Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital

Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital PDF

Author: Thomas Hodgskin

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-07-08

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13: 9781490937779

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Thomas Hodgskin (1787 - 1869) was an English socialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism and defender of free trade and early trade unions. He used Ricardo's labour theory of value to denounce the appropriation of the most part of value produced by the labour of industrial workers as illegitimate. He propounded these views in a series of lectures at the London Mechanics Institute (later renamed Birkbeck, University of London) where he debated with William Thompson, with whom he shared the critique of capitalist expropriation but not the proposed remedy. The results of these lectures and debates he published as "Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital" (1825), "Popular Political Economy" (1827) and "Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted" (1832). The title of "Labour Defended" was a jibe at James Mill's earlier "Commerce Defended" and signalled his opposition to the latter taking sides with the capitalists against their employees. Despite his high profile in the agitated revolutionary times of the 1820s, he retreated into the realm of Whig journalism after the Reform Act 1832. He became an advocate of free trade and spent 15 years writing for The Economist. He worked on the paper with its founder, James Wilson, and with the young Herbert Spencer. Hodgskin viewed the demise of the Corn Laws as the first step to the downfall of government, and his libertarian anarchism was regarded as too radical by many of the liberals of the Anti-Corn Law League. He left The Economist in 1857, but continued working as a journalist for the rest of his life.

The Definitive Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital

The Definitive Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital PDF

Author: Thomas Hodgskin

Publisher:

Published: 2019-02-25

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 9781796437454

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A Definitive edition of Thomas Hodgskin's seminal work:- Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital. An updated, corrected and annotated edition being Volume One of the upcoming Collected Works of Thomas Hodgskin. Edited and Annotated by Dr. Fred Day with relevant commentary essays by the Editor.Primarily this edition corrects the mistakes embedded into the 1922 (G.D.H. Cole) version that forms the basis of the majority of subsequent printed and on-line versions. Also includes the corrections and additional introductory Notice Hodgskin himself incorporated in his (rarely available) 1831 reprint to the original 1825 editions.This definitive edition also includes the six letters Hodgskin had published in the Trades' Newspaper, and Mechanics' Weekly Journal between Sept. 1825 and February 1826, that further explained work. Also reproduced is Hodgskin pre-emptive and extensive letter to Francis Place from May 1820, on the subject of David Ricardo's.To show the persistence of Hodgskin's position regarding Capital, two much latter items are reproduced: firstly, Trade without Capital - a letter to The Morning Chronicle - 23rd Jan. 1858. Secondly, Capital and Labour - an editorial item from The Brighton Guardian from 19th March 1862. And finally, an article from January 1867, the Theory of Capital, that illustrates his steadfastness to the ideals originally laid out in both Labour Defended (1825) and Popular Political Economy (1827).Additionally, two contemporary essays by this collection's compiler and editor (Dr. Fred Day) are included. These place Hodgskin's work within modern contexts and illustrate the value of his work to present day economics. They also attempt to integrate these within pluralist and radical perspectives.

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