Thomas Hodgskin Quotes

1787–1869 England

Thomas Hodgskin (12 December 1787 – 21 August 1869) was an English socialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism and defender of free trade and early trade unions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term socialist included any opponent of capitalism, at the time defined as a construed political system built on privileges for the owners of capital.

England
Economists
Philosophers
Socialists

Random Thomas Hodgskin quote

28 quotes

Nature rewards industry and skill, the legislator be he who he may, is utterly regardless of the connection between industry and plenty.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Our leaders invent nothing but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Those who make laws, appropriate wealth in order to secure power.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Governments have meddled incessantly with money, which in our time has been the fruitful parent of intricate discussions and painful changes.

Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827)

Mr. Locke says, that every man has a property in his own person; in fact, individuality—which is signified by the word own—cannot be disjoined from the person.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

The skill and the art of the labourer have been overlooked, and he has been vilified; while the work of his hands has been worshiped.

Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825)

Power so acquired, and privileges so established, were the basis of the present political and legal, not social, edifice of Europe.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

It is as impossible for men not to have a notion of a right of property, as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Domestic slavery, combined with systems of foreign conquest and usurpation, ruined the empires of antiquity.

Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827)

The evils of society cannot be remedied by acts of parliament.

Travels in the North of Germany (1820)

The evil of confinement is not to be remedied by outrage, but it is so great an evil, that it looks like tameness of apathy to be perfectly resigned to it.

Travels in the North of Germany (1820)

The power of making laws was long vested in those—and still is vested in their descendants—who followed no trade but war, and knew no handicraft but robbery and plunder.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

The law is a great scheme of rules intended to preserve the power of government, secure the wealth of the landowner, the priest, and the capitalist, but never to secure his produce to the labourer.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

But it is quite plain that the sum the weaver will be disposed to give for the thread will depend on his view of its utility.

Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825)

The journeymen, however, know their own interest better than it is known to the legislator; and they would be all richer if there were not an idle capitalist in the country.

Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825)

The simple means of making the race frugal is to supply the wants of no man and to leave every man the produce of his own labour.

Travels in the North of Germany (1820)

The ideas expressed by the words mine and thine, as applied to the produce of labour, are simply then an extended form of the ideas of personal identity and individuality.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Wherever the right of property is placed on a proper foundation, slavery, with all its hateful consequences, is unknown:—wherever this foundation is rotten, freedom cannot exist, nor justice be administered.

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

Who can describe the disgusting servility with which all classes submit to be fleeced by the demands of the tax-gatherer, on all sorts of false pretences, when his demands cannot be fraudulently evaded?

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832)

The labourers are still more unfortunate in being descended from bondsmen and serfs. Personal slavery or villanage formerly existed in Britain, and all the living labourers still suffer from the bondage of their ancestors.

Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Hodgskin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.