Theories of Surplus Value
In an unplaced footnote, Marx quotes Ravenstone as denying that government debt may be a "burden" on future generations. This argument would have anticipated similar arguments from Paul Samuelson in the 20th Century and Paul Krugman. Marx discusses Ravenstone's value theory in a section of Theories of Surplus Value, but it seems he was only aware of the second of Ravenstone's books mentioned; Marx refers to it as "a most remarkable work." The same volume has an extended discussion describing Ravenstone's "surplus product" analysis. Henryk Grossman also refers to Ravenstone, along with William Thompson and Thomas Hodgskin, as a thinker who drew out the egalitarian principles implicit in the labor theory of value espoused by William Petty, David Hume, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo, leading to its abandonment by subsequent economists.