The Appeal of One-Half the Human Race
Most of the early socialists intuitively recognized that the extension of positive family values to society as a whole required a critique of gender inequality. The two thinkers who addressed this issue most directly were both members of the Irish landed gentry who had experienced both the chafe of English rule and the binding force of family law.
William Thompson was initially angered by the plight of the Irish poor.36 Anna Wheeler had more personal complaints. Married at the age of fifteen to an unregenerate drunkard, she bore six children within a space of twelve years. Only two survived, and when she finally managed to escape her husband's household she was forced to assume complete responsibility for their support.37Once in London, both Thompson and Wheeler entered Bentham's circle, finding common cause in their criticisms of another Benthamite, James Mill. To the surprise of his friends and acquaintances (and later disapproval of his son John Stuart) Mill published an article in the 1819 Encyclopedia Britannica restating the familiar argument that women did not need political rights because they were well-represented by their fathers, husbands, and broth- ers.38 The gist of Thompson and Wheeler's scathing retort was summarized in its title: 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.39
While the book appeared under Thompson's name, its long preface acknowledged Wheeler's contributions, and her voice rings in its most urgent passages.40 The Appeal did more than assert women's right to vote. It systematically explored the contradictions of a theory of political economy that held men to be wholly self-interested in their dealings with each other, yet wholly altruistic in their dealings with women and children.
This argument was put most concisely in the outline of topics covered in Part I, which directly addressed the issue of self-interest:ι. The general argument of the “Article” for Human Rights is founded on the universal love of power of all human beings over all their fellow-creatures for selfish purposes. This is stated to be the grand governing law of human nature...
2. But, if in the disposition of one half the human race, men, an exception from this grand governing law exists towards the other half, women, what becomes of the law itself and the arguments founded on it?4'
The sections that followed made the case for a transition toward a more democratic and cooperative social system. In dialogue format, the authors rebutted every rationale they could imagine for denying women the same political and civil rights as men. They ridiculed the notion that marriage could be described as a contract between free and equal individuals, pointing to the asymmetrical property rights that gave husbands virtually absolute power over wives. Under English common law, they argued, the married woman could be treated as ‘‘an involuntary breeding machine and household slave.’’42
In a related article, published in The Co-Operative Magazine, Thompson laid out an argument that Owen later muddled. Patriarchal authority— not mere allegiance to kin—had distorted the natural instincts of cooperation.
Every family is a centre of absolute despotism, where of course, intelligence and persuasion are quite superfluous to him who has only to command to be obeyed: from these centres, in the midst of which all mankind are now trained, spreads the contagion of selfishness and the love of domination through all human transactions.43
The family’s ability to define its collective interests was pre-empted by its despot, the legal head of the household. Thompson and Wheeler seemed to blame patriarchal systems that antedated capitalism for resistance to cooperation. This interpretation, however undeveloped, made more sense than Owen's vague complaints. It also helped explain why communitarian efforts that simply abjured class differences foundered on other types of inequality.