Thomas Hodgskin Quotes
Neither the lawmaker nor the capitalist possesses any miraculous power of multiplying loaves and fishes; or of commanding, like the enchanters of old, broomsticks to do the work of men. They must have labourers, skilled labourers, and without them it is nonsense to talk of improving a country …
Thomas Hodgskin, 1787-1869, English Naval Officer, Journalist and Political Philosopher, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital, 1825
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
the Bolshevik Communists of Russia Zenzinov was often a critic of the Bolsheviks.
The word “proprietor” at the time meant someone who had title to land. The title was then almost always tied up with the aristocratic titles. “Great proprietors” were therefore nobles who owned and controlled large land holdings. The “improvers” tended to be the businessmen—especially the manufacturers and the transportation magnates. Large landowners could just make money by renting parts of their land to tenant farmers. They needed no capital, no vision, not much skill or talent, and they didn’t have to take any risks.
This was an incredible prediction that few people thought was possible. This speech was given in the early days of WWII when it was far from clear that we would win.
Thomas Hodgskin was an English socialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism and defender of free trade and early trade unions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term socialist included any opponent of capitalism, at the time defined as a construed political system built on privileges for the owners of capital.
