In England, at the middle of the nineteenth century (a.k.a. Victorian times) Charles Dickens was totally fed up with Utilitarianism and Political Economy. Whoa, don't panic! Shmoop to the what-on-earth-is-that-big-capitalized-word rescue! Political Economy is exactly what they predicted economics back in the day, and Utilitarianism is the idea that we ought to put up society to do the greatest good for the most number of individuals.
It sounds great when we say it like this, but how can anyone tell what the greatest good is? And what happens to the people who aren't part of the "greatest number"? Utilitarian thinkers were threatening to gradually but surely replace older Judeo-Christian ideas of morality with more mathematically based explanations of what individuals should do for themselves, for one another, and for society.
Currently there is definitely some dispute about just how far the economists really wished to take their theories. Some, like David Ricardo, just hung back and determined that economics was also descriptive. It was like saying, "Wait, we are not telling you how to live your own life. We are only making observations about just how many people do this and that, so the authorities can use these numbers for better governing." On the other hand, other economists, such as Harriet Martineau, were pretty psyched to make their ideas proscriptive -- they really did want to go around and tell everybody what do to and the way to do it.
Dickens, meanwhile, did not really care about the inner fighting of the economists. He was totally against their whole deal generally. He strongly believed that people are people and their lives and decisions can not be explained by mathematics or logic alone. Additionally, he was deeply devoted to the concept of acting for the interest of others. Self-sacrifice, altruism, generosity, and compassion were all high on his must-do record. He believed that these behaviors could be missing in an economic system that asserts that people should act only according to their self-interest.
And guess what? Not so surprisingly, their lives turn out pretty horrible. (However, you'll have to read the book to learn what happens -- we don't wish to spoil the ending for you.) Dickens seems to state, "Economics is going to mess everyone up!" But the exact same thing which makes writing fiction awesome (you get to make everything happen how you would like it to occur) is what makes it easy to criticize. When this novel came out, lots of people loved it. But at the exact same time, tons of pro-economics, pro-industrialization, pro-business people started to nitpick all the little mistakes Dickens had made about how factories really work and what economic theories actually look like.
What these nitpickers weren't paying attention to, though, is something that we don't really get to encounter anymore -- the way that people originally read the novel. It was originally published serially from Dickens's social commentary magazine, Household Words. Each week, a brand new dilemma of Household Words will come out. The very first thing in it was the latest installment of Hard Times, speaking about the general crummy-ness of things. It was basically the nineteenth century version of watching episodes of The Wire whilst streaming NPR.