1885 Unto This Last and The Two Paths, by John Ruskin

Unto This Last is an essay and book on economy by John Ruskin, first published between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal Cornhill Magazine in four articles.

Unto this Last was Finally released in book form.

The book greatly influenced the nonviolent activist Mohandas Gandhi.

The title is a quotation from the Bible Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.

The last is the eleventh-hour laborer, who are paid as if they had worked the entire day. Rather than discuss the contemporary religious interpretation of the parable, whereby the eleventh-hour laborers would be death bed converts or the peoples of the world who come late to religion, Ruskin looks at the social and economic implications, discussing issues such as who should receive a living wage. This essay is extremely critical of capitalist economists of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this sense, Ruskin is a precursor of the social economy.

The second half, The Two Paths,

In the Two Paths, Ruskin connects his theories of art with economic and practical life.

The central theme of Ruskin's theories of art was that contented individuals working within a just society and striving to capture the essence of nature produce fine and noble art, while corrupt and despondent individuals, working within an unjust society and relying on the tools of the machine age produce inferior art.

Early Socialist

Because the essays also attack the destructive effects of industrialism upon the natural world, some historians have seen them as anticipating the Green movement.