The Invisible Hand
In Revenge of the Sith, the Separatist leader General Grievous attacks the Republic capital planet Coruscant and kidnaps Chancellor Palpatine with his flagship, the Invisible Hand. The name “The Invisible Hand” evokes the title of the first prequel episode, The Phantom Menace, which refers to Palpatine, the hidden orchestrator of the Clone Wars. It is telling that when Palpatine is an ostensible prisoner aboard the Invisible Hand, he sits on a throne at the top of its highest tower. Even as he is the visible leader of the Republic, it is Palpatine’s invisible hand that guides the Separatists.
More specifically, the “Invisible Hand” is a famous metaphor from the thought of the economist Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s “invisible hand” refers to the idea that in a free market, the desire for money will drive self-interested people to work for ends they do not intend. Smith’s invisible hand is a positive image: for instance, a rich man who only wants to increase his own wealth unintentionally distributes that wealth to the poor by employing them in the process, as if “led by an invisible hand.” In Revenge of the Sith, however, the “Invisible Hand” points to a darker twist on Smith’s idea. Palpatine is secretly leveraging the self-interested greed of rich merchants like the Trade Federation and the Commerce Guild to further his own agenda. General Grievous and the other Separatist leaders do not mean to bring the galaxy under the control of Palpatine as its Emperor, but in pursuing their own selfish intentions, they are being unintentionally led by his invisible hand.
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Characters: Palpatine
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Concepts: government / greed / hiding / leadership / sight and blindness
Influences: Adam Smith
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