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. I maintained, as I still do, that the older economists, writing before Socialism had arisen as a possible alternative to Commercialism and a menace to its vested interests, were far more candid in their statements and thorough in their reasoning than their successors, and was fond of citing the references in De Quincey and Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence to the country gentleman system and the evils of capitalism, as instances of frankness upon which no modern professor dare venture.
The economical and moral identity of capital and interest with land and rent was popularly demonstrated by Olivier in Tract 7 on Capital and Land, and put into strict academic form by Sidney Webb. The point was of importance at a time when the distinction was still so strongly maintained that the Fabian Society was compelled to exclude Land Nationalizers, both before and after their development into Single Taxers, because they held that though land and rent should be socialized, capital and interest must remain private property.
This really exhausts the history of the Fabian Society as far as abstract economic theory is concerned. Activity in that department was confined to Webb and myself. Later on, Pease's interest in banking and currency led him to contribute some criticism of the schemes of the currency cranks who infest all advanced movements, flourishing the paper money of the Guernsey Market, and to give the Society some positive guidance as to the rapid integration of modern banking. But this was an essay in applied economics. It may be impossible to draw a line between the old abstract deductive economics and the modern historical concrete economics; but the fact remains that though the water may be the same, the tide has turned. A comparison of my exposition of the law of rent in my first Fabian Essay and in my Impossibilities of Anarchism with the Webbs' great Histories of Trade Unionism and of Industrial Democracy will illustrate the difference between the two schools.