Today we will begin our examination of the writings of William Thompson (1775-1833). William Thompson was a socialist and played a large role in the co-operative movement in Britain. In fact, when Robert Owen was in the United States (1825-6) overseeing the creation of New Harmony (http://www-lib.iupui.edu/...), it was Thompson who took control over the British co-operative movement. An upper class Irish protestant from Rosscarbry Co Cork, Thompson was a dedicated socialist who spent his life fighting for co-operativism and left his inheritance to the movement. He published one of the earliest Feminist tracts with his partner, Anna Wheeler, in An Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men to retain them in Political and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery in 1825.
We will begin with his discussion on the Right of the Workers to the whole of the Product, which since he is a Utilitarian, bears a different justification for the argument and its implications to that of Hodgskin, that of the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number of the members of society. Next week we will discuss his theory of value, distribution and exploitation.
The Claim:
Thompson, like Hodgskin, argued for the right of the worker to obtain his produce. He originally derives his argument from a Lockean basis of the producer to have ownership of his product.
The industrious, whose time has been occupied, whose mental and corporeal powers have been respectively on the stretch, to produce these articles with the view of adding to their own comforts, stand forth and claim as their own, as their property, what their labor alone has made what it is [...]. To take from them what their arm guided by their mind has produced, is like taking from them a part of themselves (Thompson, 1824, p. 94).
The Justification:
However, Thompson then invoked a utilitarian basis for production and distribution, positing that the object of production is the creation of the greatest possible common happiness in the society. It was upon the utilitarian concept of the greatest happiness for the greatest number that he justified his argument respecting distribution. Thus, for consistency, distribution must be undertaken such that those producing the wealth will get the greatest possible quantity of happiness.
Thompson viewed all individuals in as equally capable of enjoying equal portions of that which brings happiness, (i.e., objects of wealth). Thus, the goal of distribution of wealth should be the happiness of the greatest possible number that can be achieved.
The only reason that can be given for the production of wealth at all, is, that it adds to the means of happiness: the only reason that it should be distributed in one way more than another, is, that it tends more to produce, to add to the stock of happiness, the object of its production, by one mode of distribution than by another. The object being happiness, the greater quantity of happiness held in view and attainable, the more completely is that object accomplished, and the greater, of course, the efforts to produce it (Thompson, 1824, pp. 19-20).
Thompson believed that in order to encourage the industry of the workers they should have control, i.e., free disposal, over their whole produce. The only reason that production occurred was to produce happiness. The labourers would not work for someone voluntarily unless they obtained sufficient motivation for their production. Thompson held that only when the workers have free disposal of their produce will their security be such that they will have a strong enough reason to produce -- this would ensure the security of the society. The workers could then dispose of their surplus voluntarily.
Thompson believed that it was by the forced coercion from labour of a part of its produce that insecurity in the society was sown, decreases in the impetus of industry on the part of the worker appeared, and the overall happiness of the society declined. Thus, it is only by voluntary exchanges on the part of the labourers of a portion of their produce that the common happiness of the society could be derived. The workers, when voluntarily exchanging a portion of their product, i.e., their surplus product, would exchange it for an equivalent that they deemed satisfactory, based on the quantity of labour required for production of the product.
The Distribution of the Product:
Thompson argued that distribution should be undertaken given the notion of equality of happiness in the whole society. However, the introduction of the notion of equality into his analysis did not lead him to advocate that everyone in the society should receive equal quantities of the social product. What prevented this conclusion from being drawn derived from his argument that labour was required for the production of the mass of wealth in the economy, and hence, this fact must modify this principle of equality. He tried to unite these two strands of his thought to provide a basis for a just distribution of the social product.
First, the rule of equality must always be followed where no labor is employed in the production. Second, Wherever a departure is made (which ought scarcely ever, if ever, to occur) from the principle of "securing to every one the free use of his labor and its products," that departure should always be in favor of equality; not to increase the necessary and unavoidable evils of inequality.
The producers have an excess, that is to say, have more than their own immediate gratification demands. Absolute equality in the distribution of articles produced by labor, that is to say articles of wealth (meaning always labor by competition, the ordinary mode of labor of all societies), is impracticable, or if practicable would, under a system of individual competition, be unwise. An absolute equality in such articles is out of the question, the next object of wisdom and benevolence is to make as near an approach as possible to equality, as near as is consistent with the greatest production (Thompson, 1824, p. 95).
Clearly, given Thompson's argument, the surplus of the producers would be voluntarily exchanged for its equivalent value, measured in terms of the quantity of labour required for its production. This, he believed, would ensure the greatest production of wealth and the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the society.
Differences with Hodgskin:
In the first part of Labour Rewarded - The Claims of Capital and Labour Conciliated (1827), Thompson was eager to establish his basis for the derivation of the right of workers to the whole of the product as opposed to the analysis which was espoused by Thomas Hodgskin. This book contained Thompson's criticism of Thomas Hodgskin's derivation of the right of the worker to the whole of the produce. Hodgskin's derivation of this argument proscribed the capitalists from any right to a share in the social product. Thompson clearly did not agree with this view. Thompson's position can be identified if his earlier work is examined (1824). He opposed the confiscation of a part of the worker's product by the capitalist. However, he would not inherently oppose the capitalists's claim to a share of the produce as long as it was received by voluntary exchange from the workers. On pages 39-40 of An Inquiry Into The Distribution of Wealth, Thompson was careful to ensure the right of security to the landowner, the owners of fixed capital, the stock of circulating capital and consumption goods, as well as the security of the labourer to his product.
Mental and Physical Labor:
He argued that Hodgskin's analysis would deny the right of mental workers to their share of the social product. Although Hodgskin argued for the right of workers who do not do manual labour to a share in the social product, Thompson believed that Hodgskin's analysis was expounded such that an individual must produce a physical commodity in order to claim a share of the social product.
Thompson's argument altered the principle by which a claim to a portion of the social product could be established. His substitution of the utilitarian principle of "contribution to the common mass of social happiness" -- as opposed to the Lockean-based natural right argument of Hodgskin -- would allow those who had not contributed to the actual physical creation of the commodity to receive a part of the social product.
Ensuring subsistence for all:
Thompson, unlike Hodgskin, believed that individual workers could actually receive the whole of their own produce. However, he recognised that this created a "moral" problem, that being the disposal of the surplus product of the worker, over and above his needs.
If the worker actually consumed the whole of his product, that would lead to the starvation of those members of the working class unable to work, such as children, the aged, the sick. Thompson advocated the necessity of cooperation and sharing as the procedure to deal with this problem, while still upholding the right of the worker to the whole of his produce. Thompson's opinions on how the worker could obtain the whole of the product, the role of the state, and the benefits to the society are delineated in the following:
All that the law can do, or ought to do, towards securing to labor all the products of its exertions, is to give the same facilities to all for production, and then to protect every individual producer from the violence of others, and in the free disposal of these products for whatever equivalents the producer may think it proper to accept. [...] Law ought to secure from all violence; the rest ought to be left to morality, founded on equal education and equal rights. The reasons that the law ought to secure to every individual laborer the whole produce of his labor, are, that under a system of equal justice, of bonâ fide Free Competition, all other persons have equal chances of acquiring the same faculties and facilities of production with the laborer; that the most equal distribution of wealth compatible with its reproduction, produces more happiness than any mode of unequal distribution; that individual and equal security, or the guarantee of the possession by all of the whole products of their labor, is the most effectual known method of making an approach to this desirable equality of distribution (Thompson, 1827, p. 14).
Exchange of equivalents based on labour required for production:
Thompson utilised his argument on the question of just exchanges to support his conclusions. He argued that the basis of the economic system is one of exchanges or barter of commodities. Given that the worker has the right of ownership of his produce, his free disposal of it must be guaranteed. Thus, no restrictions on the exchange process could be considered acceptable. The worker in exchanging his surplus product must exchange it for an object representing a just equivalent of his labour required for its production. Thus, given Thompson's understanding of exploitation as deriving from unjust exchanges between the worker and the capitalist, the exchange of equivalents from the producer to the purchaser of the surplus product, would eliminate exploitation.
Suggested Readings
Thompson, Noel, W. (1984) The People's Science: The Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816-34, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, William (1824) 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, New York: A.M. Kelley Publishers, 1963.
Thompson, William (1825) An Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men to Retain them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.
Thompson, William (1827) Labor Rewarded - The Claims of Capital and Labor Conciliated; or How to Secure Labor the Whole of Its Exertions, New York: A.M. Kelley Publishers, 1969.
Let me clarify the poll as I obviously ran out of space. I was planning to do the collapse of the classical school after I finish Thompson, i.e., the wages fund, abstinence theory of profits, and then an examination of the Poor Law changes from the old to the new. I was wondering if I should do a few more diaries on classical theory before I do that or just go on to the attack on and collapse of classical theory? Here are some suggested topics, in the poll: