were the first to recognise its incongruity with existing facts were unable
to free themselves from its power. They persisted in believing in it,
though they perceived its incompatibility with the facts, and knew
therefore that it was false.

This glance at the historical evolution of economic doctrine opens the way
to the rectification of all the errors of which the different schools of
political economy have--even in their quest after truth--been guilty. It is
seen that the great inquirers and thinkers of past centuries, in their vast
work of investigation and analysis of economic facts, approached so very
near to the full and complete cognisance of the true connection of all
phenomena, that it needed but a little more labour in order to construct a
thoroughly harmonious definitive economic theory based upon the solution,
at last discovered, of the long vexed problem.

I zealously threw myself into this task, and had proceeded with it a
considerable way--to the close of a thick first volume, containing a new
treatment of the theory of value; but when at work on the classical theory
of capital, I made a discovery which at once threw a ray of light into the
obscurity that had until then made the practical realisation of the forms
of social organisation impossible. _I perceived that capitalism stops the
growth of wealth, not_--as Marx has it--_by stimulating 'production for the
market,' but by preventing the consumption of the surplus produce; and that
interest, though not unjust, will nevertheless in a condition of economic
justice become superfluous and objectless._ These two fundamental truths
will be found treated in detail in chapters xxiv. and xviii.; but I cannot
refrain here from doing justice to the manes of Marx, by acknowledging
unreservedly his service in having been the first to proclaim--though he
misunderstood it and argued illogically--the connection between the problem
of value and modern capitalism.