[73] These ideas seem to have found expression simultaneously in England and Austria. Compare The Theory of Political Economy, by W. S. Jevons, London, 1871; Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, by Anton Menger, Vienna, 1871.
[74] The question of the validity of the Marxian theory is not now a live subject in England. Mr. Hyndman's defence of the Marxian position is to be found in his Economics of Socialism, in which he attempts to demonstrate the “final futility of final utility.” It is still a mooted question on the Continent; compare, for example, the works of Böhm-Bawerk, perhaps the most eminent of the “Austrian School” of political economists.
[75] These conclusions were reached before the third volume of Capital appeared. The editor of the first volume, Mr. Frederick Engels, promised that the third volume, when it appeared, would reconcile these and other seeming contradictions. Marx does seem to have modified certain of his theories in the third volume.
[76] In the Pall Mall Gazette the following articles appeared: Marx and Modern Socialism, by Shaw, May 7th, 1887, page 3; Hyndman's reply, May 11th, page 11; Shaw's rejoinder—Socialists at Home (this heading doubtless a jibe of the editor), May 12th, page 11; Hyndman's rejoinder, May 16th, page 2; Mrs. Besant's article on the same subject, May 24th, page 2. In To-Day, Vol. XI., New Series, 1889, appeared: An Economic Eirenicon, by Graham Wallas, pages 80-86; Marx's Theory of Value, by Hyndman, same volume, pages 94-104; Shaw's reply, Bluffing the Value Theory, following Hyndman, May, 1889, pages 128-135, was lately reprinted by Eduard Bernstein in Sozialistische Monatshefte. Shaw's letter in Justice appeared on page 3 of the issue of July 20th, 1889. The fine essay, entitled The Illusions of Socialism, quite penetrating in its psychology, although caviare to the ordinary reviewer, originally appeared in German in Die Zeit (Vienna), in 1896: No. 108, October 24th, and No. 109, October 31st; later it appeared in English in Forecasts of the Coming Century, edited by Edward Carpenter, Manchester: Labour Press, 1897; it afterwards appeared in French in L'Humanité Nouvelle (Ghent and Paris), August, 1900, edited by Auguste Hamon, the well-known Socialist and the French translator of Shaw's plays.
[77] The Class War, in the Clarion, September 30th, 1904.
[78] Shaw's position in regard to the Class War is ably set forth in his three articles, under the general heading, The Class War, which appeared in the Clarion, London; dates: September 30th, October 21st and November 4th, 1904.
[79] In 1888 Shaw wrote two very clever articles, which so far seem to have escaped attention, although the disguise is so thin as to be negligible. These two articles are, respectively, My Friend Fitzthunder, the Unpractical Socialist, by Redbarn Wash—note the anagram—(To-Day, edited by Hubert Bland, August, 1888), and Fitzthunder on Himself—A Defence, by Robespierre Marat Fitzthunder (To-Day, September, 1888). These very amusing papers, both written by Shaw, it is needless to say, constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the unpractical and revolutionary Socialist; Fitzthunder is evidently a composite picture, made up from a number of Shaw's Socialist confrères.
[80] Fabian Tract, No. 45: The Impossibilities of Anarchism, a paper by Shaw, written in 1888, read to the Fabian Society on October 16th, 1891, and published by the Fabian Society, July, 1893.
[81] Compare the former chapter; complete details are to be found in Fabian Tract No. 41, pages 12-15.
[82] In the twenty-seventh Annual Report on the work of the Fabian Society (for the year ended March 31st, 1910), the membership is given as 2,627.