The Question of Sharing: Thomas Jefferson and the Idea of Communal Property

Dean Caivano

doi:10.3390/histories1030012

Abstract

Drawing from archival research, this article explores Thomas Jefferson’s understanding of property and his embrace of a political community defined by communal sharing. Tracing the evolution of Jefferson’s view on property holdings from the Anglo-Saxons to the American colonies to his speculative vision of ward republics, this paper argues that fears concerning economic and property inequities in the early republic compelled the principal author of the Declaration of Independence to endorse small, communal experiments. Importantly, this reading of Jefferson problematizes strict liberal or republican interpretations of his thought, further calling into question the philosophical heritage of the American republic. By evaluating personal letters from 1804 to 1824, this article offers an alternative reading of Jefferson, one that carefully showcases his wholly original, compelling, and radical democratic thinking. The significance of this heterodox interpretation has far-reaching implications on our understanding of the foundational principles of the early republic as well as how we address the issue of economic inequality in the modern-day United States.

Highlights

In the final section of this article, I showcase his tepid, yet radical democratic embrace of communal property through an examination of personal letters conducted through archival research, which reveals a side of Jefferson’s thought that tests the limits of early American scholarship by calling into question how far he envisioned the question of sharing within a political community
In the 1820s, Jefferson pushes the very limits of his thought concerning property holdings to its most mature position to explore the possibility of a political community defined by sharing, yet still fundamentally committed to the pursuit of happiness
I have proposed a reading of Thomas Jefferson that is more receptive to a radical democratic framing, which embraces an arrangement of a political community organized by way of communal property

Summary

Introduction

“The question becomes twofold: if a city is to be run well, is it better that all the citizens should share in all things capable of being shared, or only in some of them and not in others?” [1]. This article affirms the complexity of his thought and argues that the Jeffersonian imagination contains a radical democratic dimension toward property This side of Jefferson’s thought is intimately concerned with the creation of the best type of dynamic political regime that could provide the conditions for freedom, equality, and happiness over time. I show how Jefferson’s appraisal of the allodial nature of property maintained by the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman Conquest in the 11th century informed his thinking on property relations in colonial America and his home state of Virginia From his reading of the Anglo-Saxons, Jefferson inquired an important historical source that would become further refined over six decades engendering a systematic rejection of hierarchical, inequitable divisions of property. In the final section of this article, I showcase his tepid, yet radical democratic embrace of communal property through an examination of personal letters conducted through archival research, which reveals a side of Jefferson’s thought that tests the limits of early American scholarship by calling into question how far he envisioned the question of sharing within a political community

Jefferson’s View on Property

Historical and Philosophical Sources

The Prospects of a Community of Sharing

Conclusions