This was the first appearance in Socialist
controversy of the value theory of Jevons, published in 1871. Professor
Edgeworth and Mr. Wicksteed, to whom Jevons appealed as a mathematician,
were at that time trying to convince the academic world of the
importance of Jevons's theory; but I, not being a mathematician, was not
easily accessible to their methods of demonstration. I consented to
reply to Mr. Wicksteed on the express condition that the editor of
To-day, in which my reply appeared, should find space for a rejoinder
by Mr. Wicksteed. My reply, which was not bad for a fake, and contained
the germ of the economic argument for equality of income which I put
forward twenty-five years later, elicited only a brief rejoinder; but
the upshot was that I put myself into Mr. Wicksteed's hands and became a
convinced Jevonian, fascinated by the subtlety of Jevons's theory and
the exquisiteness with which it adapted itself to all the cases which
had driven previous economists, including Marx, to take refuge in clumsy
distinctions between use value, exchange value, labour value, supply and
demand value, and the rest of the muddlements of that time.
Accordingly, the abstract economics of the Fabian Essays are, as regards
value, the economics of Jevons. As regards rent they are the economics
of Ricardo, which I, having thrown myself into the study of abstract
economics, had learnt from Ricardo's own works and from De Quincey's
Logic of Political Economy.
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