William Thompson (philosopher)
Encyclopedia
William Thompson was an Irish
political
and philosophical writer
and social reformer
, developing from utilitarianism
into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the Cooperative
, Trade Union
and Chartist
movements as well as Karl Marx
. Born into the Anglo-Irish
Ascendancy
of wealthy landowners and merchants of Cork
society, his attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death sparked the longest court case in Irish legal history as other branches of his family fought to have the will annulled.
the son and heir of one of the most prosperous merchants of that city, Alderman
John Thompson, who held, amongst other offices, that of Mayor
in 1794. William inherited the small trading fleet and landed estate near Glandore
, West Cork after his father's death in 1814. Rejecting the role of absentee landlord
commonly led by those of a similar situation, William based his living quarters on the estate and despite many travels, invested much time with the tenants on the estate introducing agricultural innovations, services and education for children aimed at improving the welfare and prosperity of the families present.
Victim of weak health from an early age, Thompson became a non-smoker, teetotaller and vegetarian for the last 13 years of his life. These abstemious habits, he explained helped him in concentrating on his reading and writing. Nonetheless, by the 1830s he was suffering from a chest affliction that finally killed him on 28 March 1833. He had never married and left no direct heir.
, particularly Condorcet, Thompson became a convinced egalitarian and democrat. His support for the French Revolution
earned him the label of "Red Republican" from Cork society and his support for advocates of Catholic emancipation in elections further alienated him from the rest of his wealthy Protestant kith and kin.
Thompson was greatly impressed by the utilitarianism
of Jeremy Bentham
with whom he corresponded and established a friendship, later staying at the English philosopher's house for several months in 1821-22 while visiting London. As well as Bentham, Thompson read and corresponded with other utilitarian contemporaries such as
James Mill
and was influenced, both positively and negatively, by William Godwin
and Thomas Malthus
. His desire to overcome the limitations of Godwin's "intellectual speculations" and Malthus's "mechanical speculations" led him to propose a new synthesis: social science - Thompson was the first to introduce this term - would combine political economy's concern with scientific materialism with utilitarianism's concern with rational morality.
that led him to London and, in 1824, the publication of "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth..." (see biblio. for full title). Thompson had also become acquainted with the work of the French utopian socialists including Charles Fourier
, Henri Saint-Simon
and the economist Sismondi
.
In the Inquiry Thompson follows the line of the labour theory of value put forward by Adam Smith
. However he characterises the appropriation of the lion's share of surplus value by the capitalist owner of the tools of production as exploitation. He rejects the Malthus/Mill proposition that any increase in the wage of the workers can only result in their further immiseration, noting the self-serving nature of this theory for capitalists pressing for legislation to outlaw workers efforts to raise their wages. By applying the utilitarian principle of "the greatest good for the
greatest number" to the existing and possible alternative schemes of distribution, Thompson comes down on the side of an egalitarian distribution of the product.
One of Thompson's colleagues in the Cooperative movement, John Minter Morgan, made the observation that he was the first to coin the term competitive to describe the existing economic system. The case for the originality of this work is further made by Max Nettlau
who states: "[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, unlimited distribution."
In 1827 fellow "Ricardian socialist
" Thomas Hodgskin
published Labour Defended which also characterised the appropriation of the lion's share of the fruits of production by landlord and capitalist as
exploitation defrauding the worker of the full product of their labour. However, Hodgskin proposed that the road to economic justice for the labourer was through a reformed competitive system. Thompson replied with Labor Rewarded defending cooperative communism against Hodgskin's unequal wages.
an advocate of the benefits of contraception
. Thompson's development
of a critique of the contemporary status of women was most strongly influenced by his long-term close friendship with Anna Doyle Wheeler
. He had met Wheeler while staying with Bentham and they moved in those utilitarian circles that included James Mill
. It was the publication of the latter's "On Government" which called for the vote for men only, that aroused the fervent opposition of both Wheeler and Thompson and to the rebuttal in Appeal of One Half the Human Race... (see Bibliography for full title).
have tended to be somewhat unfairly subsumed under the political label of Owenism
. In fact, although his writings and social experiments at New Lanark
had helped to bring the cooperative movement together, many, Thompson included, were critical of Owen's authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies. Thompson further distrusted Owen's courtship of rich and powerful patrons, believing that the rich as a class could be never be expected to be in favour of any project of emancipation for the labouring poor as this would threaten their privilege. He also believed in the necessity of the workers in any co-operative community having eventual security of ownership of the community's land and capital property. He gained a considerable following within the cooperative movement for these positions and it was to distinguish themselves from Owen's positions that this wing of the movement began to adopt the label of "socialist or communionist" (Letter to "The Cooperative Magazine", London, November 1827, cited by OED as first documented use of socialist) rather than "Owenist".
These differences led to open confrontation between Thompson and Owen at the Third Cooperative Congress held in 1832 in London. Owen, perhaps discouraged by the failure of his attempted community at New Harmony, maintained that it was necessary to wait for Government and Stock Exchange support and investment into large scale communities. Thompson and his supporters contended that they must move towards establishing independent small scale communities based on the movement's own resources. The argument was not resolved at that congress and by the following one Thompson was unable to attend probably as a result of the illness that was to lead to his death in another five months.
had come across Thompson's work on a visit to Manchester in 1845 and cites it in passing in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and also in Capital itself. However the same can be said of other of the proto-socialist political economists
such as Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray
, John Francis Bray
. It seems surprising then, that the likes of Beatrice and Sidney Webb would characterise Marx as "the illustrious disciple" of Thompson and Hodgskin. Sentiments also echoed by the likes of Harold Laski
and other British historians of socialism. In this they were accepting the earlier thesis in Anton Menger
's Right to the Whole Produce of Labour (1899), amalgamating all the aforementioned into a homogeneous category of Ricardian socialist
s which obscured the important differences between Thompson's communist critique of Hodgskin's "market libertarian" position.
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and philosophical writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and social reformer
Reform movement
A reform movement is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change, or change in certain aspects of society, rather than rapid or fundamental changes...
, developing from utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the Cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
, Trade Union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
and Chartist
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...
movements as well as Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. Born into the Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
Ascendancy
Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...
of wealthy landowners and merchants of Cork
Cork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...
society, his attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death sparked the longest court case in Irish legal history as other branches of his family fought to have the will annulled.
Life
Born in CorkCork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...
the son and heir of one of the most prosperous merchants of that city, Alderman
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...
John Thompson, who held, amongst other offices, that of Mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
in 1794. William inherited the small trading fleet and landed estate near Glandore
Glandore
Glandore |Cork]] city.The village has several pubs, with traditional music. It is a very popular holiday destination for Irish holiday makers in particular. Famous homeowners include Margaret Jay, former leader of the House of Lords, and Tony O'Reilly. The village yacht club's official headquarters...
, West Cork after his father's death in 1814. Rejecting the role of absentee landlord
Absentee landlord
Absentee landlord is an economic term for a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. This practice is problematic for that region because absentee landlords drain local wealth into their home country, particularly that...
commonly led by those of a similar situation, William based his living quarters on the estate and despite many travels, invested much time with the tenants on the estate introducing agricultural innovations, services and education for children aimed at improving the welfare and prosperity of the families present.
Victim of weak health from an early age, Thompson became a non-smoker, teetotaller and vegetarian for the last 13 years of his life. These abstemious habits, he explained helped him in concentrating on his reading and writing. Nonetheless, by the 1830s he was suffering from a chest affliction that finally killed him on 28 March 1833. He had never married and left no direct heir.
Ideas
An enthusiastic student of the writers and ideas of the EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, particularly Condorcet, Thompson became a convinced egalitarian and democrat. His support for the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
earned him the label of "Red Republican" from Cork society and his support for advocates of Catholic emancipation in elections further alienated him from the rest of his wealthy Protestant kith and kin.
Thompson was greatly impressed by the utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
of Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
with whom he corresponded and established a friendship, later staying at the English philosopher's house for several months in 1821-22 while visiting London. As well as Bentham, Thompson read and corresponded with other utilitarian contemporaries such as
James Mill
James Mill
James Mill was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was a founder of classical economics, together with David Ricardo, and the father of influential philosopher of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill.-Life:Mill was born at Northwater Bridge, in the parish of...
and was influenced, both positively and negatively, by William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
and Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
. His desire to overcome the limitations of Godwin's "intellectual speculations" and Malthus's "mechanical speculations" led him to propose a new synthesis: social science - Thompson was the first to introduce this term - would combine political economy's concern with scientific materialism with utilitarianism's concern with rational morality.
Contribution to political economy
It was the contrasting ideas of Godwin and Malthus that spurred Thompson into the project of research into the role of distribution in political economyPolitical economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
that led him to London and, in 1824, the publication of "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth..." (see biblio. for full title). Thompson had also become acquainted with the work of the French utopian socialists including Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
, Henri Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...
and the economist Sismondi
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi , whose real name was Simonde, was a writer born at Geneva. He is best known for his works on French and Italian history, and his economic ideas.-Early life:...
.
In the Inquiry Thompson follows the line of the labour theory of value put forward by Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
. However he characterises the appropriation of the lion's share of surplus value by the capitalist owner of the tools of production as exploitation. He rejects the Malthus/Mill proposition that any increase in the wage of the workers can only result in their further immiseration, noting the self-serving nature of this theory for capitalists pressing for legislation to outlaw workers efforts to raise their wages. By applying the utilitarian principle of "the greatest good for the
greatest number" to the existing and possible alternative schemes of distribution, Thompson comes down on the side of an egalitarian distribution of the product.
One of Thompson's colleagues in the Cooperative movement, John Minter Morgan, made the observation that he was the first to coin the term competitive to describe the existing economic system. The case for the originality of this work is further made by Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
who states: "[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, unlimited distribution."
In 1827 fellow "Ricardian socialist
Ricardian socialism
Ricardian socialism refers to a branch of socialist economic thought based upon the work of economist David Ricardo. The Ricardian socialists reasoned that the free-market was the route to socialism, and that rent, profit and interest were not natural outgrowths of the free-market...
" Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin was an Englishsocialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism, free-market anarchist and defender of free trade and early trade unions...
published Labour Defended which also characterised the appropriation of the lion's share of the fruits of production by landlord and capitalist as
exploitation defrauding the worker of the full product of their labour. However, Hodgskin proposed that the road to economic justice for the labourer was through a reformed competitive system. Thompson replied with Labor Rewarded defending cooperative communism against Hodgskin's unequal wages.
Feminism
Although he rejected the political and economic implications of Malthus' essay on population, Thompson recognised that, particularly in Ireland, unrestrained population growth did pose the threat of rising poverty. As such he was like Bentham and Francis PlaceFrancis Place
Francis Place was an English social reformer.-Early career and influence:Born in the debtor's prison which his father oversaw near Drury Lane, Place was schooled for ten years before being apprenticed to a leather-breeches maker. At eighteen he was an independent journeyman, and in 1790 was...
an advocate of the benefits of contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
. Thompson's development
of a critique of the contemporary status of women was most strongly influenced by his long-term close friendship with Anna Doyle Wheeler
Anna Doyle Wheeler
Anna Doyle Wheeler was a writer and advocate of political rights for women and the benefits of contraception. She married Francis Massey Wheeler when she was aged 15 and they separated 12 years later...
. He had met Wheeler while staying with Bentham and they moved in those utilitarian circles that included James Mill
James Mill
James Mill was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was a founder of classical economics, together with David Ricardo, and the father of influential philosopher of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill.-Life:Mill was born at Northwater Bridge, in the parish of...
. It was the publication of the latter's "On Government" which called for the vote for men only, that aroused the fervent opposition of both Wheeler and Thompson and to the rebuttal in Appeal of One Half the Human Race... (see Bibliography for full title).
Opposition to Robert Owen
Thompson and others of the Cooperative movementCooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
have tended to be somewhat unfairly subsumed under the political label of Owenism
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
. In fact, although his writings and social experiments at New Lanark
New Lanark
New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately 1.4 miles from Lanark, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there to take advantage of the water power provided by the river...
had helped to bring the cooperative movement together, many, Thompson included, were critical of Owen's authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies. Thompson further distrusted Owen's courtship of rich and powerful patrons, believing that the rich as a class could be never be expected to be in favour of any project of emancipation for the labouring poor as this would threaten their privilege. He also believed in the necessity of the workers in any co-operative community having eventual security of ownership of the community's land and capital property. He gained a considerable following within the cooperative movement for these positions and it was to distinguish themselves from Owen's positions that this wing of the movement began to adopt the label of "socialist or communionist" (Letter to "The Cooperative Magazine", London, November 1827, cited by OED as first documented use of socialist) rather than "Owenist".
These differences led to open confrontation between Thompson and Owen at the Third Cooperative Congress held in 1832 in London. Owen, perhaps discouraged by the failure of his attempted community at New Harmony, maintained that it was necessary to wait for Government and Stock Exchange support and investment into large scale communities. Thompson and his supporters contended that they must move towards establishing independent small scale communities based on the movement's own resources. The argument was not resolved at that congress and by the following one Thompson was unable to attend probably as a result of the illness that was to lead to his death in another five months.
Influence on Karl Marx
Karl MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
had come across Thompson's work on a visit to Manchester in 1845 and cites it in passing in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and also in Capital itself. However the same can be said of other of the proto-socialist political economists
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
such as Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray
John Gray (19th century socialist)
John Gray was a British socialist economist.-Life and views:Very little personal information about John Gray is available. He lived mostly in Edinburgh. According to his own account, he was a poor student who dropped out of school early, went to London and took up factory work as a youngster...
, John Francis Bray
John Francis Bray
John Francis Bray was a radical, Chartist, writer on socialist economics and activist in both Britain and hisnative America in the 19th century. He was hailed in later life as the 'Benjamin Franklin' of American labor.- Life :...
. It seems surprising then, that the likes of Beatrice and Sidney Webb would characterise Marx as "the illustrious disciple" of Thompson and Hodgskin. Sentiments also echoed by the likes of Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
and other British historians of socialism. In this they were accepting the earlier thesis in Anton Menger
Anton Menger
Anton Menger von Wolfensgrün , Austrian, is the author of "The Right to the Whole Produce of Labor", "The Civil Law and the Poors" among others. He is Austrian economist Carl Menger's brother....
's Right to the Whole Produce of Labour (1899), amalgamating all the aforementioned into a homogeneous category of Ricardian socialist
Ricardian socialism
Ricardian socialism refers to a branch of socialist economic thought based upon the work of economist David Ricardo. The Ricardian socialists reasoned that the free-market was the route to socialism, and that rent, profit and interest were not natural outgrowths of the free-market...
s which obscured the important differences between Thompson's communist critique of Hodgskin's "market libertarian" position.