By the start of the Victorian period the school of British economists
acknowledging Adam Smith as its master was in the ascendancy. 'Political
Economy', a catch-all title which ignored the diversity of viewpoints to
be found amongst the discipline's leading proponents, became associated
in the popular mind with moral and political forces held to be uniquely
conducive to the progress of an increasingly industrialised and
competitive society. 'Political Economy' served in turn as the focus for
critics of equally diverse moral and political persuasions, who sought
to challenge the materialism of contemporary society and offer their own
assessments of the profound social changes of the time. In the
introductory essay to the collection of readings from such 'critics of
capitalism', the editors review the principles of the early economists,
the way in which these principles were appropriated and applied by their
Victorian successors and the contrasting modes which critics of popular
economic ideas assumed. Subsequent extracts from the writings of the
Owenite Socialist John Bray, Carlyle, Marx and Engels, J. S. Mill,
Ruskin, Arnold, T. H. Green, William Morris and G. B. Shaw, demonstrate
both the breadth of the possible grounds for ideological opposition to
the prevailing philosophy and the shifting nature of the debate as
'Political Economy' itself was revealed as incapable of explaining or
responding to the changing conditions of the 1870s. Headnotes to the
extracts describe the genesis of individual debate and discuss
distinctive stylistic features. Annotation in the form of footnotes and
endnotes has been designed to gloss obscure allusions and arguments. In
making more accessible the socio-economic writings of those authors now
better known for their imaginative work, this volume will enable readers
to reach a more profound appreciation of the central role such work
played in developing the moral vision embodied in their more lastingly
popular books and essays.
