“Universal Jubilee”: Social Property and 1790s Radicalism

This essay uses the scriptural figure of jubilee to approach agrarian reform proposals made by Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence during the 1790s. It does so in light of Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, which calls for the incorporation of ideology and culture into the study of economic history....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in romanticism 2021-09, Vol.60 (3), p.307-329
Main Author: Rowe, Samuel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
18th century
Abolition of slavery
Economic history
Egalitarianism
Equal rights
Historians
Ideology
Inequality
Liberalism
Modernity
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
Piketty, Thomas
Poverty
Property rights
Radical groups
Radicalism
Romantic period
Social change
Spence, Thomas (1750-1814)
Wealth distribution
Writing
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Summary:This essay uses the scriptural figure of jubilee to approach agrarian reform proposals made by Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence during the 1790s. It does so in light of Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, which calls for the incorporation of ideology and culture into the study of economic history. Using Piketty’s concept of “social property,” I show how Paine and Spence envision jubilarian transformations of the idea of private property via the installation of permanent redistributive mechanisms. Jubilee, I argue, is distinct from two better-known images of historical change in the 1790s, millenarianism and perfectibilism.
ISSN:0039-3762
2330-118X
2330-118X
DOI:10.1353/srm.2021.0020