In a testament to the durability of bad ideas, the landscape is littered with monuments to discredited “economist” Karl Marx. His well-kept London grave is a pilgrimage site of sorts. Yet Adam Smith, the 18th-century expounder of an economic system that actually works, lacks a memorial worthy of his place in the economic pantheon. London’s Adam Smith Institute is finally trying to change that.

The institute is raising money to erect a 10-foot-tall bronze statue of Smith in the center of Edinburgh, where he spent much of his life. A year into the effort, it has raised about two-thirds of the $407,000 cost of casting and maintaining the statue, according to Steve Bettison, general manager of the institute. Contributions have come from individuals all over the world. More information is available at www.adamsmith.org/statue.

Mr. Bettison said he can think of only two other statues of Smith in Britain – one in a Glasgow museum and the other in a backstreet in London. The disparate treatment of Smith and Marx, says the proprietor of tomgpalmer.com, arises because “Marx created a cult, but Smith stimulated people to think.” Smith based his work not on his own personality but on the observation of truths of human nature that Marx was never able to plumb.

The statue may seem a bit late, coming 215 years after Smith’s death. But we could use a reminder of his genius right about now, as the pangs of globalization cause some to question the wisdom of free trade. These tensions were high even 1776, when Smith published “The Wealth of Nations” as a rebuff to mercantilist trade policy. It’s not a coincidence, as the Marxists are fond of saying, that it was the same year as the American Declaration of Independence. Smith taught that the rising tide of trade-stimulated growth lifts all boats. It’s a lesson Senator Smoot Schumer might want to reread as he pushes retaliatory textile tariffs against China.

Smith was a professor of moral philosophy (economics as such didn’t exist in his day), but “The Wealth of Nations” has helped shape our modern economy and politics like no other single book by any other human thinker. Mr. Palmer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, tells of visiting Smith’s grave and finding the site obscure and littered. If this statue project comes to fruition, Smith will be able to look down on his handiwork from a vantage point in the heart of Edinburgh’s commercial district. And then we can set our sights on an Adam Smith statue here in New York.