The Theoretical Background of Henry George's Value Theory*

Abstract . Henry George intended that his last work. The Science of Political Economy, (which his untimely death left unfinished), should recast economics in a new mold. He argued that if economics is the science of the nature of wealth and the laws of its production and distribution and if in present society there is some deep and widespread wrong in its distribution, if not in its producton, it is the office of an honest science to disclose that. He therefore sought a philosophical basis for an investigation into the nature of wealth which led him into an investigation of the idea of value. These investigations were preceded by an attempt to set out a philosophy of science with respect to one of the sciences, economics.