George Bernard Shaw or the quest for a popular and scientific economics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/1806-9029.35in.2(64)e64885Keywords:
Socialism, Fabian society, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Wicksteed, Theory of valueAbstract
George Bernard Shaw was an important Irish playwright of the late 19th century. In addition to his literary output, which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, Bernard was also an important socialist, linked to the Fabian Society. As a Fabian activist, Shaw furthered his studies in economics and became involved in a polemic with the Reverend Philip Wicksteed, also an economics scholar, on the theory of value. This article aims to analyse this controversy and is divided into three sections: the first describes the formation of George Bernard Shaw's economic thought; the second analyses the formation of Philip Wicksteed's economic thought; and the third analyses the actual content of the controversy between the two. The article concludes by pointing out Bernard Shaw's creative approach, but also his limits, as he juxtaposed elements of Marxist and neoclassical economic thought, without achieving a precise synthesis of the two.
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