Abstract
In November 1878 the Nineteenth Century published an article titled ‘National Insurance: A Cheap, Practical, and Popular Means of Abolishing Poor Rates’. Its author, the clergyman W. L. Blackley, fretted about the unintended connotations of the title: ‘its very sound may induce most readers’, he wrote, ‘to pass it over as a matter so extravagant, impracticable, and Utopian, as to be unworthy of serious consideration’. Blackley need not have worried—for events had ‘moved quickly in England’. By 1883, there was more to feel concerned over for extreme individualists than a scheme of national insurance whereby improvident workers were goaded into a self-reliant condition by compulsory means. The appearance of Wallace, the traction gained by George’s ideas, the shape that radicalism had assumed under Chamberlain and Dilke, as well as the DF’s formation, meant that British society could be compared, on W. H. Mallock’s view, ‘to a house that is full of exceedingly inflammable materials’; hitherto unaffected, the country was suffused with ‘a spirit of social revolution’. In that context, utopia would seem like an inappropriate referent for Blackley’s modest proposal, when, that is, genuinely utopian proposals had been formulated.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
W. L. Blackley, ‘National Insurance: A Cheap, Practical, and Popular Means of Abolishing Poor Rates’, The Nineteenth Century, 4/21 (Nov. 1878), p. 834.
- 2.
Mallock, ‘England for All’, p. 356.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 358.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 355.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 358.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 355.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 361.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Indeed, Mallock literally substituted George for Hyndman, arguing that ‘Mr George … says better than Mr. Hyndman what Mr. Hyndman means’. Ibid., p. 366.
- 12.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. x.
- 13.
Mallock, ‘England for All’, p. 387.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 388.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 389.
- 19.
See Mallock, ‘Civilization and Equality’, pp. 661–663.
- 20.
Mallock, ‘England for All’, p. 389.
- 21.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 99.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 100.
- 23.
Ibid., pp. 99, 100.
- 24.
Mallock, ‘England for All’, p. 389.
- 25.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, pp. 274–275.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 249. For further discussion see Ford, ‘W.H. Mallock and Socialism in England’, pp. 328–332. Mallock also re-rehearsed some of these themes in four articles published in the March, May, August, and October 1887 editions of the Fortnightly Review. Hyndman issued a rejoinder in the same periodical. H. M. Hyndman, ‘Wealth and Ability. A Rejoinder’, Fortnightly Review, 42/251 (Nov. 1887), pp. 636–648.
- 27.
Samuel Smith, The Fallacies of Socialism Exposed: Being a Reply to the Manifesto of the Democratic Federation (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, 1885), p. 5.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 8.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 13.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Walter Bagehot, The Postulates of English Political Economy (New York & London: G. P. Putnam’s & Sons, 1885), p. 4. Mallock, ‘England for All’, p. 354.
- 36.
Arnold Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, A Criticism of Mr. Henry George: Being Two Lectures Delivered in St. Andrew’s Hall, Newman Street, London (London: Kegan & Paul, 1883), p. 7.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 6.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 40.
In the Historical Basis, Hyndman praised Toynbee as ‘a clever and sympathetic young economist’. Historical Basis, p. 300. According to Hyndman, it had initially been suggested, in fact, that Toynbee’s lectures be supported by the SDF, a proposal he rejected because he disapproved of ‘attacking allies’. Yet, later, Philip Wicksteed claimed that, while Hyndman was ‘not one of those pressing for the public discussion of the Toynbee lectures, he would ‘take advantage’ of it’, and, in a letter to Shaw, Hyndman stated that he and Toynbee went over Toynbee’s statistics on rent together before Toynbee lectured. Quoted in Michael V. White, ‘Searching for New Jerusalems: P. H. Wicksteed’s “Jevonian” Critique of Marx’s Capital’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 25/5 (2018), pp. 1127, 1128.
- 41.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 5.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 5–6.
- 43.
Ibid., p. 22.
- 44.
Ibid., pp. 22–23.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 23.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 42.
- 47.
Ibid., pp. 24–25.
- 48.
Mill, Chapters, p. 250. Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 31.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 52.
- 52.
Ibid. For Toynbee’s use of Mazzini see ‘Are Radicals Socialists?’, p. 237.
- 53.
Ibid., p. 236.
- 54.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 396.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 385.
- 56.
Ibid., p. 253.
- 57.
Ibid.
- 58.
Ibid., p. 387.
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 387, 390.
- 60.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 31.
- 61.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 62.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 390.
- 63.
Smith, Fallacies of Socialism, p. 13. Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 391.
- 64.
Ibid., p. 239.
- 65.
Ibid., p. 256.
- 66.
Ibid. See John M. Sherwood, ‘Engels, Marx, Malthus, and the Machine’, The American Historical Review, 90/4 (1985), pp. 837–865; and Daniel C. S. Wilson, ‘Arnold Toynbee and the Industrial Revolution: The Science of History, Political Economy, and the Machine Past’, History and Memory, 26/2 (2014), pp. 133–161.
- 67.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 7. For an analysis of this late-century turn away from Malthus, touching on many of the thinkers dealt with here, see Gareth Stedman Jones, An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate (London: Profile, 2004), ch. 6.
- 68.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 469.
- 69.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 22.
- 70.
Ibid., p. 23. Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 447.
- 71.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 23.
- 72.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 446.
- 73.
Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth (London: Vacher and Sons, [1879] 1931), p. 299.
- 74.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 8.
- 75.
Hyndman, Record, p. 281. Marx repeated the slur in a letter to Sorge. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 46, p. 101. For the changing reception of George among socialists in Britain see Peter D. A. Jones, ‘Henry George and British Socialism’, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 47/4 (1988), pp. 474–491; and Elwood P. Lawrence, ‘Uneasy Alliance: The Reception of Henry George by British Socialists in the Eighties’, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 11/1 (1951), pp. 61–74.
- 76.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 8.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Ibid., Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 46, p. 100.
- 79.
Ibid., p. 101.
- 80.
Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 21.
- 81.
Ibid., pp. 21–22.
- 82.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 300.
- 83.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 46, p. 100.
- 84.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 299. Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, pp. 11–16.
- 85.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 301. Toynbee, “Progress and Poverty”, p. 38.
- 86.
Ibid., p. 49.
- 87.
Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 301.
- 88.
Ibid., pp. 302, 304.
- 89.
Henry Fawcett, ‘State Socialism and the Nationalisation of the Land’, Macmillan’s Magazine, 48/285 (Jul. 1883), p. 186.
- 90.
Ibid., p. 194.
- 91.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 47, p. 427.
- 92.
Ibid.
- 93.
Ibid., p. 404.
- 94.
Ibid., p. 526.
- 95.
Ibid.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Flaherty, S. (2020). Wealth and Ability: Hyndman, Mallock, Toynbee, and George. In: Marx, Engels and Modern British Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42339-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42339-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42338-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42339-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)