Post by dodger on Aug 13, 2013 12:40:53 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/thomas-spence-%e2%80%93-industrial-revolutionary/
Thomas Spence – Industrial Revolutionary
marxman
21st June is the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Spence on Newcastle Quayside in 1750. Born at a time when industrial capitalism was gathering momentum as the revolution in manufacturing was transforming Britain, fashioning the working class as it did so. It was a time of radical ideas and insurrection, with revolutions in what were the thirteen colonial states of America, followed shortly by the toppling of the monarchy in France. And all before Spence was 40 years old
Poverty was the dominant circumstance of his life from birth, giving Spence first hand experience of the extreme inequalities condemning the majority to hardship while the few took fabulous wealth to be their birthright. He developed a life-long antipathy towards the still dominant aristocracy: the emergent capitalist class was still to assume its destiny of economic, political and social pre-eminence. Land was regarded as the primary source of wealth, so the landlord was the bete noire of British radicals. On Tyneside the landowners would make tremendous profits not from what was grown on their land, but dug out from under it; coal.
In 1787, Spence moved to London where he would eventually set up his bookshop, “The Hive of Liberty” in Holborn. He became a famous, or infamous from the point of view of the ruling class, as an author and disseminator of his own ideas through pamphlets. 1792 saw him arrested and briefly imprisoned for seditious libel. The dose was repeated a year later, while 1794 had him arrested for High Treason and incarcerated for seven months without trial. His surelease left him at “liberty”, though under constant surveillance until 1798 when he was detained on suspicion of consorting with the United Irishmen. 1801 collared him for another 12 months inside, once more for seditious libel
The year after he died in 1814, the Society of Spencean Philanthropists was established to promote his ideas, what he called his plan, the main points of which were:
• The abolition of the aristocracy and an end to landlords.
• Land should be brought under public ownership administered by democratic parishes that would be largely self-governing.
• Land rent in the parish to be equally shared amongst parishioners.
• Universal suffrage, male and female, in the parish and through deputies elected by parishes for a national senate.
• A social guarantee providing income for those unable to work.
• The rights of infants to be free from poverty and abuse. This at a time when child labour much akin to slavery with the use of corporal punishment was becoming common in the new factories.
It seems likely that Spence coined the term, “the Rights of Man”. On visiting “Jack the Blaster” who’d been a farmer and a miner, but suffered at the whims of landlords to the point he’d dug himself a cave to live in at Marsdon Rocks near South Shields, Spence chalked over his fireplace,
“Ye landlords vile, whose man’s peace mar,
Come levy rents here if you can;
Your stewards and Lawyers I defy,
And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN.”
That his ideas continued to be influential after his death is testament to the voice he gave to popular aspirations. In the early years of the nineteenth century a revolutionary would be known as a Spencian, perhaps as now he or she would be a Marxist.
“…the doctrines of the Spencian clubs have been widely diffused through the country either by extension of similar societies or by missionaries.” (Report by a secret government committee, 1817)
“We have all seen for years past written on the walls in or near London these words ‘Spence’s Plan’.” ( Letter to Henry Hunt from William Cobbett)
The loathed aristocracy would be displaced, but by the capitalist class, not a Spencian utopia of self governing parishes. Yet his ideas encapsulate the very essence of socialism – common ownership, democracy vested in the people not parliament, an end to the exploiting classes, the equal distribution of wealth, the nurturing of children. Less than half a century after his death Marx would be carrying out the analysis of capitalism and establishing the economic basis and principles to make the realisation of those ideas a real possibility.
It will not be the parish that is the vehicle of change, but the working class,
experiencing measures of government repression as Spence was. The state continues to do all it can to shackle the working class. Even now it’s announcing its intention to enact even more draconian anti-trade union laws against those who vote to act on their own behalf.
Spence recognised that meaningful universal suffrage demands more than the paltry right to mark a ballot paper in favour of one or other team of capitalism’s administrators. He understood the crucial link between ownership of wealth creation and real political power. In his terms it was the parish holding wealth, the land, in common ownership. His was a direct democracy beginning with the parish as the fundamental unit, rather than the national state neutering local democracy to promote and protect the financial interests of the few.
This principle would emerge in the worker’s governance of the Paris Commune and the Soviets of revolutionary Russia. In Britain, the vote of itself has not been the objective, but what could be done with it.
People must act for themselves and can only do so once they recognise their common cause as being members of the working class: they depend on selling their labour time in order to earn the means of life. Simply voting, even voting Labour, will change nothing other than some details in how capitalism is administered. If the Labour Party became true to its name it still could not deliver socialism because it’s not in its gift. If the working class of this country really wants to rebuild Britain in its own favour, it will have to take matters into its own hands.
So, for Thomas Spence on his birthday (and with apologies due to him),
Ye bankers vile, who countries plunder,
Speculate on this if you can,
Your Quisling parliaments I defy
In favour of the VOICE OF MAN.
Thomas Spence – Industrial Revolutionary
marxman
21st June is the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Spence on Newcastle Quayside in 1750. Born at a time when industrial capitalism was gathering momentum as the revolution in manufacturing was transforming Britain, fashioning the working class as it did so. It was a time of radical ideas and insurrection, with revolutions in what were the thirteen colonial states of America, followed shortly by the toppling of the monarchy in France. And all before Spence was 40 years old
Poverty was the dominant circumstance of his life from birth, giving Spence first hand experience of the extreme inequalities condemning the majority to hardship while the few took fabulous wealth to be their birthright. He developed a life-long antipathy towards the still dominant aristocracy: the emergent capitalist class was still to assume its destiny of economic, political and social pre-eminence. Land was regarded as the primary source of wealth, so the landlord was the bete noire of British radicals. On Tyneside the landowners would make tremendous profits not from what was grown on their land, but dug out from under it; coal.
In 1787, Spence moved to London where he would eventually set up his bookshop, “The Hive of Liberty” in Holborn. He became a famous, or infamous from the point of view of the ruling class, as an author and disseminator of his own ideas through pamphlets. 1792 saw him arrested and briefly imprisoned for seditious libel. The dose was repeated a year later, while 1794 had him arrested for High Treason and incarcerated for seven months without trial. His surelease left him at “liberty”, though under constant surveillance until 1798 when he was detained on suspicion of consorting with the United Irishmen. 1801 collared him for another 12 months inside, once more for seditious libel
The year after he died in 1814, the Society of Spencean Philanthropists was established to promote his ideas, what he called his plan, the main points of which were:
• The abolition of the aristocracy and an end to landlords.
• Land should be brought under public ownership administered by democratic parishes that would be largely self-governing.
• Land rent in the parish to be equally shared amongst parishioners.
• Universal suffrage, male and female, in the parish and through deputies elected by parishes for a national senate.
• A social guarantee providing income for those unable to work.
• The rights of infants to be free from poverty and abuse. This at a time when child labour much akin to slavery with the use of corporal punishment was becoming common in the new factories.
It seems likely that Spence coined the term, “the Rights of Man”. On visiting “Jack the Blaster” who’d been a farmer and a miner, but suffered at the whims of landlords to the point he’d dug himself a cave to live in at Marsdon Rocks near South Shields, Spence chalked over his fireplace,
“Ye landlords vile, whose man’s peace mar,
Come levy rents here if you can;
Your stewards and Lawyers I defy,
And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN.”
That his ideas continued to be influential after his death is testament to the voice he gave to popular aspirations. In the early years of the nineteenth century a revolutionary would be known as a Spencian, perhaps as now he or she would be a Marxist.
“…the doctrines of the Spencian clubs have been widely diffused through the country either by extension of similar societies or by missionaries.” (Report by a secret government committee, 1817)
“We have all seen for years past written on the walls in or near London these words ‘Spence’s Plan’.” ( Letter to Henry Hunt from William Cobbett)
The loathed aristocracy would be displaced, but by the capitalist class, not a Spencian utopia of self governing parishes. Yet his ideas encapsulate the very essence of socialism – common ownership, democracy vested in the people not parliament, an end to the exploiting classes, the equal distribution of wealth, the nurturing of children. Less than half a century after his death Marx would be carrying out the analysis of capitalism and establishing the economic basis and principles to make the realisation of those ideas a real possibility.
It will not be the parish that is the vehicle of change, but the working class,
experiencing measures of government repression as Spence was. The state continues to do all it can to shackle the working class. Even now it’s announcing its intention to enact even more draconian anti-trade union laws against those who vote to act on their own behalf.
Spence recognised that meaningful universal suffrage demands more than the paltry right to mark a ballot paper in favour of one or other team of capitalism’s administrators. He understood the crucial link between ownership of wealth creation and real political power. In his terms it was the parish holding wealth, the land, in common ownership. His was a direct democracy beginning with the parish as the fundamental unit, rather than the national state neutering local democracy to promote and protect the financial interests of the few.
This principle would emerge in the worker’s governance of the Paris Commune and the Soviets of revolutionary Russia. In Britain, the vote of itself has not been the objective, but what could be done with it.
People must act for themselves and can only do so once they recognise their common cause as being members of the working class: they depend on selling their labour time in order to earn the means of life. Simply voting, even voting Labour, will change nothing other than some details in how capitalism is administered. If the Labour Party became true to its name it still could not deliver socialism because it’s not in its gift. If the working class of this country really wants to rebuild Britain in its own favour, it will have to take matters into its own hands.
So, for Thomas Spence on his birthday (and with apologies due to him),
Ye bankers vile, who countries plunder,
Speculate on this if you can,
Your Quisling parliaments I defy
In favour of the VOICE OF MAN.