William Thompson (philosopher)

George Chinnery : William Thompson, around 1830

William Thompson (* 1775 in Cork ; † March 28, 1833 in Rosscarbery near Cork) was an Irish philosopher , writer and social reformer who developed his views of utilitarianism towards an early critique of capitalist exploitation, whose ideas were both cooperative and union - as well as influenced the reform movement of the Chartists and also inspired Karl Marx . In the Anglo-Irish society of landowners and wealthy merchants of the Cork Society, his desire to bequeath his fortune to the cooperative movement sparked one of the longest litigation in Irish legal history after his death, as other branches of the family wanted the will to be annulled.

Life

Thompson was born in Cork as the son and heir of one of the city's richest merchants, Alderman John Thompson, who held positions as Lord Mayor (1794). William inherited the small merchant fleet and after his father's death (1814) put his fortune in Glandore , West Cork. Because he rejected the role of the absent landlord , which was customary at the time , he also chose this as the center of his life and despite his frequent travels invested a lot of time in cooperation with his tenants, with whom he planned agricultural improvements, community services and educational institutions to improve the situation of the population.

In poor health from childhood, Thompson became a non-smoker, abstainer, and vegetarian for the last 13 years of his life. According to his own statement, this measured way of life helped him study and write. Nevertheless, he suffered from lung ailments from the 30s, of which he died on March 28, 1833. Thompson never married and left no direct descendants.

Contributions to the history of ideas

An avid student of Enlightenment ideas and thinkers , especially the Condorcets , Thompson became an advocate of egalitarianism and a staunch democrat. His advocacy for the French Revolution earned him the designation "Red Republican" at the Cork Society; later, his support for Catholic equality in elections alienated him even further from his original Protestant class.

Thompson was deeply impressed by Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism , he entered into correspondence with him and a friendship developed between them; later (1821-22) he stayed for several months while visiting London in the house of the English philosopher. Like Bentham, Thompson studied and corresponded with other utilitarian contemporaries, including David Ricardo , and was influenced both positively and negatively by William Godwin and Thomas Malthus . His desire, the limitations of Godwin's intellectual mind games and Malthus' mechanistic mind games to overcome, let him a synthesis of both positions formulated: The Social Science - Thompson was the first to this concept (social science) used - would the national economic interests of scientific materialism reconcile the utilitarian claims of a rational morality.

Contributions to economic policy

The conflicting views of Godwin and Malthus spurred Thompson to advance his own research on the role of distributive justice in the economy ; it first took him to London, where in 1824 he published his study of the fundamentals of the distribution of wealth most conducive to human happiness . Just like Malthus' student David Ricardo , Thompson had also familiarized himself with the work of the French utopian socialists, among them Charles Fourier , Henri de Saint-Simon and the Swiss economist Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi .

In the argument Thompson follows the labor theory of value , Ricardo in his seven years previously published Principles of Political Economy ( Fundamentals of Political Economy ) had set out. However, he characterizes the appropriation of the lion's share of surplus value by the investor of the means of production as exploitation. He rejects the position of Malthus / Ricardo that any increase in wages can only result in the further impoverishment of the workers, not without pointing out the selfish nature of such a theory, which allows capitalists to disenfranchise workers who demand higher wages to legitimize. By applying the utilitarian maximum happiness principle of the greatest good for the greatest number to the existing and possible alternatives for the distribution of goods, Thompson takes the standpoint of an egalitarian sale of goods.

John Minter Morgan , one of his colleagues in the cooperative movement, noted that Thompson was the first to term competitive ( competitive based used) to describe the current economic system. Thompson's originality is also emphasized by Max Nettlau when he says: Thompson's book reveals his own development; beginning with the demand for the entire product of labor [for the worker] and the control of distribution, he finally develops communist ideas, that is, those of unlimited distribution.

In 1827 his companion, the Ricardian socialist Thomas Hodgskin , published Labor Defended , which also branded the appropriation of the lion's share of the profits of production by landowners and capitalists as exploitation that deprived the worker of the fruits of his labors. However, Hodgskin suggested that the path to distributive justice for the worker would lead through a reformed competition system. Thompson responded with Labor Rewarded , in which he defended cooperative communism against Hodgskin's unequal wages.

feminism

Although Thompson rejected the political and economic predictions of Malthus' essay on population , he recognized that, especially in Ireland, unchecked population growth harbored the danger of increasing impoverishment of the population. In this respect, like Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place, he was a pioneer in contraception . Thompson's development of his criticism of a contemporary view of the women's question was extraordinarily determined by his longstanding close friendship with Anna Doyle Wheeler . He had met Wheeler at Bentham; both frequented James Mill's utilitarian circles . Its publication " On Government ", which called for the right to vote for men, provoked the furious reaction of Wheeler and Thompson and prompted them to respond in their work Objection of one half of the human race… .

Influence on the cooperative movement

Opposition to Robert Owen

Thompson's views, like those of other collaborators, have often been identified with the ideas of Robert Owen . In fact, he was very critical of its authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies, even if Owen's writings and the social experiments of New Lanark helped to form the cooperative movement. Thompson also disliked Owen's recruiting for rich and powerful supporters because he believed that the rich as a class would never vote in favor of any project for the poor because it threatened their privileges. Thompson believed in the need for workers to form cooperatives in order to enforce possible land and capital claims. For this he gained a considerable following, which is different from the one who represented Owen's positions.

These differences led to open conflict between Thompson and Owen at the Cooperative's Third Congress, held in London in 1832. Owen, perhaps disillusioned by the failure of the New Harmony community , insisted on government and stock market support and investing in large community projects. Thompson and his followers, on the other hand, claimed that one had to establish small communities that could support themselves from the movement. At this congress the question was not resolved, at the next Thompson was no longer present, five months later he died of his lung disease.

Influence on Karl Marx

Karl Marx had come across Thompson's work on his visit to Manchester in 1845; he quotes it in Das Elend der Philosophie (1847) as well as in Capital . Of course, the same can be said of other of the proto-socialist political economists like Thomas Hodgskin , John Gray, and John Francis Bray . So it is surprising that Beatrice and Sidney Webb refer to Marx as "the famous student" of Thompson and Hodgskin. Such opinions exist with Harold Laski and other British historians of socialism. You agree with Anton Menger's older view in The Right to Full Employment in a Historical Presentation , summarizing all of the above in a more or less uniform category of “Ricardian Socialists”. The fundamental difference between Thompson's communist criticism and Hodgskin's market liberalism, however, is lost from view.

Works and sources

1. ^ William Thompson: 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 . Longman, Hurst Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, London 1824.
2. ^ Back translation from the English Wikipedia; Source is missing.
3. ^ William Thompson: Labor Rewarded. The Claims of Labor and Capital Conciliated: or, How to Secure to Labor the Whole Products of Its Exertions . Hunt and Clarke, London 1827.
4. ^ William Thompson: Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery . Longman, Hurst Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, London 1825.
5. ^ Letter to The Cooperative Magazine, London, November 1827, cited by the OED as the first documented use of the term socialist
6. ^ William Thompson: Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities on the Principles of Mutual Co-operation, United Possessions and Equality of Exertions and the Means of Enjoyments . Strange and E. Wilson, London 1830.
7. ^ Anton Menger: The right to the full income from work in a historical representation . Cotta, Stuttgart 1886.

literature

• Fintan Lane, 'William Thompson, class and his Irish context, 1775-1833', in Fintan Lane (ed.), Politics, Society and the Middle Class in Modern Ireland . Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009.
• James Connolly: The first Irish socialist: A forerunner of Marx . In Labor in Irish History , Dublin 1910; London 1987.
• Richard Pankhurst: William Thompson (1775-1833) Pioneer Socialist . Pluto Press, London 1991.
• Dolores Dooley: Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler . Cork University Press, Cork 1996.
• Dolores Dooley (Ed.): William Thompson: Appeal of One Half of the Human Race . Cork University Press, Cork 1997.

Web links

• Cork's Praxis group on William Thompson
• Sunshine for Women on William Thompson