# Think Tank > History >  Was Thomas Jefferson anti-capitalist?

## Pennsylvania

I was listening to an interview by Noam Chomsky in which he implied that the "real" Thomas Jefferson held anti-capitalist views. Out of curiosity I looked into it, and I've been reading an article by one Professor Claudio J. Katz at Loyola University of Chicago which discusses the possibility that Thomas Jefferson did not accept the notion of private property nor the legitimacy of wage labor.

The article can be found here.

I've highlighted various points from the article which support the conclusion of the author. I am interested in hearing the forum's opinions on this.

Referring to the Declaration of Independence:




> [...] he (Thomas Jefferson) adopts Locke’s “life and liberty” but omits “estate” in favor of “the pursuit of happiness.”  Similarly, he recommends excising “property” from Lafayette’s draft declaration of rights for France.  “The omission,” writes Matthews (1984, 27), “is significant.  While Locke views property as a natural right and its accumulation as the fulfillment of human endeavors, Jefferson does not.


Referring to settled husbandry (i.e. the impermanence of private property):




> The second argument cites Jefferson’s distinction between occupancy and ownership as evidence that he did not include property among the natural rights (see Yarbrough 1998, 89-90).  Jefferson writes (to Isaac McPherson [Aug. 13, 1813] 1999, 579-80):  
> 
> _It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land....  By an universal law, ... whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it.  Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society._


Jefferson comparing wage labor to slavery:




> And with the laborers of England generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or the slave?


Food for thought.

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## pdavis

Was Thomas Jefferson anti-capitalist?

It depends on how you define capitalism.

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## apropos

> [...] he (Thomas Jefferson) adopts Locke’s “life and liberty” but omits “estate” in favor of “the pursuit of happiness.”


The impression I have always had about this is that Jefferson simply didn't want to just copy Locke verbatim. Echo a respected and well-known line of thought but don't make it rote parroting. The intro is just boilerplate decoration of the Declaration and shouldn't be read into too deeply...the real meat of the document resides in the list of grievances justifying a declaration of indepedence.

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## Pennsylvania

> Was Thomas Jefferson anti-capitalist?
> 
> It depends on how you define capitalism.


Yes, well I am operating on the popular connotation of capitalism which includes a system of wage labor. Naturally, institutions which are not structured thereafter could still exist in that society. However, as far as I can determine, capitalism cannot exist without the notion of private property.

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## BenIsForRon

Well, land isn't the only form of property one can own.

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## Brian4Liberty

Would Jefferson disagree with the Oligopoly/Plutocracy/Corporatism of today? Damn right he would.

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## Young Paleocon

I thought Jefferson omitted property to placate the political landscape surrounding slavery at the time.

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## Dreamofunity

Didn't Franklin make the changes from property to happiness among other things?

I remember hearing that somewhere.

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## Austin

I seem to remember a video from Junior High noting that the original version of the DOI included property, but that it was later replaced with 'pursuit of happiness'... and for some reason I have it in my head that it was due to influence from other founding fathers...

hmm, now I'm curious.

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## bigronaldo

I found this article explaining the roots of "the pursuit of happiness."

According to the author, Jefferson was still borrowing from Locke with the phrase. Locke wrote in the 1690 essay _Concerning Human Understanding_:



> The _necessity of pursuing happiness_ [is] the foundation of liberty.  As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant _pursuit of true and solid happiness_; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable _pursuit of happiness_ in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with, our real happiness: and therefore, till we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases.



http://hnn.us/articles/46460.html

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## jsu718

The truth is out! Jefferson was a communist before it was popular!

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## Aratus

thomas jefferson usually tends to be less controversial than his revolutionary peer thomas paine...

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## aravoth

> thomas jefferson usually tends to be less controversial than his revolutionary peer thomas paine...


Thomas Paine is my personal favorite of them all.

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## RonPaulR3VOLUTION

For an anti-capitalist, he stated this well. 

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

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## Minarchy4Sale

No, Jefferson was not an anti-capitalist, because capitalism wasnt understood as it is today.  Jefferson was definitely a populist in the sense that he felt that every child born of a nation had an equal claim on the natural resources of that nation, and he had some reservations about family land dynasties depriving future generations of that right.  Further, he felt that the proper place of government was to implement policies that were beneficial to the largest mass of people, so that they could thrive on their own.

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## Materialist

Go to http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/...s/jeff1550.htm for lots of quotes by Jefferson about property.

From the quotes, I think he is very  much for private property.




> "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:36
> 
> "A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490
> 
> "[We in America entertain] a due sense of our equal right to... the acquisitions of our own industry." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:320
> 
> "He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Bancroft, 1788. ME 19:41
> 
> "That, on the principle of a communion of property, small societies may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen its proofs in various small societies which have been constituted on that principle. But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle." --Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly, 1822. ME 15:399

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## BenIsForRon

So basically, he saw ownership of property as a complex issue.  Gives me more respect for him.

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## Gaius1981

A documentary on Thomas Jefferson which I recently saw, presented Jefferson as a very agrarian type person who was strongly opposed to industrialization and large cities. Alexander Hamilton was presented as a pro-industrialization capitalist. Jefferson did support public schools and such, and he was one of the largest slave holders of Virginia and refused to sell his slaves when others did so, so I don't consider him a champion of laissez-faire capitalism. Patrick Henry, on the other hand...

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## Pennsylvania

> Alexander Hamilton was presented as a pro-industrialization capitalist.


LoL

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