Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) is today a largely unknown figure, sometimes considered to be a forerunner of Karl Marx. Yet a closer look at Hodgskin's works reveals that he was actually a committed advocate of laissez-faire economics and enthusiastic about labor-saving machinery and the Industrial Revolution, with a genuine interest in the well-being of the working classes. This book places him in the tradition of classical liberalism, where he belongs-as a disciple of Adam Smith, but even less tolerant of government power than Smith was.

Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class: The Economic Thought of Thomas Hodgskin will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in the history of economic thought, economic history and the history of political thought.

Alberto Mingardi is associate professor of the history of political thought at IULM University in Milan. He is also a presidential scholar in political theory at Chapman University, director general of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, a think tank in Milan, and an adjunct fellow at the Cato Institute.

Chapter 1: A Life in the Storm

1.1 The Early Life of Thomas Hodgskin

1.2 Utilitarian (and Useful) Friendships

1.3 A Journalistic Career

1.4 An Essay on Naval Discipline

2.1 Hodgskin: A Ricardian Socialist?

2.2 Capital and Privilege

2.3 The Issue of Machinery

2.4 A Theorist of Human Capital?

3.1 A Defender of Political Economy

3.2 Labor, Knowledge and a Principle of Population

3.3 A Long-time Opposition to the Corn Laws

3.4 Hodgskin, Cobden, and the League

3.5 Hodgskin's Free Trade Manifesto

4.1 Some Thoughts on the Business Cycle

4.2 Free Banking

5.1 Private Property, Good and Bad: Hodgskin as a Lockean

5.2 Against "Scientific" Government

5.3 Public Opinion and the Middle Classes

6.1. Herbert Spencer and Thomas Hodgskin

6.2. The Anti-Utilitarianism of Spencer and Hodgskin

6.3. A Distinct Tradition of Classical Liberalism?