Footnote 3, Chapter 8, of the author's Ruskin's Poetic Argument: The Design of the Major Works, which Cornell University Press published in 1985. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Earlier appreciations of Ruskinian economics include John A. Hobson, John Ruskin, Social Reformer (Boston, 1898), and Charles A. Beard, "Ruskin and the Babble of Tongues," New Republic 87 (1936), 370-372. John T. Fain's Ruskin and the Economists (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1956) is the standard modern account of Ruskin and his tradition, including a mature assessment of his influence. See also Sherburne 106-121. Both Fain and Sherburne find Ruskin mistaken in his view that the orthodox economists did not understand the abstract nature of their science or that they deliberately preached materialistic values. For Sherburne, the real difference between Ruskin and a writer like Mill relates to the system of ethics: "Ruskin cannot share a belief in liberty. He is unwilling to accept its divisive effects. Now, he values justice, unity, or even love more than liberty. This difference in ethical preference lies behind his conflict with the leading economists over the relationship of social forces and chains of causation" (p. 121).
Last modified December 2000