To a considerable extent, however, the economic ideas of the Middle Ages were a direct outgrowth of the economic and religious conditions under which the writers lived.1063 In the following centuries, some Greek influence may be traced in Adam Smith, in the physiocrats,1064 in utopian writers such as More, and in eighteenth-century thinkers like Rousseau.
It is usually asserted that the economic thought of the past century has been practically unaffected by Greek ideas. But our previous discussion has clearly shown that Plato and Xenophon, at least, dominated the economic thinking of Ruskin. If further evidence is needed, it is necessary only to turn to the names of Greek thinkers in the index to the monumental new edition of his works, which we have frequently cited above. He frankly and enthusiastically presents himself as an apostle of a “Greek theory of economics.”1065
But despite some of his utopian and extravagant ideas, he is being ever more recognized by authorities in economics as having been one of the chief factors in the development of political economy to its present moral and humanitarian emphasis.1066
His repudiation of the abstract “economic man,” his insistence upon human, moral, and social ideals in economics, his attempt to broaden the definition of economic value and wealth by emphasizing true utility, his constant stress upon proper consumption rather than upon production, his demand that all have opportunity up to their capacity, his opposition to the laissez-faire policy in economics and politics, his emphasis upon right education, all have borne rich and abiding fruit in the last few decades, and these are all distinctively Greek ideas, as we have seen above. Thus indirectly, through Ruskin, Greek economic thought has exerted a potent influence upon the evolution of nineteenth-century economics, and thus there is much truth in the words of Wagner, as quoted by Oncken,1067 not merely for German, but for all modern economy: