Thomas Paine and the Birth of the Welfare State
Not all of our founding fathers were for limited government. Thomas Paine proposed social security with an associated tax.
Were Paine's ideas in line with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Were Paine's ideas in line with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
We find out heroes in the past and are disappointed that they do not meet our standards."
Very good, MikeMarotta,
It has been quite a while since I studied Paine, but I place great value on 99.8% of what he wrote. That is a great achievement in my eyes; for I have found no other in this life that has surpassed that number; not even Rand. To be mortal is to be fallible.
O.A.
"Indeed not. I searched WORLDCAT and found many citations for "Agrarian Justice." The first 35 were likely the earliest publications and reprints of 1797 and 1798."
Maybe I am missing something here, but I did not read it the same way. He is responding simply to AJ's referential absence from Jean Jaurès' work.
This essay has a serious flaw. The author admits to a large lacuna where Paine's "Agrarian Justice" belongs. Vincent writes:
"At a later stage, the direct or indirect influence of Agrarian Justice can be traced in the works or practical experiments of Louis Blanc, Robert Owen and other 19th-century socialist utopians or, as Philippe Van Parijs has pointed out, in the writings of Herbert Spencer, Henry George, Léon Walras or more recently Hillel Steiner.35 Also, in his Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française published at the turn of the century, Jean Jaurès repeatedly refers to Paine’s “social fecundity” as he found it in Rights of Man, and discusses his welfare “plan of legislation” at length,36 but no mention is made of Agrarian Justice, an omission which is quite baffling and uneasy to account for.
In my view, it was Edward Bellamy—with his Looking Backward, a best-selling science-fiction novel first published in 1888—who was closest to Paine’s pamphlet, although he never mentions it."
Indeed not. I searched WORLDCAT and found many citations for "Agrarian Justice." The first 35 were likely the earliest publications and reprints of 1797 and 1798. After that come occasional reprints from 1800 to 1835 or so. Then, we have a SEVENTY YEAR GAP:
Agrarian justice, opposed to agrarian law, and... by Thomas Paine. London, J. Watson, 1851.
The Pioneers of land reform, Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine (New York : Knopf, 1920.) That was an anthology edited by Max Beer (1864-1943) who also wrote "A History of British Socialism"
That is significant because the year 1920 was a year of many publications in the wake of the Russian Revolution.
Using JSTOR, searching for citations to Paine's book, I found this work in the New Books of The American Economic Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec., 1920), pp. 862-864 (Published by: American Economic Association). That issue contained -21- book reviews including:
CLARK, E. Facts and fabrications about soviet Russia. (New York: Rand School of Social Science. 1920. Pp. 93. 50c.)
LEE, F. E. The Russian cooperative movement. U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Miscellaneous series no. 101. (Washington: Supt. Docs. 1920. Pp. 83. 15c.)
ULIANOV, V. I. (Nikolai Lenin, pseud.) The Soviets at work; the international position of the Russian soviet republic and the fundamental problems of the socialist revolution. Fifth edition. (New York: Rand School of Social Science. Pp. 48. 15c.)
Basically, Paine's work lay fallow for 70 years until it was re-discovered by socialists seeking their roots. Thus, it is not surprising that neither Herbert Spencer nor Edward Bellamy mentioned "Agrarian Reform." (On Spencer, he is greatly misunderstood by left and right today. More on him later.)
The bottom line is that this particular work blaming Thomas Paine for the welfare state is weak.
Despite his brilliant essay on the development of the chick embryo, Aristotle never actually counted how many teeth his wife had. The men who wrote the Declaration owned slaves. John D. Rockefeller was a Baptist. Martin Luther King was a hedonist, perhaps morally degenerate when you get right down to it. Their failings do not invalidate the good that they accomplished in their lives.
We find out heroes in the past and are disappointed that they do not meet our standards.
We know a famous coin from the American colony of Connecticut, struck by Samuel Higley: "I am Good Copper / Value Me as You Choose". Pretty much says it all.
http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinI...
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