A wealthy nation in thrall to a narrow economic ideology, its residents bent on self- enrichment, its business leaders adrift without a moral compass, its politicians oblivious to the gap between rich and poor: seen through the eyes of John Ruskin, today's Britain would not have looked so different from Britain in the 1850s.
Ruskin – art critic, social visionary, moralist of wealth – laid out the antidote in a savage attack on market economics, which he contrasted with a moral blueprint of how business and society should function. This year is the 150th anniversary of this tract's publication in four essays, later issued as a book that rocked the foundations of wealthy, industrialised Victorian Britain: Unto This Last.
Until 2007, most market economists were guilty of the same smugness Ruskin was attacking in 1860. The global financial crisis has raised concerns he would have shared: about excessive pay and bonuses; use and abuse of wealth; honesty and justice in business and finance; and about the purpose of work. No wonder that, without consciously referencing Ruskin, politicians, regulators, academics and even business people echo his ideas.