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