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05-04-2006, 10:32 PM
Via Ymir.
A History of the Irish Working Class by Peter Berresford Ellis, Pg. 86
Ireland produced William Thompson of Clonkeen, Roscarbery, Co. cork, who demands recognition as the
formulator of the economic theories usually associated with Karl Marx. Thompson was the anticipator
of many of the basic Marxian theories and thus could be described as the father of Scientific Socialism.
Harold J. Laski, in introducing the Communist Manifesto, says Thompson "laid the foundations" which
Marx and Engels "brought so remarkably to completion." Marx was, unfortunately, less than generous
in acknowledgements to Thompson. Only slight references to this "First Irish Socialist", as Connolly
describes him, are made in Poverty of Philosophy, 1847; Critique of Political Economy, 1859;
and Das Kapital, 1867.
William Thompson was born in Cork City in 1795, one of the Protestant Ascendancy class who had
acquired land in Ireland in 1682-6. His father was Alderman John Thompson, a rich Cork merchant,
sometime mayor of the city and High Sheriff of the county. Thompson was thirty-nine years old when he
inherited his father's estates- 1400 acres and a trading fleet in 1814. but he was not a businessman. A
member of the Cork Institution and the Philosophical, Scientific, and Literary Society, he was widely
traveled and had studied works of Simon de Sismondi and others of the then modernist school of French
political economy. On inheriting his father's estate he was confronted with the Irish land question,
immediately ceasing to be an absentee landlord and giving his tenants leases on such generous terms that
he brought down the wrath of the Establishment about his head. "I am not," he wrote, "what is usually
called a laborer. Under equitable social arrangements, possessed of health and strength, I ought to blush
making this statement." He became obsessed with a sense of guilt for living on rents, "the produce of the
efforts of others."
During the years 1812-26 he supported Christopher Hely-Hutchinson, an advocate of Catholic
Emancipation and his first essay into public affairs was in 1818 when he advocated popular education and
educational reform in a series of letters to the Cork Southern Reporter. These letters were
subsequently published in pamphlet form as Practical Education for the South of Ireland. Thompson
became interested in Bentham's doctrine of Utilitarianism and then studied the economic theories of David
Ricardo who argued that the value of a commodity was equal to the value of the labour that produced it.
Unlike Ricardo, however, Thompson felt that the laborer was entitled to the full value of the labour. Under
capitalism the labourer was paid the lowest wage that the market competition for labour determined. The
rest of the produce went to the capitalist in profit and interest. Few explained this as clearly as Thompson,
certainly no one worked out the economic significance more clearly and it is this that made Thompson the
founding father of Scientific Socialism. The concept of surplus value is the fundamental principle of Marxist
Socialism.
In 1824 Thompson published his 276,000-word work: An Inquiry into the Principles of Distribution Most
Conducive to Human Happiness Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth.
In this work Thompson became the first writer to explain the evolution towards socialism and the rich, as a
class, would oppose the advance of the majority to an egalitarian society. "A few individuals," he added,
"may rise above the impulses of their class…" but these would be exceptions. In this statement, Thompson
came into conflict with the ideas of his fellow Celt, the Welshman, Robert Owen, who believed that appeals
to the rich and aristocratic patronage would move society towards co-operative communities. Thompson's
philosophy was that the workers could only improve their lot through their own exertions. Thompson's work
had an electrifying effect on the workers' movements growing up in Europe.
John Minter Morgan acclaimed the work as a masterpiece and subsequently wrote:
Neglected Thompson, whose attainment towers
Beyond the reach of critic's feeble powers
And vain attempts his reasoning to refute,
Has taught them wisdom- for behold them mute.
But when this weaker generation's past
And struggling truths, unfetter'd rise at last,
Then shall his work transcendant be confess'd
And distant nations by his genius bless'd.
Owen was impressed by Thompson and distributed his work at his own expense from Messrs. Wheatley
and Alard in the Strand, London. When he set out to establish his commune at New harmony, Indiana,
U.S.A., Owen took a large number of copies with him.
Thompson was also an avowed feminist, a ceaseless advocate of woman's emancipation. He was
a close friend of Anna Wheeler, born in 1785, the youngest daughter of an Irish Protestant Archbishop.
Anna was prominent in the Co-operative Movement in which Thompson was now a leading figure. She
wrote to Robert Owen: "Shall man be free, woman a slave. . . never say I!" In 1825 Thompson
published An Appeal of one half of the Human race, women, against the pretentions of the other half,
men, to retain them in political and thence in civil and domestic slavery. The work was a "joint
property" with Anna Wheeler and part of the work was the exclusive product of "her mind and pen".
Both Thompson and Anna were bitter opponents of marriage with its unbreakable bonds, disabilities
imposed upon women, unequal moral standards and the false odour of sanctity. Pankhurst writes:
The Appeal was a landmark in history. The book gave a more concrete view of the legal and
social disabilities of women, it adapted an altogether bolder and more challenging approach than had
yet been attempted and gave point and impetus to latent yearnings. From its time onward publications
advocating the emancipation of women became more frequent, bolder, and more definitely applied to
remedy the evils of the law.
The year of the Appeal's publication Thompson took part in the historic debates of the
Co-operators at Chancery Lane and Red Lion Square, London, when it was believed that the term
"Socialism" was first coined. In 1827 Thompson published Labour Rewarded. The claims of labor
and capital conciliated by one of the Idle Classes. This went further to enhance his position as one of
the leaders of the Co-operative in the United Kingdom. In Thompson's day the discussion among pioneer
Socialists was not that of the Marxian era- i.e. whether Socialism could be achieved in one country
surrounded by the capitalist world. The discussion was whether Socialism, or communes, could succeed
in one district.
Thompson was no mere theoretician and he had long urged the establishment of communes. In the
Co-operative Magazine in 1826 Thompson argued that communities should be formed "not by
agriculturalists alone to produce food, but by labourers and tradesmen of every description to supply
each other with all the comforts as well as necessities of life." His Address to the Industrious Classes
of Great Britain, in 1826, embodies his ideas on communes. In 1827 a community of 2000 people,
each having one acre of land. The constitution provided complete freedom of thought and expression;
religion was a private thing, women were eligible for advancement to any office to which their talent
might lead them. Idlers and "persons with vicious tendencies would, if deemed irreclaimable by mild
treatment", be exiled from the commune. However, it does not appear that Thompson's plans for a
commune advanced beyond the stage of resolutions and paper constitutions.
In July, 1830, Thompson's most important work was published: 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. This work placed Thompson rather than Owen in
the forefront of the Co-operative movement, and, because of Thompson's more radical, revolutionary,
Socialist outlook, Own grew increasingly bitter. Following the publication of this work, Owen wrote to
Thompson and expressed their basic difference.
While you are boldly operating on the whole mass, I am endeavoring to arrange a little part of the
social machine, not forgetting its connection with the whole.
Thompson was a delegate of the Cork Co-operative Society, which had its offices at 14 The Parade,
Cork, to the Second Co-operative Congress in 1831. he pressed his ideas for establishing communes but
received no aid from Owen who saw Thompson as a threat to his own position in the movement.
Thompson suffered from a chest ailment which grew steadily worse and on March 28, 1853 he died at aged
fifty-eight. He left his money and property to the Co-operative Movement and his body to science.
Relatives contested the will on the grounds that Thompson was insane. The case dragged on for
twenty-five years and it was the lawyers, with their exorbitant fees, who became the chief beneficiaries.
Despite the fact that Thompson's works were still in print in the 1880s, he remains a largely unknown and
overlooked figure to all but a few students of the Socialist history, despite the fact that William Lovett's
Chartist Movement drew their inspiration from Labour Rewarded.
A History of the Irish Working Class by Peter Berresford Ellis, Pg. 86
Ireland produced William Thompson of Clonkeen, Roscarbery, Co. cork, who demands recognition as the
formulator of the economic theories usually associated with Karl Marx. Thompson was the anticipator
of many of the basic Marxian theories and thus could be described as the father of Scientific Socialism.
Harold J. Laski, in introducing the Communist Manifesto, says Thompson "laid the foundations" which
Marx and Engels "brought so remarkably to completion." Marx was, unfortunately, less than generous
in acknowledgements to Thompson. Only slight references to this "First Irish Socialist", as Connolly
describes him, are made in Poverty of Philosophy, 1847; Critique of Political Economy, 1859;
and Das Kapital, 1867.
William Thompson was born in Cork City in 1795, one of the Protestant Ascendancy class who had
acquired land in Ireland in 1682-6. His father was Alderman John Thompson, a rich Cork merchant,
sometime mayor of the city and High Sheriff of the county. Thompson was thirty-nine years old when he
inherited his father's estates- 1400 acres and a trading fleet in 1814. but he was not a businessman. A
member of the Cork Institution and the Philosophical, Scientific, and Literary Society, he was widely
traveled and had studied works of Simon de Sismondi and others of the then modernist school of French
political economy. On inheriting his father's estate he was confronted with the Irish land question,
immediately ceasing to be an absentee landlord and giving his tenants leases on such generous terms that
he brought down the wrath of the Establishment about his head. "I am not," he wrote, "what is usually
called a laborer. Under equitable social arrangements, possessed of health and strength, I ought to blush
making this statement." He became obsessed with a sense of guilt for living on rents, "the produce of the
efforts of others."
During the years 1812-26 he supported Christopher Hely-Hutchinson, an advocate of Catholic
Emancipation and his first essay into public affairs was in 1818 when he advocated popular education and
educational reform in a series of letters to the Cork Southern Reporter. These letters were
subsequently published in pamphlet form as Practical Education for the South of Ireland. Thompson
became interested in Bentham's doctrine of Utilitarianism and then studied the economic theories of David
Ricardo who argued that the value of a commodity was equal to the value of the labour that produced it.
Unlike Ricardo, however, Thompson felt that the laborer was entitled to the full value of the labour. Under
capitalism the labourer was paid the lowest wage that the market competition for labour determined. The
rest of the produce went to the capitalist in profit and interest. Few explained this as clearly as Thompson,
certainly no one worked out the economic significance more clearly and it is this that made Thompson the
founding father of Scientific Socialism. The concept of surplus value is the fundamental principle of Marxist
Socialism.
In 1824 Thompson published his 276,000-word work: An Inquiry into the Principles of Distribution Most
Conducive to Human Happiness Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth.
In this work Thompson became the first writer to explain the evolution towards socialism and the rich, as a
class, would oppose the advance of the majority to an egalitarian society. "A few individuals," he added,
"may rise above the impulses of their class…" but these would be exceptions. In this statement, Thompson
came into conflict with the ideas of his fellow Celt, the Welshman, Robert Owen, who believed that appeals
to the rich and aristocratic patronage would move society towards co-operative communities. Thompson's
philosophy was that the workers could only improve their lot through their own exertions. Thompson's work
had an electrifying effect on the workers' movements growing up in Europe.
John Minter Morgan acclaimed the work as a masterpiece and subsequently wrote:
Neglected Thompson, whose attainment towers
Beyond the reach of critic's feeble powers
And vain attempts his reasoning to refute,
Has taught them wisdom- for behold them mute.
But when this weaker generation's past
And struggling truths, unfetter'd rise at last,
Then shall his work transcendant be confess'd
And distant nations by his genius bless'd.
Owen was impressed by Thompson and distributed his work at his own expense from Messrs. Wheatley
and Alard in the Strand, London. When he set out to establish his commune at New harmony, Indiana,
U.S.A., Owen took a large number of copies with him.
Thompson was also an avowed feminist, a ceaseless advocate of woman's emancipation. He was
a close friend of Anna Wheeler, born in 1785, the youngest daughter of an Irish Protestant Archbishop.
Anna was prominent in the Co-operative Movement in which Thompson was now a leading figure. She
wrote to Robert Owen: "Shall man be free, woman a slave. . . never say I!" In 1825 Thompson
published An Appeal of one half of the Human race, women, against the pretentions of the other half,
men, to retain them in political and thence in civil and domestic slavery. The work was a "joint
property" with Anna Wheeler and part of the work was the exclusive product of "her mind and pen".
Both Thompson and Anna were bitter opponents of marriage with its unbreakable bonds, disabilities
imposed upon women, unequal moral standards and the false odour of sanctity. Pankhurst writes:
The Appeal was a landmark in history. The book gave a more concrete view of the legal and
social disabilities of women, it adapted an altogether bolder and more challenging approach than had
yet been attempted and gave point and impetus to latent yearnings. From its time onward publications
advocating the emancipation of women became more frequent, bolder, and more definitely applied to
remedy the evils of the law.
The year of the Appeal's publication Thompson took part in the historic debates of the
Co-operators at Chancery Lane and Red Lion Square, London, when it was believed that the term
"Socialism" was first coined. In 1827 Thompson published Labour Rewarded. The claims of labor
and capital conciliated by one of the Idle Classes. This went further to enhance his position as one of
the leaders of the Co-operative in the United Kingdom. In Thompson's day the discussion among pioneer
Socialists was not that of the Marxian era- i.e. whether Socialism could be achieved in one country
surrounded by the capitalist world. The discussion was whether Socialism, or communes, could succeed
in one district.
Thompson was no mere theoretician and he had long urged the establishment of communes. In the
Co-operative Magazine in 1826 Thompson argued that communities should be formed "not by
agriculturalists alone to produce food, but by labourers and tradesmen of every description to supply
each other with all the comforts as well as necessities of life." His Address to the Industrious Classes
of Great Britain, in 1826, embodies his ideas on communes. In 1827 a community of 2000 people,
each having one acre of land. The constitution provided complete freedom of thought and expression;
religion was a private thing, women were eligible for advancement to any office to which their talent
might lead them. Idlers and "persons with vicious tendencies would, if deemed irreclaimable by mild
treatment", be exiled from the commune. However, it does not appear that Thompson's plans for a
commune advanced beyond the stage of resolutions and paper constitutions.
In July, 1830, Thompson's most important work was published: 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. This work placed Thompson rather than Owen in
the forefront of the Co-operative movement, and, because of Thompson's more radical, revolutionary,
Socialist outlook, Own grew increasingly bitter. Following the publication of this work, Owen wrote to
Thompson and expressed their basic difference.
While you are boldly operating on the whole mass, I am endeavoring to arrange a little part of the
social machine, not forgetting its connection with the whole.
Thompson was a delegate of the Cork Co-operative Society, which had its offices at 14 The Parade,
Cork, to the Second Co-operative Congress in 1831. he pressed his ideas for establishing communes but
received no aid from Owen who saw Thompson as a threat to his own position in the movement.
Thompson suffered from a chest ailment which grew steadily worse and on March 28, 1853 he died at aged
fifty-eight. He left his money and property to the Co-operative Movement and his body to science.
Relatives contested the will on the grounds that Thompson was insane. The case dragged on for
twenty-five years and it was the lawyers, with their exorbitant fees, who became the chief beneficiaries.
Despite the fact that Thompson's works were still in print in the 1880s, he remains a largely unknown and
overlooked figure to all but a few students of the Socialist history, despite the fact that William Lovett's
Chartist Movement drew their inspiration from Labour Rewarded.