An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth, most conducive to human happiness: applied to the newly proposed system of voluntary equality of wealth.

First edition of the "magnum opus of nineteenth-century co-operative political economy" (ODNB), by the field's leading theorist. Marx studied Thompson's Inquiry at length, and it arguably anticipated his concepts of oppression and stratification. William Thompson (1775-1833) advocates a series of co-operative communities arranged on the basis of need, and criticizes the subjugation of women under the existing system of private property. The Inquiry criticizes the simplistic conception of human nature as articulated by Malthus and Godwin and seeks to explain the unequal distribution of wealth resulting from the Industrial Revolution. Thompson advocates co-operatives as a means of countering the untrammelled competitive pressures in free market capitalism. Palgrave notes that the Inquiry far surpassed "in scope and coherence anything emanating from the pen of Robert Owen" (p. 633). Einaudi 5614; Goldsmiths' 24361; Kress C.1354; Mattioli 3605; Sraffa 5819. Octavo (221 x 133 mm), pp. xxiv, 600. Original purple embossed cloth (a secondary binding, c. 1840s), spine lettered in gilt and decorated in blind, covers with triple-line panel and central ornament in blind, yellow coated endpapers. Light bumping and wear, spine faintly sunned, remnants of library shelflabel to foot of spine, remnants of bookplate adhesive to front pastedown, minor foxing to contents, a couple of leaves with browning to outer edges, many leaves unopened: a very good copy. …