A man should have the fruits of his labour;and therefore the man who labours most should have most.But,unlike Bentham,he regards equality as more important than security.To him the main consideration is the monstrous mass of evil resulting from vast accumulations of wealth in a few hands.
In the next place,he adapts to his own purpose the Ricardian theory of value.All value whatever,he argues,is created by labour.The labourer,he infers,should have the value which he creates.As things are,the labourer parts with most of it to the capitalist or the owner of rents.The capitalist claims a right to the whole additional production due to the employment of capital.The labourer,on the other hand,may claim a right to the whole additional production,after replacing the wear and tear and allowing to the capitalist enough to support him in equal comfort with the productive labourers,68Thompson holds that while either system would be compatible with 'security,'the labourer's demand is sanctioned by 'equality.'
In point of fact,neither system has been fully carried out;but the labourer's view would tend to prevail with the spread of knowledge and justice.While thus anticipating later Socialism,he differs on a significant point.Thompson insists upon the importance of 'voluntary exchange'as one of his first principles.No one is to be forced to take what he does not himself think a fair equivalent for his labour.Here,again,he would coincide with the Utilitarians,They,not less than he,were for free trade and the abolition of every kind of monopoly.But that view may lead by itself to the simple adoption of the do-nothing principle,or,as modern Socialists would say,to the more effectual plunder of the poor.The modern Socialist infers that the means of production must be in some way nationalised.Thompson does not contemplate such a consummation.He denounces,like all the Radicals of the day,monopolies and conspiracy laws.Sinecures and standing armies and State churches are the strongholds of tyranny and superstition.The 'hereditary possession of wealth'is one of the master-evils,and with sinecures will disappear the systems of entails and unequal distribution of inheritance.69Such institutions have encouraged the use of fraud and force,and indirectly degraded the labourer into a helpless position.He would sweep them all away,and with them all disqualifications imposed upon women.70This once done,it will be necessary to establish a universal and thoroughgoing system of education.Then the poor man,freed from the shackles of superstition and despotism,will be able to obtain his rights as knowledge and justice spread through the whole community,the desire to accumulate for selfish purposes will itself disappear.
The labourer will get all that he creates;the aggregate wealth will be enormously multiplied,though universally diffused;and the form taken by the new society will,as he argues at great length,be that of voluntary co-operative associations upon Owen's principles.
The economists would,of course,reject the theory that the capitalists should have no profits;but,in spite of this,they might agree to a great extent with Thompson's aspirations,Thompson,however,holds the true Socialist sentiment of aversion to Malthus.He denies energetically what he takes to be the Malthusian doctrine:that increased comfort will always produce increased numbers.71This has been the 'grand scarecrow to frighten away all attempts at social improvement.'Thompson accordingly asserts that increased comfort always causes increased prudence ultimately;and looks forward to a stationary state in which the births will just balance the deaths.I need not inquire here which theory puts the cart before the horse.The opposition possibly admits of reconciliation;but here I only remark once more how Malthus stood for the appeal to hard facts which always provoked the Utopians as much as it corresponded to the stern Utilitarian view.
Another writer,Thomas Hodgskin,honorary secretary of the Birkbeck Institution,who published a tract called Labour defended against the Claims of Capital,or the Unproductiveness of Capital proved (1825),and afterwards gave some popular lectures on political economy,has been noticed as anticipating Socialist ideas.He can see,he says,why something should go to the maker of a road and something be paid by the person who gets the benefit of it.But he does not see why the road itself should have anything.72Hodgskin writes without bitterness,if without much logic.It is not for me to say whether modern Socialists are well advised in admitting that these crude suggestions were anticipations of their own ideas.The most natural inference would be that vague guesses about the wickedness of the rich have been in all ages current among the poor,and now and then take more pretentious form.Most men want very naturally to get as much and to work as little as they can,and call their desire a first principle of justice.
