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{{Short description|Irish political economist and social reformer (1775–1833)}}
{{other people|William Thompson}}
{{EngvarB|date=October 2013}}
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* [[Social science]] (term)
* [[Surplus value]]
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It was the contrasting ideas of Godwin and Malthus that spurred Thompson into the project of research into the role of distribution in [[political economy]] that led him to London and, in 1824, the publication of ''An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth'' (see biblio. for full title).{{sfn|Lee|1901}} Thompson had also become acquainted with the work of the French utopian socialists including [[Charles Fourier]], [[Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon|Henri Saint-Simon]], and the economist [[Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi|Sismondi]].
In the ''Inquiry'', Thompson follows the line of the [[labour theory of value]] put forward by [[Adam Smith]]. However he characterizes the appropriation of the
By applying the utilitarian principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number" to the existing and possible alternative schemes of distribution, Thompson comes down on the side of an egalitarian distribution of the product.
One of Thompson's colleagues in the Cooperative movement, [[John Minter Morgan]], made the observation that he was the first to coin the term ''competitive'' to describe the existing economic system. The case for the originality of this work is further made by [[Max Nettlau]] who states: ''"[Thompson's] book, however, discloses his own evolution; having started with a demand for the full product of labour as well as the regulation of distribution, he ended up with his own conversion to communism, that is, unlimited distribution."''
In 1827, fellow [[Ricardian socialist]] [[Thomas Hodgskin]] published ''Labour Defended'' which also characterised the appropriation of the
However, Hodgskin proposed that the road to economic justice for the labourer was through a reformed competitive system. Thompson replied with ''Labor Rewarded'' defending cooperative communism against Hodgskin's unequal wages.
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=== Influence on Karl Marx and Marxists ===
[[Thorstein Veblen]] has said Marx had a "large...unacknowledged debt" to Thompson.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/veblen/soc-econ.htm |title = The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers-1}}</ref> [[Harold Laski]] remarks that Thompson "laid the foundations" for Marxism.<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nFilAwAAQBAJ&q=harold+laski+william+thompson&pg=PA219 |title = Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement: The Radical Utilitarianism of William Thompson|isbn = 9781438452050|last1 = Kaswan|first1 = Mark J.|date = 21 May 2014}}</ref> [[James Connolly]] held Thompson in high regard saying he was an "original thinker, a pioneer of Socialist thought, superior to any of the Utopian Socialists of the Continent" who had "a merciless fidelity to truth".<ref name="marxists.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap10.htm|title=James Connolly: Labour in Irish History - Chapter 10|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> [[Herbert Foxwell]] believed Thompson to be "the first writer to elevate the question of the just distribution of wealth to the supreme position it has since held in English political economy. Up to his time political economy had been rather commercial than industrial".<ref name="marxists.org"/>
[[Karl Marx]] had come across Thompson's work on a visit to Manchester in 1845, and cites it in passing in ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847), and also in ''Capital'' itself.{{sfn|Marx|1992|pp=397–399}} Thompson's "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth" is acknowledged by Marx as one of the works on political economy he studied.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ria.ie/news/dictionary-irish-biography/karl-marx-and-dib|title=Karl Marx and the DIB|date=3 May 2018|website=Royal Irish Academy}}</ref>
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* [https://web.archive.org/web/20030427190426/http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/w_thompson.html Sunshine for Women on William Thompson]
* [http://wsm.ie/williamthompson Worker's Solidarity Movement page on William Thompson]
* [https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/irishmr/vol01/no04/osullivan.pdf Pat
* [http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/west-corks-john-thompson-was-the-original-rebel-with-a-cause-298604.html Irish Examiner article]
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[[Category:Consequentialists]]
[[Category:Irish cooperative organizers]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Irish anti-capitalists]]
[[Category:Irish atheists]]
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