{"id":52564,"date":"2021-02-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realprogressives.org\/?p=40142"},"modified":"2021-02-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T00:00:00","slug":"thomas-paine-revolutionary-socialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/25\/thomas-paine-revolutionary-socialist\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Paine: Revolutionary Socialist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello Internet,\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0Jackie Fox and in my last few videos\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0covered\u00a0Capitalist Realism: Is there No Alternative?<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Why You Should Be a Socialist.<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0like to top that off with a few profiles of people throughout American History who showed what Nathan J. Robinson called the ‘Socialist Ethic’ throughout all the history that happened before capitalism ended history in the 20th Century.\u00a0Let\u2019s\u00a0start with the Founding Father you\u00a0probably heard\u00a0the least about in History class,\u00a0Thomas Paine<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paine is famous for his writing, especially the book\u00a0Common Sense.\u00a0<\/em>This\u00a0protosocialist\u2019s\u00a0manifesto is said to have paved the way for the American Revolution by swaying moral sensibilities to favor the colonists over the Monarchy.\u00a0Though, I say ‘protosocialist’ for good reason, over a century before writers like Marx popularized the term, Paine showed a socialist ethic in his revolutionary works like\u00a0Common Sense.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we talk about that though, some of his other writing stands out to me, like when he wrote in a magazine that slavery should be abolished a full 100 years before it would be.\u00a0Paine was also involved in the French Revolution that by many accounts was the first act of socialism in history.\u00a0Paine published\u00a0The Rights of Man<\/em>\u00a0in response to the events that were beginning to unfold there, meaning his writing was important in not one but two revolutions.\u00a0He also opposed the private ownership of land and supported universal suffrage, which was another issue over a century ahead of its time.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paine speaks to the need for a functioning society to enable us to do things greater than one can do alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe strength of one is so unequal to their wants, and their mind so\u00a0unfitted\u00a0for perpetual solitude, that they are soon\u00a0obliged to\u00a0seek assistance and relief of another, who in their turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling\u00a0in the midst of\u00a0a wilderness, but one might labor out the common period of life without accomplishing anything<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While he decries the monarchy, he also recognizes that class is the source of societal inequality.\u00a0He says humanity: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cbeing originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor\u2026 But there is another and greater distinction for which\u00a0no\u00a0truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of people into Kings and Subjects.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In its second chapter, Common Sense<\/em> makes an unexpectedly powerful Christian argument against the monarchy to really drive home the \u201cno truly… religious reason\u201d part. He believed some scale of revolt against English rule would be an eventuality, and because of this, reconciliation with the Crown would lead only to a civil war within the fledgling colonies, \u201cthe consequences of which may be far more fatal than all the malice of Britain.\u201d  Instead, he found it to be a safer course of action for the colonies to stand together in solidarity and dare England to mount the sort of naval invasion they would need to conquer a land so much larger than its own, and so far away. Thinking long term, he also advocated for a powerful defensive Navy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many other Founding Fathers, Paine expressed a gratitude for the usefulness of hemp to our young nation as an industrial resource saying, \u201chemp flourishes even to rankness, so that we need not want cordage.\u201d  I guess rankness was just 1700\u2019s for dankness, but I digress.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s original T. Paine also used\u00a0Common Sense<\/em>\u00a0to lay a lot of the groundwork for the American government to come.\u00a0His proposals were in line with and\u00a0perhaps influential\u00a0of the views of the other founding fathers, but in at least one notable way\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0considerably different\u00a0than our current norms and that was the number of representatives we would have in Congress.\u00a0Paine argued that there should be at least 30 representatives per state in the national assembly,\u00a0whereas\u00a0now our minimum is only three.\u00a0With the average population of a colony in 1776 being around 200,000 people, this works out to a 1:6,667 ratio of Congresspeople to Americans at a minimum.\u00a0Currently, we have one Congressperson to around every\u00a0615,450 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no political matter which more deserves our attention.\u00a0A small number of electors, or a small number of representatives, are equally dangerous.\u00a0But if the number of the representatives be not only small, but unequal, the danger is increased.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He also advocated for reelecting the President annually with 12 candidates per election, one from each colony excluding the colony\u00a0whose candidate won in the previous year, meaning no one could spend two consecutive years in office.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, only having a single representative was worst of all, \u201cthe palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.\u201d Much of his writing is nearly as anarchistic as socialistic in the way that it looks at the justification of power hierarchies: \u201cSociety in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!\u201d  This, perhaps, is as much a product of the anti-monarchical revolution he was writing for at the time as anything else, which is to say that at the time, for a man like Paine, questioning the justifications of the power of Kings was really just common sense. If we are to consider Paine a socialist, he would likely be the most revolutionary of the socialists I will speak of in this series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. \u2018Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent- of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe.\u00a0\u2018Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age;\u00a0posterity\u00a0are\u00a0virtually involved in the contest, and will be\u00a0more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union,\u00a0faith\u00a0and honor.\u00a0The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender\u00a0rind\u00a0of a young oak; The wound will enlarge with the tree, and\u00a0posterity\u00a0read it in full grown characters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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