ABSTRACT
The key to John Ruskin's attitude to the market and commercial society in general may be found in his discussion of the concept of value; a discussion which looms large in both Unto this Last and Munera Pulveris. A similarly prominent role was to be played by the chivalrous merchant in the moralisation and rationalisation of the market. In any case the competitive market economy, as it functioned in mid-Victorian Britain, established prices which were very far from being the natural outcome of market forces. Though there is little that is original there is much that is of intrinsic worth on the critical side of Ruskinian political economy. In the final analysis, however, Ruskin saw the problem of allocation as having a moral solution. Under the pen of Ruskin such a vision had a compelling appeal, as is evidenced by the indelible imprint which it left upon no less a thinker than William Morris.
