Feminist Socialism

If Thompson’s socialism informed his feminism, the reverse was also true. It was as though he read Ricardo through Anna Wheeler’s eyes. Many of his arguments paralleled those of other so-called Ricardian socialists who deployed the language of political economy.

Thompson cared little for Ricardo’s distinction between capitalists and landlords and, in asides clearly aimed at Owen, observed that appeals to the rich were unlikely to benefit the poor. The working class, he argued, must organize on its own behalf to lay claim to the products of its labor. Workers, like bees, were allowing their surplus honey to be stolen.⁴⁴ He called for the immediate abolition of slavery, insisting that the violation of human rights that it entailed was more damning than the violation of property rights that its abolition would require.⁴⁵ He opposed revolutionary redress only because he feared that violence would lead to brutalizing waste. Better for men and women to gradually lay claim to the surplus they produced, edging toward equality. The achievement of political democracy was necessary, though not sufficient to reach this goal.

Thompson condemned the inheritance of private property that distrib­uted resources without respect to merit, effort, or ability. The unequal distribution of wealth led inevitably, in his view, to unequal exchange within the market.⁴⁶ He applied Benthamite logic to argue for a tax on wealth.

Cooperative systems, Thompson insisted, could be efficient. Individuals might tend to shirk but a share of the surplus could potentially elicit more effort than a mere subsistence wage. How should that share be defined? Equal division was the simplest rule, but would put the hardest-working and most skilled workers at a disadvantage. Why not reward each according to his work, following the precepts of the labor theory of value? Many of Thompson’s friends, as well as the French socialists discussed in the follow­ing chapter, urged this principle.

Thompson conceded that this would be a great improvement over the existing system of‘‘constraint by mingled force and fraud.’’⁴⁸ But he pointed out that it was difficult to calculate each person’s individual contribution, and that workers sometimes invested in skills that unexpectedly became obsolete. Like Owen, he feared that allowing workers to compete for higher individual rewards would foster selfishness and undermine the very basis of cooperation.⁴⁹

Unlike Owen, Thompson pointed out that the labor theory of value ignored the labor devoted to the production and maintenance of laborers themselves. Competition would penalize people who devoted themselves to the care of those too young or old or sick to care for themselves.⁵⁰ Family responsibilities would always put women at a disadvantage. ‘‘In the race of individual competition for wealth,’’ Thompson wrote, ‘‘men have such fearful advantages over women, from superiority of strength and exertion uninterrupted by gestation, that they must probably maintain the lead in acquisition by individual effort.’’⁵¹

Thompson insisted that women should never be forced into involun­tary motherhood, and believed that prosperity would lead to fertility decline.⁵² He was even more forthright than Owen in advocating contra­ception.

Communities of cooperation could potentially benefit women more than men. Thompson offered detailed plans for redeploying domestic labor in his Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establish­ment of Communities on the Principles of Mutual Co-operation, United Possessions and Equality of Exertions and of the Means of Enjoyments (1830). Owen echoed many of its details in his Book of the New Moral World (1836), such as replacing the sexual division of labor with an age­based system (housework to be performed by children of eleven years or younger).

Before his untimely death in 1833 Thompson complained bitterly that the ‘‘leaders of the school of Competitive Political Economy” had simply ignored the ‘‘system of Cooperative political economy.”⁵⁴ Though many of his arguments surfaced in the later work of Mill, Marx, and Engels, he received little credit for them. A portion of his estate was bequeathed to Anna Wheeler, the remainder left to trustees to advance the cause of socialism. Thompson’s sisters immediately contested the terms of the will, keeping it in litigation for over twenty-five years. The value of the bequest was almost completely consumed by legal fees, poignant testimony to the costs of competition.⁵⁵