The Rights Of Man

Abstract

Thomas Spence (1750–1814) was one of the originators of British radicalism in the mid-18th century. His political views were at base an ideology for landless peasants and workers who suffered oppression during the transition from manufactory to factory production. Spence’s program of reforms was first voiced at a meeting of the Newcastle Philosophical Society on November 8, 1775. In the pamphlet “Human Rights,” Spence advocated abolition of the private ownership of land and its transfer to parish communities. Commonly-owned land and the parish as an administrative formation were the requisite components of Spence’s ideal society, and it was precisely such a society that the radical described in his utopian works. Spence’s political ideas had a significant impact on the development of popular radicalism and the labor movement in England from the second half of the 18th century up to the early Chartist period. The pamphlet “Human Rights” appears here in Russian for the first time.