William Thompson, bankruptcy and the west Cork estate, 1808–34

Abstract

Historians of socialist thought have rated the Irish political philosopher and radical economist William Thompson (1778–1833) as the most influential theorist to emerge from the Owenite movement in early nineteenth-century Britain. Indeed, Gregory Claeys has judged him to be that movement's ‘most analytical and original thinker ... and a writer whose subsequent influence upon the history of socialist economic thought has been long established’. Furthermore, stressing Thompson's democratic values, Claeys insists that the Irishman ‘may rightfully be considered the founder of a more traditionally republican form of British democratic socialism’. While Robert Owen is remembered for his ambitious co-operative experiments, he was not a theoretical or deeply reflective writer and his intellectual legacy was minimal. The Corkborn Thompson, on the other hand, wrote assiduously on the theory and practice of early socialism, reputedly influenced Karl Marx and became a key figure in the history of feminism; nonetheless, our knowledge of this important Irish intellectual remains deficient.