ABSTRACT
I Those who know Ian Steedman’s long-standing interest in the economics of socialism will hardly be surprised by my choice of subject. But there is a personal side to that choice known best to Ian and myself. When I was organizing some historical essays celebrating the centenary of the Royal Economic Society in 1990, I asked Ian to contribute one on the treatment given to socialism in the Economic Journal during the first three decades of its existence.1 We were both aware of the importance of the subject, but the magnitude of the task only became obvious when Ian had done far more work than could be accommodated in a single chapter. Having urged Ian to undertake the task, I was in the embarrassing position of having to say that there wasn’t enough space for it to be done as thoroughly as he wished. Ian’s mild form of revenge was to devote his opening section to listing the topics he would not be able to cover, adding a couple of notes to inform readers that ‘further relevant material is available from the author’ – a statement that rings true of most of the themes Ian has pursued during his long research career. Henry Sidgwick, the subject of this offering, featured in Ian’s chapter as the author of an essay, accurately described by Ian as ‘delightful’, on ‘The Economic Lessons of Socialism’. It appeared in the Economic Journal in 1895 and it furnished Ian with several useful quotations, one of which now serves as an epigraph for the theme I shall be addressing here:
[T]hough Mill had concealed from us the extent of his Socialism, we were all, I think, conscious of having received from him a certain impulse in the Socialistic direction: we have at any rate ceased to regard the science of Political Economy as opposing a hard and fast barrier against the Socialistic conception of the ideal goal of economic progress.2
