CHAPTER XI EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

IN the present chapter some consideration is given to certain representatives of a group of English writers who, though individually not of great importance or reputation, are nevertheless not without interest and significance, when viewed as a company. We have become more aware than were our predecessors half a century ago that the essential elements of the Marxian way of thinking may be found expounded with much lucidity, though without the Marxian trimmings, in certain writers, some of whom were almost unknown in their own day, and who have only been rescued from oblivion at a much later date. For our present purpose, and pending a closer examination in the next chapter, we may regard the essence of Marx as consisting of a doctrine of exploitation, of ‘unpaid labour,’ arising from the fact that a worker who may be able to support himself by labouring for a certain number of hours, is nevertheless compelled, as a result of the sale of his labourpower, to work for a longer period, so that the proceeds of these unremunerated hours fall into the lap of the capitalist. It should be observed that if strict regard were had to chronology, these writers ought to have been presented at an earlier stage of this history; but as the interest which they evoke derives very largely from the extent to which they anticipate scientific socialism, it has been thought expedient to keep them waiting until we are on the threshold of Marx.