First published in 1930, J. A. Hobson's "Rationalisation and Unemployment - An Economic Dilemma" is a vintage economic essay on the subject of unemployment and 'rationalisation', which refers to the attempt to change an ad hoc workflow into one based on a set of published rules. Contents include: "Income, Monetary and Real", "Uses of the Surplus", "Underspecification", "Rationalisation and Productivity", "Rationalisation and Consumption", "Markets and Distribution of the Product", etc. John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) was an English social scientist and economist most famous for his writing on imperialism-which notably influenced Vladimir Lenin-as well as his theory of underconsumption. His early work also questioned the classical theory of rent and predicted the Neoclassical ""marginal productivity"" theory of distribution. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an excerpt from Agrawala's "The Economic Philosophies" (1941).