assimilated, to something much more like Nietzsche's philosophy than like Bentham's. These
developments, however, belong to a later period, since Darwin Origin of Species was published in
1859, and its political implications were not at first perceived.
Socialism, on the contrary, began in the heyday of Benthamism, and as a direct outcome of
orthodox economics. Ricardo, who was intimately associated with Bentham, Malthus, and James
Mill, taught that the exchange value of a commodity is entirely due to the labour expended in
producing it. He published this theory in 1817, and eight years later Thomas Hodgskin, an ex-
naval officer, published the first Socialist rejoinder, Labour Defended Against the Claims of
Capital. He argued that if, as Ricardo taught, all value is conferred by labour, then all the reward
ought to go to labour; the share at present obtained by the landowner and the capitalist must be
mere extortion. Meanwhile Robert Owen, after much practical experience as a manufacturer, had
become convinced of the doctrine which soon came to be called Socialism. (The first use of the
word "Socialist" occurs in 1827, when it is applied to the followers of Owen.) Machinery, he said,
was displacing labour, and laisser faire gave the working classes no adequate means of combating
mechanical power. The method which he proposed for dealing with the evil was the earliest form
of modern Socialism.
Although Owen was a friend of Bentham, who had invested a considerable sum of money in
Owen's business, the Philosophical Radicals did not like his new doctrines; in fact, the advent of
Socialism made them less Radical and less philosophical than they had been. Hodgskin secured a
certain following in London, and James Mill was horrified. He wrote:
"Their notions of property look ugly;... they seem to think that it should not exist, and that the
existence of it is an evil to them. Rascals, I have no doubt, are at work among them.... The fools,
not to see that what they madly desire would be such a calamity to them as no hands but their own
could bring upon them."
This letter, written in 1831, may be taken as the beginning of the long war between Capitalism
and Socialism. In a later letter, James Mill attributes the doctrine to the "mad nonsense" of
Hodgskin, and adds: "These opinions, if they were to spread, would be the subversion