Spence, Thomas

Spence, Thomas, 1750–1814, English agrarian socialist. A forerunner of the single taxers (see single tax), he devised a scheme by which the parishes would assume ownership of the land and rent paid to the parish corporation would be the sole tax. He devoted much of his life to agitating for these principles and founded a society of Spenceans. He set forth his ideas in The Real Rights of Man (1775) and other pamphlets.

Bibliography

See study by O. D. Rudkin (1927, repr. 1966).

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Spence, Thomas 

Born June 21,1750, in Newcastle-on-Tyne; died Sept. 8,1814, in London. English Utopian socialist and economist.

Spence was influenced by the theorists of natural law. In his pamphlet The Real Rights of Man (1775), he supported the abolition of private ownership and the transfer of land to church parishes for free rental to parishioners. He considered it thus possible to create a new social structure—a free association of self-governing communities. Spence was repeatedly subjected to repression. His teachings influenced R. Owen.

REFERENCES

Volgin, V. P. Istoriia sotsialisticheskikh idei, part 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1928.
Cherniak, E. B. Massovoe dvizhenie v Anglii i Irlandii v kontse XVIII-nachaleXIX v. Moscow, 1962.
Rudkin, O. D. Thomas Spence. New York, 1927.