Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Contexts and possibilities
- Part II Texts
- 4 The Real Rights of Man, Thomas Spence, 1775
- 5 An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, William Ogilvie, 1782
- 6 Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness, William Godwin, 1798
- 7 The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, Charles Hall, 1805
- 8 A Lay Sermon Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817
- 9 Report to the County of Lanark, Robert Owen, 1821
- 10 A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy, ‘Piercy Ravenstone’, 1821
- 11 An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth, William Thompson, 1824
- 12 Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved with Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen, Thomas Hodgskin, 1825
- 13 Rural Rides, William Cobbett, 1830
- 14 Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
12 - Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved with Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen, Thomas Hodgskin, 1825
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Contexts and possibilities
- Part II Texts
- 4 The Real Rights of Man, Thomas Spence, 1775
- 5 An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, William Ogilvie, 1782
- 6 Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness, William Godwin, 1798
- 7 The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, Charles Hall, 1805
- 8 A Lay Sermon Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817
- 9 Report to the County of Lanark, Robert Owen, 1821
- 10 A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy, ‘Piercy Ravenstone’, 1821
- 11 An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth, William Thompson, 1824
- 12 Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved with Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen, Thomas Hodgskin, 1825
- 13 Rural Rides, William Cobbett, 1830
- 14 Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Summarizing Thompson's argument improves it; but Hodgskin's pamphlet is admirably clear and economical. The first thing to note is the authorial voice; unlike all the writers considered so far, Hodgskin speaks as a labourer to labourers. This voice reflects what he was, only if we accept his definition of labour, which embraces mental as well as manual work. He was the son of a storekeeper in the naval dockyard at Chatham. He went to sea as a cadet, rose to lieutenant, and was discharged when, in his own words, ‘I complained of the injury done me, by a commander-in-chief, to himself, in the language I thought it merited; he had unjustly deprived me of every chance of promotion from my own exertions, and that was robbing me of every hope.’ Of such stuff are radical critics of society made. There followed hard times; but eventually, he succeeded in making his living as a writer and journalist. Hodgskin was a professional intellectual. In the difficult years after he left the navy, he studied philosophy and wrote a treatise On Mind, which failed to find a publisher and is now lost. We may compare him, then, to Ogilvie, Godwin, and Coleridge, also professional intellectuals; but whereas they were products of educational institutions – the Scottish universities, an English public school and Cambridge, dissenting academies – Hodgskin was largely self-taught. In this he resembles Owen; but Hodgskin has a better-disciplined mind.
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- Socialism, Radicalism, and NostalgiaSocial Criticism in Britain, 1775-1830, pp. 232 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987