William Thompson (?1775-1833)


Life
[err. 1785;] b. Rosscarbery; established an ill-fated agrarian co-operative on Owenite principles in Glandore; anticipated Karl Marx, whom Sidney and Beatrice Webb called ‘Thompson’s Disciple’, and received a footnote in Das Kapital; wrote An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (1824, 1850), with German trans. (Berlin 1903-04), originating as a lecture before q Cork literary society on ‘the blessings of the inequality of wealth’; also, Practical Considerations for the speedy and Economic Establishment of Communities on the Principle of Co-Operation (1825);
 
with Anne Wheeler the daughter of a Church of Ireland bishop, by then separated from her husband (Francis Massey-Wheeler), whom he met in London through Robert Owen for whose journal she wrote as ‘Vlasta’, Thompson issued An Appeal of one Half of the Human Race, Women, against [...] Political and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery (1825); an atheist & vegetarian, he left his wealth to the occupants of his estate, but his will was overturned in court in an action that wore on for twenty-five years; d. 28 March; extensively considered in James Connolly, in Labour in Irish History (1910). DIW DIH FDA OCIL

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Works
Dolores Dooley, ed. and intro., Appeal of one Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them in Political and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery ([1825]; Cork UP ?1995), pbk. 172pp.

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Criticism
P. Lynch, ‘William Thompson and Socialist Tradition,’ in Leaders and Workers, ed. J. W. Boyle (Cork: Mercier 1966), pp.11-16; Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson: British Pioneer Socialist, Feminist and Co-operator (1954; rep. Pluto Press 1991); Dolores Dooley, Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler (Cork UP 1996), 472pp.; Terry Eagleton, ‘The Radicalism of William Thompson’, in The Irish Review, 26, 1 (Autumn 2000), pp.80-88.

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Commentary
Aodh de Blacam, in In What Sinn Fein Stands For (1921), cites Thompson as a precursor of Sinn Féin distributivism in a Catholic Ireland setting its face equally against capitalism and communism and speaks of Thompson, the ‘so-called forerunner of Marx’, as being ‘curiously prophetic of Connolly and Liberty Hall [in calling for] a Central Union of all trades.’ [q.p.]

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Michael Kenny reviewing Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson 1775-1833: Pioneer Socialist (1954; rep. London: Pluto Press [1991], notes thesis that Thompson’s influence upon Marx [...] has gone unrecognised, and that [he] deserves greater attention as the producer of influential and concrete ideas within the utopian movement; a number of inaccuracies [...] cited in an article by James Coombe’s in 1970 [undermines] the status of this account as a definitive biography [but] it still stands as an enlightening treatment of a neglected socialist figure [...] militant atheist, talented economist and hard-headed political activist (Books Ireland, March 1992.)

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Sheila Rowbotham, reviewing of Dolores Dooley, Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thomson and Anna Doyle Wheeler (Cork UP 1996): Anna Doyle, m. at 19 to Francis Massey-Wheeler, a hard-drinking husband, escaped after 12 years to Guernsey with her 2 dgs., and settled in Caen, becoming involved in reforming circles; friend of Flora Tristan, originator of idea of workers’ international, and with Jeanee Desirée Veret; reviewer pans structure and style of the book.

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Timothy P. Foley, in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1996): Thompson saw himself as steeing between the Scylla of ‘intellectual speculator’ such as Godwin and Scylla of ‘mechanical reasoner’ like Malthus; hoped to unite followers of Owen with those of Saint-Simon; comments, ‘theirs was an ambitious enlightenment project, rich in grand emancipatory narratives, but insensitive to cultural diffeence. Custom, for instance, is simply condemned as superstition, a “many-headed despot”, though its liberatory potential, as in the Irish land struggle, was often appealed to by colonised peoples in opposition to an imperialism informed by the “rational” philosophy of utilitarianism.’ (p.15.)

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Desmond Fennell, ‘Irish Socialist Thought,’ in The Irish Mind, ed. Richard Kearney, 1985, ‘William Thompson, John Dohert[y], Feargus O’Connor and James Bronterre O’Brien [...] leading thinker of that group; born in Cork, [son of] Alderman John William T., prosperous Cork merchant and member of Protestant Ascendancy [with] 1,500 acre estate at Roscarbery, 40 miles west of Cork; spent time in France and Netherlands, read Saint-Simon and Sisimondi, and later wrote that ‘the tendency of civilisation and of manufacturing improvements was to deteriorate the situation of the industrious classes as compared with that of the idle classes.’ Thompson was a humorous, idealistic man of penetrating mind and frugal habits [...] member of Philosophical, Scientific and Literary Soc., and one of the proprietors of the Cork Institution; guilty about ‘living on the rent produced by ‘the effort of others’; wrote Practical Education for the South of Ireland; correspondent and friend of Bentham; essentially a humanist; An Inquiry into the Principles of Distribution of Wealth most Conducive to Human Happiness; Applied to the Newly-Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth (1824); Owenite communitarian programme. In Bentham’s London circle, Thompson met Anna Wheeler, dg. of a Church of Ireland archbishop, who had fled an unhappy marriage in Co. Limerick; in collaboration with her, wrote An Appeal of One Half of the Human Race [...] against [...] Domestic Slavery. His last book, Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economic Establishment of Communities on the Principle of Mutual Co-Operation, United Possessions, Equality of Exertions and the Means of Employment [octavo]; Active in first three co-operative congresses in England, 1831-32. See also remarks in Rosangela Barone’s 2 vol. study of Eva Gore-Booth, The Oak Tree and the Olive Tree (Edizione da Sud/Bari, 1990), especially remarks on Anna Wheeler, his full collaborator in the Appeal.

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References
R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), p.307, bio-note: 1775-1833; ‘the proto-socialist philosopher was prominent in the Liberal Clubs of the post-1826 period’;; b. Co. Cork, wealthy landowner and critical student of Bentham, Godwin, and Owen; An Inquiry into [...] the Distribution of Wealth (1824), and an Appeal for equality of sexes (1825); quoted by Marx, whom the Webb’s called ‘Thompson’s disciple’; atheist and vegetarian.

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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; remarks that Appeal was influenced by Mrs. Wheeler’s legal difficulties with her husband; under pseud. ‘Vlasta’ she contributed to Owen’s Crisis. Biog., Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson: Britain’s Pioneer Socialist, Feminist and Co-Operator (London 1954). Does not note Virago rep. of Appeal, selected here: ‘Political rights are necessary to women as a check on the almost inveterate habits of exclusion of men [...] if none but men are to be jurors [...] the secrecy of domestic wrongs [...] system of exclusive political rights [...] think ye indeed that it is of the use of what are called your personal charms alone that man is jealous [...] there is not a quality of mind which his animal propensities do not grudge you [...] those only excepted [...] which render you, as objects of sense, more stimulating to his purely selfish desires. [...] a system of domineering hypocrisy [...] every moral and intellectual quality of which you might be possessed [is] thus systematically sacrificed at the shrine of man’s all-devouring jealousy [...] Many as are the years during which the Catholics of Ireland have been eligible to some few corporation and other offices, but very few of them have been so elected, because the keys of admission were absurdly or perfidiously left in the hands of the exclusionists [...] so must it in some measure be with the removal of the partial legislation and partial morals affecting women [...] persevere and you must be free ..(pp. 1125-29). [Note that it is actually addressed to Women.]

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Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists Thompson, Appeal of One Half [of] the Human Race - Women - [... &c.], facsimile rep., of 1825 edn. [sic] (Cork: [Mercier] 1975; Virago, 1983); new pref. Joe Lee. [n.d].

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Notes
Kith & Kin: There is a biographical notice on [presumably another] William Thompson in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), vol. II, p.592.

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