses it "a man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude of menial servants."

Teori U-turn Smith dari sudut pandang mikroekonomi ke makroekonomi tidak tercermin dalam The Wealth of Nations. Bagian-bagian besar dari buku ini diambil dari kuliah Smith sebelum kunjungannya ke Prancis. Sehingga harus dibedakan mikroekonomi The Wealth of Nations dengan makroekonomi Adam Smith. Apakah itu kutipan Smith tentang tangan tak terlihat di tengah-tengah pekerjaannya merupakan pernyataan mikroekonomi atau pernyataan makroekonomi, keduanya mengutuk monopoli dan campur tangan pemerintah seperti dalam hal tarif dan paten.

Interpretasi para ekonom terhadap kutipan "tangan tak terlihat"

Konsep "tangan tak terlihat" hampir selalu digunakan di luar kegunaan asli Smith. Ungkapan tersebut belum populer di kalangan ekonom sebelum abad ke-20; Alfred Marshall tidak pernah menggunakannya dalam buku teks prinsip-Prinsip Ekonomi dan demikian juga William Stanley Jevons dalam Teori Ekonomi Politik. Paul Samuelson mengutip dalam buku teks Ekonomi tahun 1948:

Even Adam Smith, the canny Scot whose monumental book, "The Wealth of Nations" (1776) , represents the beginning of modern economics or political economy-even he was so thrilled by the recognition of an order in the economic system that he proclaimed the mystical principle of the "invisible hand": that each individual in pursuing his own selfish good was led, as if by an invisible hand, to achieve the best good of all, so that any interference with free competition by government was almost certain to be injurious. This unguarded conclusion has done almost as much harm as good in the past century and a half, especially since too often it is all that some of our leading citizens remember, 30 years later, of their college course in economics.

Dalam penafsiran ini, teori tangan tak terlihat menyatakan bahwa jika masing-masing konsumen diberi kebebasan membeli dan produsen diperbolehkan memilih apa yang dijual dan bagaimana memproduksinya, pasar akan menyesuaikan distribusi dan harga produk yang menguntungkan bagi semua individu di masyarakat, serta masyarakat secara keseluruhan. Alasannya adalah kepentingan pribadi mendorong seseorang berperilaku menguntungkan seperti dalam kasus serendipity. Metode produksi yang efisien diadopsi untuk memaksimalkan keuntungan. Harga yang rendah dikenakan untuk memaksimalkan pendapatan melalui keuntungan pasar dengan melemahkan pesaing.^{[butuh rujukan]} Investor berinvestasi di industri-industri yang paling dibutuhkan untuk memaksimalkan keuntungan, dan menarik modal dari hal yang kurang efisien dalam menciptakan nilai. Semua efek ini berlangsung secara dinamis dan otomatis.^{[butuh rujukan]}

Sejak zaman Smith, konsep ini telah dimasukkan lebih jauh ke dalam teori ekonomi. Léon Walras mengembangkan empat-persamaan model keseimbangan umum yang menyimpulkan bahwa kepentingan individu yang beroperasi di pasar kompetitif menciptakan kondisi unik dimana utilitas total masyarakat dimaksimalkan. Vilfredo Pareto menggunakan garis hubungan edgeworth box untuk menggambarkan pengoptimalan masyarakat yang serupa.

Lihat pula

• Essays on Philosophical Subjects oleh Adam Smith
• I, Pencil oleh Leonard Read
• The National Gain oleh Anders Chydenius
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments oleh Adam Smith
• The Visible Hand oleh Alfred Chandler
• The Wealth of Nations oleh Adam Smith

• Korporasi
• Kemunculan
• Kepentingan pribadi tercerahkan
• Sistem harga bebas
• Laissez-faire
• Fundamentalisme pasar
• Objektivisme
• Biaya kesempatan
• Pengetahuan parsial
• Filsafat ilmu sosial
• Egoisme rasional
• Tatanan spontan
• The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
• Tangan menghilang

Referensi

1. Thornton, Mark. "Cantillon and the Invisible Hand". Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae12_2_3.pdf Vol. 12, No. 2 (2009) pp. 27–46.
2. Sen, Amartya. Introduction. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. By Adam Smith. 6th ed. 1790. New York: Penguin, 2009. vii–xxix.
3. Slater, D. & Tonkiss, F. (2001). Market Society: Maarkets and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 54–5
4. Olsen, James Stewart. Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. pp. 153–154
5. Smith, A., 1980, The Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press, vol. III, p. 49
6. Smith, A., 1980, The Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press, vol. III, p. 49
7. Smith, A., 1976, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. 1, p. 184 in: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press
8. Smith, A., 1976, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. 1, p. 184 in: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press
9. Walker, A., 1875, The Wage Question, N:Y: Henry Holt, p. 215
10. Walker, A., 1875, The Wage Question, N:Y: Henry Holt, p. 215
11. A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, 1890
12. S. Jevon, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871
13. Paul Samuelson, Economics, 1948
14. Paul Samuelson, Economics, 1948

Daftar pustaka

• Basu, Kaushik (2010). Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13716-2. 
• Samuels, Warren J., ed. (2011). Erasing the Invisible Hand: Essays on an Elusive and Misused Concept in Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51725-6. 

Bacaan lanjutan

Wikiquote memiliki koleksi kutipan yang berkaitan dengan: Tangan tak terlihat.

• The Theory of Moral Sentiments (full text) 2007-09-27 di Wayback Machine.
• The Wealth of Nations (full text) or
• The History of Astronomy, in Essays on Philosophical Subjects (full text)