produce of his labour. It was supposed that a nation working exclusively upon the land might thus solve the problem of distribution.
This is not the place for a detailed analysis of this mass of socialistic literature, which is to be found in the excellent works of Beer, Menger, and Podmore.[1] But as these socialistic notions formed a large part of the mental equipment of Chartists, a general sketch of their tendency is essential to a proper understanding of the Chartist Movement. The relation of the Chartist Movement to the evolution of socialist ideas is somewhat complex. The Chartist Movement was not a homogeneous thing. It was a general protest against industrial and political oppression, and as the protest swelled the movement swallowed up a variety of agitations of a special and local character, some of which bore little relation to socialist propagandism. It is true that some of the leaders of Chartism were downright Socialists—as we should call them to-day. James O'Brien (commonly known as Bronterre O'Brien) was the unremitting advocate of land nationalisation and collective control of the means of exchange.[2] William Lovett, the noblest of them all, was persuaded that individual ownership of industrial capital was the prime evil of society. Hetherington was a disciple of Owen and Thompson. In spite of this, however, the Chartist Movement was carefully distinguished by its more prominent adherents from the Socialist Movement of the period, which was a communist movement guided by Robert Owen, Lloyd Jones, and William Pare. Feargus O'Connor's Land Scheme was the very antithesis of Socialism, but it was also not a real Chartist scheme.
The Land Reformers, Spence, Ogilvie, and Paine (the ex-member of the Revolutionary Convention and the author of the Rights of Man), are one and all under the influence of Natural Rights. They belong to the period which preceded the birth of economic analysis, and therefore detailed criticism of the existing social and industrial system plays little part in their discussions. They proceed by the deductive method, commencing with a statement of the natural and inherent rights of mankind. Clearly the right to subsist upon the land of his birth is the most obvious of these rights. Hence the
- ↑ Max Beer, Geschichte des Sozialismus in England (1913); A. Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1891), translated as The Right to the whole Produce of Labour, by M. E. Tanner and H. S. Foxwell (1899); F. Podmore, Life of Robert Owen (1906).
- ↑ For O'Brien's plans for the nationalisation of the land see Niehuus, Englische Bodenreformtheorien, Leipzig (1910), pp. 99-108.
