Between 1820 and 1840, there arose in England a small school of economic thought, intensely anti-capitalistic, known as the Ricardian socialists. Their basic idea was the laborers' right to their whole product. One somewhat obscure member of this group was Piercy Ravenstone who wrote A Few Doubts on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy in 1821 and Thoughts on the Funding System and Its Effects in 1824.
In this thesis, I have put forth Ravenstone's system in detail by thoroughly examining both of his works. His basic approach is to demolish the Malthusian population theory, putting in its place a theory which shows that exploitation through rent, taxes and profit is the cause of worker misery. Before examining Ravenstone's work, I have described the historical events which led to early socialist ideology and have given a general overview of Ricardian socialism and its connection with the more classical economics. Profiles of the 2 more well-known members of the school are given and thoughts of Karl Marx on the work of these men are briefly discussed.
The conclusion reached is that Ravenstone was not a true socialist but rather was somewhat right-wing. Although he shared many socialist criticisms of capitalist society, he espoused a society of individual workers in both manufacturing and agriculture rather than Owenist establishments or communism. / Master of Arts
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/64593 |
| Date | January 1970 |
| Creators | Miles, John Jeffries |
| Contributors | Economics |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | iii, 127 [2] leaves., application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 20289779 |
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