IF AUTHORS MUST QUOTE ADAM SMITH THEY OUGHT AT FIRST TO READ HIS WORKS

Rajat Kathuria (director & chief executive, Icrier), Vatsala Shreeti and Parnil Urdhwareshe (research assistants) post (29 April) on Financial Express HERE 

“Column: Socialism to marketism: Involvement of the state in markets must be consistent with its capacity”

“In Adam Smith’s world of perfectly competitive markets, price is all that is needed to coordinate economic activity—the “invisible hand” leads to optimal allocation under textbook conditions.” 

Comment

The three authors of the article in Financial Express are so far off the truth about Adam Smith (I prefer to blame their tutors and the modern authors of the books from which they learned their errors about Adam Smith's political economy). They certainly never read anything in Adam Smith to justify their nonsense about which they write above.

The Adam Smith born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland in 1723, who wrote the Wealth of Nations (1776), never wrote about, nor mentioned, “perfectly competitive markets”, and neither did his use of the metaphor of “an invisible hand” refer to “optimal allocation” or “rextbook conditions”. 

At best the authors' are confused. Worse, I do not think they know just how wrong they are about Adam Smith’s ideas. T’is a pity. 

Worse, they compromise the details of their comments on aspects of India’s economy in the rest of their article in Financial Express.