Ricardian socialism

Ricardian socialismis a branch ofclassical economicthought based upon the work of the economistDavid Ricardo(1772–1823). The term is used to describe economists in the 1820s and 1830s who developed a theory of capitalist exploitation from the theory developed by Ricardo that stated that labor is the source of all wealth andexchange value.This principle extends back to the principles of English philosopherJohn Locke.The Ricardian socialists reasoned that labor is entitled to all it produces, and thatrent,profitandinterestwere not natural outgrowths of thefree marketprocess but were insteaddistortions.They argued that private ownership of themeans of productionshould be supplanted bycooperativesowned by associations of workers.

This designation is used in reference to economists in the early 19th century that elaborated a theory of capitalistexploitationfrom the classical economic proposition derived fromAdam Smithand David Ricardo stating that labor is the source of wealth. Although Ricardian socialist thought had some influence onKarl Marx's theories, there is disagreement about the extent to which this is the case. Some believe Marx rejected many of the fundamental assumptions of the Ricardian socialists, including the view that labor was the source of all wealth;while others believe the Ricardian socialists, though "generally dismissed as incoherent utopians", were in fact "an important though very largely neglected" influence on Marxist economic theories.

Economics

Ricardian socialism is considered to be a form of socialism based on the arguments made by Ricardo that the equilibrium value of commodities approximated producer prices when those commodities were in elastic supply, that these producer prices corresponded to the embodied labor and that profit, interest and rent were deductions from this exchange-value. This is deduced from the axiom of Ricardo and Adam Smith that labor is the source of all value.

The first imputation that early British and Irish socialists were influenced by Ricardo is made byKarl Marxin his 1846Poverty of Philosophy:

Anyone who is in any way familiar with the trend of political economy in England cannot fail to know that almost all the Socialists in that country have, at different periods, proposed the equalitarian application of the Ricardian theory. We quote for M. Proudhon: Hodgskin, Political Economy, 1827; William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness, 1824; T. R. Edmonds, Practical Moral and Political Economy, 1828 [18], etc., etc., and four pages more of etc. We shall content ourselves with listening to an English Communist, Mr. Bray. We shall give the decisive passages in his remarkable work, Labor's Wrongs and Labor's Remedy, Leeds, 1839...

The link is later re-asserted byHerbert Foxwellin his introduction to the English translation ofAnton Menger's "The Right to the Whole Produce of Labor" (1899). Consequently, the category of Ricardian socialist came to be accepted by supporters and opponents both of Marxism by the early 20th century.

However, in recent years a number of scholars have challenged the validity of the category based on the lack of evidence that its proposed members had either read Ricardo's "Principles of Political Economy" or the contradictory internal evidence of their own value theory which appears to owe more toAdam Smiththan Ricardo.So much so that several scholars prefer the term "Smithian Socialism".

Ricardian socialists

• Thomas Hodgskin
• Charles Hall
• John Francis Bray
• John Gray
• William Thompson
• Percy Ravenstone

See also

• Classical economics
• David Ricardo
• Free-market anarchism
• Labor theory of value
• Mutualism
• Market socialism
• Piero Sraffa
• Ricardian economics
• Socialist economics

References

Bibliography

• Burkitt, Brian (1984). "3. The Ricardian Socialists".Radical Political Economy(PDF).New York:New York University Press.pp. 19–35.ISBN0814710581.OCLC265497079.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 7 April 2014.Retrieved2 April2014.
• Carson, Kevin(2007).Studies in Mutualist Political Economy.BookSurge.ISBN9781419658693.OCLC941284812.
• Hunt, E. K.(1980). "The Relation of the Ricardian Socialists to Ricardo and Marx".Science & Society.44(2).New York:Guilford Press:170–198.ISSN0036-8237.JSTOR40402242.OCLC5544960731.
• King, J.E. (1983). "Utopian or scientific? A reconsideration of the Ricardian Socialists".History of Political Economy.15(3).Durham:Duke University Press:345–373.doi:10.1215/00182702-15-3-345.ISSN0018-2702.OCLC4633494014.
• Marx, Karl(1962) [1847].The Poverty of Philosophy.Moscow:Foreign Languages Publishing House.OCLC251591636.
• Thompson, Noel W. (2002) [1984].The People's Science: The Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816-34.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-89342-9.OCLC472922541.
• Tsuzuki, Chūshichi (1992).Robert Owen and the World of Co-operation.Tokyo:The Association.ISBN978-4-938424-40-4.OCLC850853084.

External links

• "Utopians and Socialists",History of Economic Thought,New School for Social Research