One of the second hand books I bought on my recent foray to England's delightful Book Town of Sedbergh was J.A.Hobson: A Reader edited by Michael Freeden.

It's one of those rare books with little online footprint, and the copies offered on Amazon start at $83 (although mine was £3), but Project Gutenberg does have some full length texts by Hobson online. This lack of attention in the digital world reflects the neglect of Hobson by subsequent scholars. Yet he was a prolific writer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and having read only The Science of Wealth before, I was staggered by what I discovered in this Reader.

Hobson is probably remembered most often now for his work on imperialism, which was picked up and praised by Lenin. Hobson saw imperialism as the search for new markets by the leading economies as their own capital accumulation found fewer and fewer outlets in domestic markets, consumption being unable to keep up. This is an interesting perspective at a time when the 'emerging' markets have the capital surpluses.

However, the most lasting influence of this theory of 'underconsumption' was on Keynes, whose General Theory indeed acknowledges Hobson's influence. Going back to the source in works such as The Problem of the Unemployed (1896) and The Economics of Distribution (1900) is revelatory. Hobson makes Keynes sound like a cautious, rather conservative fellow. His views were far more radical. He was all in favour of redistributive tax and spending, and increasing the scale and scope of government intervention in the economy. The virtues of thrift, he argued, were wildly over-rated.

Particularly striking is his emphasis on the role of society in making individuals productive. He saw the emphasis on individual choice and action in conventional economics as essentially flawed because it overlooks the fact that value is a social construct. Even a smallholder selling a few vegetables in the market benefits from social value because without the presence of the demand of others, her spare carrots would have no value. Hobson also roamed over psychology, philosophy and politics in his work, making him the very model of a heterodox economist.

So he's not an accessible read – those late Victorian rhetorical flourishes are pretty heavy going – but nevertheless an intriguing one. Keynes has become all the rage again, in certain circles, but people looking now for inspirations for a left-of-centre public philosophy would do well to root out Hobson in a second hand bookshop.