10 research outputs found
Social science in a water observing system
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95008/1/wrcr12336.pd
Thomas Hodgskin, Rational Optimist
Long considered a ‘Ricardian socialist’, Thomas Hodgskin is rarely read as the perceptive observer of the Industrial Revolution
that he was.Hismost famous pamphlet, LabourDefended Against theClaims ofCapital, has been interpreted as anticipating some
central tenets ofMarxism. If we abandon this well-established interpretation, however, we can better appreciate Hodgskin’s acute
reading of the process of industrialisation unfolding before his eyes. Unlike most socialists, Hodgskin had no sympathy for
machine breakers and actually understood the importance of the entrepreneurial function. Moreover, he thought mechanisation
and improvement in the tools available for workers would not dispossess them but, on the contrary, would raise their living
standards. Hodgskin’s ‘optimism’ shows that in the 1820s someone who was deeply concerned with the future of the working
classes could nonetheless develop a reasoned sympathy for industrialisation—rather thanmerely oppose technological innovation
and long for a mythical past