"Hodgskin, very simply, was a natural-law individualist who thought government should grant no privileges to anyone, particularly capitalists, landowners, and clergy, who in his time were the chief beneficiaries of state appropriation and other interference with peaceful market activity. He embraced the ‘natural right of property’ and opposed the ‘artificial right of property,’ which he attributed to the utilitarians’ belief that legislation, not natural law, was the source rights. In other words, land and other objects acquired through original appropriation and honest, voluntary means were legitimate property. All forced and fraudulent means of acquisition yielded illegitimate, artificial property that could only be sustained by government power. He called for the abolition of all forms of the artificial right of property and full flowering of the natural right."
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Philosophers from EnglandSocialists from EnglandEconomists from EnglandSocial anarchistsPolitical authors
Original Language: English
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Sources
Sheldon Richman, “The Natural Right of Property: Not to be confused with government-created artificial rights, Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) (August 17, 2007)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Hodgskin
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Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin (12 December 1787 – 21 August 1869) 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.
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