Republican Political Economy in Britain, 1820–1840

The way in which republicanism informed political economy is largely missing from our intellectual histories of the nineteenth century. This article makes the claim that a distinctively republican political economy emerged in the 1820s and 1830s. To demonstrate this, it examines the work of four writers: William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray, and John Francis Bray. Each attempted to take republican ideas, developed in the register of constitutionalism, and apply them to the economy; each offered proposals for achieving personal freedom in the economic sphere. A critical split occurred over the desirability of competition as the supreme organizing principle of markets. Yet even the more socialist schemes did not view markets themselves as inexorably dominating. Once social inequalities had been addressed, they believed, free and fair markets would come into being. Accordingly, in addition to showing how republicanism informed political economy, this article provides a fresh understanding of the early development of socialism in Britain.