William Thompson

[RedFlag32]

I only found out about this guy recently and to my astonishment i found nothing on him on the internet,he was a forerunner of Marx's scientific socialism and he was an Irish man. He is basically the first to espouse scientific socialism,although it was Marx who turned it into a workable theory.I found it strange none of his works are on the Marxist internet archiv so i thought id stick this up to see if anyone else has nything on him or his early writings? This what i found so far.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thompson_%28philosopher%29

www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/w_thompson.html

homepage.eircom.net/~thompsonschool/William_Thompson/william_thompson.html

[conghaileach]

William Thompson
(1775-1833)

William Thompson was born in Cork City in 1775. His family were of the rich Protestant class, who had acquired Irish land in the 1680s. His father was Alderman John Thompson, a rich Cork merchant and High Sheriff of the county.

In 1814 Thompson inherited his father’s estate – 1,400 acres and a trading fleet – and immediately ceased to be an absentee landlord. He granted leases to the tenants on generous terms. He became guilt-stricken for living on “the produce of the efforts of others”.

In the early 19th century, social philosophers began to spring up in England, France and Germany, each with their own ideas on how to create the perfect social order and wipe out the evils of poverty. Most of these theorists had no qualm with those who gained from the social system of the day, instead focussing on the results of the system.

They believed that the ruling and owning classes would voluntarily renounce all their privileges, once they were convinced of the advantages of a new social order. So the relationship between labourer as producer and the proprietor as owner of the thing produced was ignored.

Thompson believed that the labourers were entitled to the full value of their labour. He argued that under capitalism the labourer was paid as little as possible, based on market competition for this labour. The rest of the produce went to the capitalist as profit. For this he has been called “the founding figure of Scientific Socialism”¹. James Connolly called him a “forerunner of Marx”.

In his introduction to the Communist Manifesto, Harold J. Laski wrote that Thompson “laid the foundation” which Marx and Engels “brought so remarkably to completion”. Marx himself only gave Thompson slight references in his work.

In 1824 Thompson published An Inquiry into the principles of distribution of wealth most conducive to human happiness. In this work he argued that the rich as a class would oppose the moves made by the majority towards an egalitarian society. He stated that a few “may rise above the impulses of their class” but that these would be exceptions.

This belief brought Thompson into conflict with Robert Owen, who believed that appeals to the rich and aristocrats would lead to the creation of co-operative communities. Owen was nonetheless impressed by Thompson and distributed his work at his own expense.

Thompson was also a feminist and an advocate of woman’s emancipation. In 1825 he wrote An appeal of one half of the human race, women, against the pretensions of the other half, men, to retain them in political and thence civil and domestic slavery. He gave joint ownership of the work to his friend Anna Wheeler (1785-1848), who was prominent in the Co-operative Movement.

In 1827 Thompson published Labour Rewarded: The Claims of Labour and Capital conciliated by one of the Idle Classes. It proposed the replacement of capitalism with co-operative communism and “was influential on the trade union and Chartist movements with its recommendations on the role of unions and the democratisation of parliament”².

Practical directions for the speedy and economic establishment of Communities, on the principle of mutual co-operation, united possessions, equality of exertions and the means of enjoyment was published in 1830. It was a detailed blueprint of co-operative communism and was adopted as the guiding principle of the Co-operative Movement.

Thompson replaced Owen as the movement’s leading theoretician, and Owen became increasingly bitter. He wrote to Thompson that: “while you are boldly operating on the whole mass, I am endeavouring to arrange a little part of the social machine, not forgetting its connection with the whole.”³

On March 28, 1833, Thompson died of a chest ailment. He left his money and property to the Co-operative Movement and his body to medical science. Relatives however contested the will on the grounds that he was insane. The case dragged on for twenty-five years and the only beneficiaries were the well-paid lawyers.

James Connolly commented on Thompson: “Fervent Celtic enthusiasts are fond of claiming, and the researches of our day seem to bear out the claim, that Irish missionaries were the first to rekindle the lamp of learning in Europe, and dispel the intellectual darkness following the downfall of the Roman Empire; may we not also take pride in the fact that an Irishman was the first to pierce the worse than Egyptian darkness of capitalist barbarism, and to point out to the toiler the conditions of their enslavement, and the essential pre-requisites of their emancipation?”⁴


Notes

1. Peter Berresford Ellis. A History of the Irish Working Class.

2. William Thompson Weekend School

3. Robert Owen: Letters, No. 211

4. James Connolly. Labour in Irish History.

[Stallit 2 de Halfo]

Had a search for stuff by him - didnt find anything.

Here are some links mentioning him....

www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900002-001/text011.html





www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1555

William Thompson

One of the first people to critically engage with political economy and attempt to turn it around to defend the improvement of the condition of the working class and rural poor was the scion of an Anglo- Irish landowning family from West Cork by the name of William Thompson. Born in 1775 in Cork, the young Thompson had been an enthusiastic supporter of the enlightenment, republicanism and the French Revolution. He later became a leading figure in the Co-operative movement in radical opposition to Robert Owen.

In the 1820s, outraged by the use of political economy by a local "eminent speaker" to argue the supposed necessity and benefit of the absolute poverty of the "lower orders" Thompson set about an investigation into political economy which resulted in his "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness" of 1824. As the lengthy title indicates his attention was like the political economists also focused on the effects of the distribution of wealth, however his yardstick for the outcome was the utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number" rather than the overall abstraction of the "wealth of the nation".

He addressed Bentham's three principles governing distribution - the right to security, the right to the produce of labour and the right to subsistence. The right to subsistence was the principle of distribution by need which, in Bentham's reasoning, had to be subordinate to the right to the produce of labour which recognised the priority of the producers claim to the product of his or her own labour. Bentham over-ranked both with the right to security i.e. that the individual's right to his or her existing property had to be defended from arbitrary abstraction by society or all medium to long term incentives to economic activity would be nullified by the possibility of having any gains taken away in the future.

Thompson's first point of attack was to recognise that under the guise of the right to security Bentham and the utilitarians were in fact defending the existing property status quo without any interest into the legitimacy of how this division of ownership had come about. In Thompson's native West Cork it was easy to recognise that the monopoly of land by the Anglo-Irish protestant ascendancy had been brought about not through thrift, hard work and parsimonious virtue but by military main force. Further Thompson exposed that exchanges between the dispossessed and property-monopolising classes could not be seen as free or equal in any way as the propertyless had to accept unfair wages for the sale of their labour under duress of starvation as the alternative. Thompson went on to analyse the process of exploitation of the wage labourer by their employers and how the lion's share of the product was appropriated by the latter as surplus value in an account later adopted by Marx.

From here Thompson moved to posit a system of "free exchange" where equal access to land and the means of production was guaranteed to all, but distribution was governed by the right to the produce of labour taking precedence over the right to subsistence. As the anarchist historian Max Nettlau noted "[Thompson's] book, however, discloses his own evolution; having started with a demand for the full product of labour as well as the regulation of distribution, he ended up with his own conversion to communism, that is to unlimited distribution".

That is, having proposed a system based on the right to the full product of labour he re-examined it compared to a system of equal distribution by the same utilitarian yardstick that he had used to dismiss the status quo and found, to his initial surprise that the system of "free exchange" was inferior to that of unlimited equal distribution. In examining the hypothetical system of "free exchange" he discovered its competitive nature - the term "competitive" in fact was first applied to describe capitalist exchange by him. The evils Thompson ascribed to the competitive system were not simply ethical or moral - that the system made each look upon his or her peers as rivals and means to an end - but also in terms of efficiency - that competition would encourage people to hide their innovations and discoveries and that market intelligence would also be kept secret thus causing waste and inefficiency.

In the year Thompson's "Distribution of Wealth" was published he spent much time in London engaging in a series of public debates defending the rights of trade unions against the bourgeois political economists such as J. S. Mill and also on the way forward for the workers with Thomas Hodgskin at the newly formed London Mechanics Institute.

The Thompson vs Hodgskin debate

Thomas Hodgskin was the son of a storekeeper at the naval dockyards at Chatham Kent and had served in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars. Expelled from the navy at the end of the war due to conflict with upper ranks, he became a radical journalist and a fierce critic of authority and the upper classes. He shared with Thompson the view that the upper classes monopoly on land and the means of production allowed them to exploit those compelled by necessity to sell their labour to them. Where he differed with Thompson was that he considered the right to the full product of labour freed from capitalist exploitation to be the ultimate goal of radical reform. In Hodgskin's vision groups of workers organised as unions, could take possession of the means of production and exchange their products amongst each other on a "market" basis. The ensuing debate between Hodgskin and Thompson resulted in the publication of "Labour Defended" and "Labour Rewarded" respectively and in many ways outlined the division between the advocates of socialism and communism that has continued to run through the radical anti-capitalist movement to this day.

Hodgskin's eclipse of Thompson

In the end it was Hodgskin's analysis that won out over Thompson's. Thompson suffered the marginalising effects of his West Cork base, his early death and his association with the strategy of setting up experimental communities. In addition his theoretical writings were too lengthy, challenging and, above all, too expensive for the ordinary worker to afford. In contrast Hodgskin was concise and skilled in making his arguments in a language the ordinary worker could both readily understand and re-use amongst his or her peers. Above all Hodgskin was "good enough" for the purposes of the nascent trades union movement. Radical enough to turn the tables on the political economy of the bosses but avoiding the truly radical total inversion of the existing order that Thompson's proto-communism called for. With Hodgskin the trade union agitators could conjure up the vision of a future society free of the worker's exploitation by the bosses but still retaining the familiarity of money and exchange. The "natural wage" undiminished by the exploitative abstractions by the capitalists and landlords.

www.cooponline.coop/about_facts_whowas.html#thompson

Thompson, William, 1785?-1833 - Owenite

Native of Cork of which he was a prosperous landed proprietor. Corresponded with Jeremy Bentham and resided with him for many years after 1819. Came also under the influence of Owen. He combined the ethics of Bentham, the labour economics of Ricardo and the social views of Owen into a system of socialism. His most important work was a tome, Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most conducive to Human Happiness, 1824, which is said to have fallen stillborn from the press. William Pare published an abridged version of it in 1850. Also wrote An Inquiry into the Principles Most Conducive to Human Happiness, 1824, Labour Rewarded, or How to Secure the Whole Product of His Exertions, 1827, Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities, 1830. These books reveal the direction of his thought and expound his socialism, the need for socialism, a description of his ideal community and ways and means of establishing them. He is generally regarded as being the finest intellect associated with the Owenite movement, attended the early Co-operative Congresses and was highly revered by them. He conceived and worked out the theory of surplus value. Also wrote An Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men.

Died at Clounksen, County Cork. Bequeathed most of his property to trustees (William Pare was one) for the purpose of propagating his principles and aiding their practical application. His library was to go to the first co-operative community established in Great Britain or Ireland. The will was disputed by relatives, and William Pare was still engaged in litigation upon it in 1850. His body was to be examined by a lecturer on anatomy and the skeleton preserved in an anatomical museum. Despite the objections of the local peasantry this was claimed to have been accomplished.

[dangeresque]

yeah I read the same thing in the book by Ellis, History of the Irish Working Class. Says he was the first to theorise the concept of surplus value.

Didn't he also found a collective on his lands but it was taken away after he went into debt gambling?

[RedFlag32]

dangeresque said:

yeah I read the same thing in the book by Ellis, History of the Irish Working Class. Says he was the first to theorise the concept of surplus value.

Didn't he also found a collective on his lands but it was taken away after he went into debt gambling?

Good memory comrade,ou can tell im reading thi book at the moment ;D Yeah he did create a comune and i fidn it fascinating to read about all the very successfull Irish communes which were the envy of the world,and also our health systen was world famous during the celtic communism stage. Fascinating read. Ok thats a bit off topic,geting back tot his guy,how come none of his stuff is on the marxist internet archive?

[Stallit 2 de Halfo]

Good memory comrade,ou can tell im reading thi book at the moment Yeah he did create a comune and i fidn it fascinating to read about all the very successfull Irish communes which were the envy of the world,and also our health systen was world famous during the celtic communism stage. Fascinating read. Ok thats a bit off topic,geting back tot his guy,how come none of his stuff is on the marxist internet archive?

Ill have to look up that book myself! - where is it available?

Its a good question, and if anyone does get their hands on his writing they should contact MIA and if u can put it up there - I think they do be looking for people to put up relevent material like that.

[RedFlag32]

I got this book here,i think there are vey expencive originals but i got one of the reprints.

www.alibris.co.uk/