John Gray (19th century socialist)
Encyclopedia
John Gray was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 socialist economist
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

.

Life and views

Very little personal information about John Gray is available. He lived mostly in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

. According to his own account, he was a poor student who dropped out of school early, went to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and took up factory work as a youngster. His hardships first convinced him of the ills of the economic system and drove him to read the writings of Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

, David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

 and other economists, and to take an interest in various schemes of social reform. Gray was involved in the newspaper business and is said to have been a failed businessman. He was an admirer of the social reformer Abram Combe
Abram Combe
Abram Combe was a British utopian socialist and Christian social reformer, an associate of Robert Owen and a major figure in the early co-operative movement.-Life:...

. Gray was for awhile associated with the co-operative movement of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...

 and was one of the so-called Ricardian socialists
Ricardian socialism
Ricardian socialism refers to a branch of socialist economic thought based upon the work of economist David Ricardo. The Ricardian socialists reasoned that the free-market was the route to socialism, and that rent, profit and interest were not natural outgrowths of the free-market...

, along with Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin was an Englishsocialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism, free-market anarchist and defender of free trade and early trade unions...

 and John Francis Bray
John Francis Bray
John Francis Bray was a radical, Chartist, writer on socialist economics and activist in both Britain and hisnative America in the 19th century. He was hailed in later life as the 'Benjamin Franklin' of American labor.- Life :...

. Named after the economist David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

, the Ricardian socialists asserted that labour was the source of value. The Ricardian socialists argued that the equilibrium exchange value of commodities in elastic supply tend to coincide with producer prices, which represent the labour embodied in the commodities. Profit, interest and rent are deducted from this value and are, in the view of the Ricardian socialists, illegitimate for that reason. Gray argued that the producers receive only about a fifth of the value of their products, whereas their labour creates 100% of that value. He also argued that competition hampered the economy's productivity because, under free-market competition, incomes remain low, limiting demand and therefore production. To overcome the limits competition places on social production, the hardships it imposes on all competitors and the injustice of the extraction of surplus value
Surplus value
Surplus value is a concept used famously by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Although Marx did not himself invent the term, he developed the concept...

 from labour (as he saw it), Gray proposed a central bank which would issue a 'labour currency', to be used as a generalised medium of exchange of equivalent amounts of labour value, as well as a system of co-operative associations to organise supply and demand. These would be co-ordinated by a central 'National Chamber of Commerce'.

John Gray wrote several books, including Lectures on Human Happiness (1825), The Social System: A Treatise on the Principle of Exchange (1831), An Efficient Remedy for the Distress of Nations (1842), The Currency Question (1847) and Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money (1848) and several others. In 1825, John Gray and his brother James founded the Edinburgh and Leith Advertiser, an unstamped paper. This was replaced in 1826 by a stamped paper, the North British Advertiser. In 1829, John Gray is said to have suffered a mental breakdown, and his brother James came from Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 to Edinburgh to nurse him back to health. In 1830, John turned over management of the Advertiser to James. In 1830, John Gray tried to set up a printers' hall with a steam-driven printing press, but he was forced to relinquish the project. He is said to have published directories for Edinburgh for several years. In 1842, Gray was associated with a co-operative project at Falonside, Galashiels. The preface of his book on the Effective Remedy of the Distress of Nations is dated from there. In 1844-49 we find the brothers listed as proprietors of Gray's Local Advertiser in Glasgow. The brothers do not seem to have seen eye-to-eye politically; at any rate, John Gray publicly dissociated himself from the political line James Gray pursued in the Edinburgh and Leith Advertiser. John Gray also contributed articles to a variety of journals in Britain and even in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. (For example, an article on 'Industrial Reform' was published in 1848 in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review.)

Gray first wrote to Robert Owen in 1823, having noticed that some of Owen's ideas resembled those he had reached independently. He subsequently visited New Lanark
New Lanark
New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately 1.4 miles from Lanark, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there to take advantage of the water power provided by the river...

 and at first publicly supported Owen (though he claimed later that he was never fully convinced of Owen's theory). By 1826, however, Gray had become disillusioned with Owen, and their quarrel soon became public; The Social System contains a long critique of Owen. They disagreed over whether production as well as distribution should be organised co-operatively (Owen favoured this, Gray apparently not). Gray was also critical of Owen's management of his co-operative at New Lanark. Gray seems to have been involved in the early trade union movement; there is some evidence that he was involved in the printers' union in Edinburgh. In 1830 he published An Address to the Printers of Edinburgh. He was in contact with the London Co-operative Society
London Co-operative Society
The London Co-operative Society was a consumer co-operative society in the United Kingdom.The Society was formed in September 1920 by the amalgamation of the Stratford Co-operative Society and the Edmonton Co-operative Society, two of the largest societies in the London Metropolitan area...

 and was a supporter of the Chartist
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...

 movement. He also gave an address to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institute. Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

 cited Gray, along with other Ricardian socialists, in his polemic against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

, to dispute Proudhon's priority claim. He subjected Gray's ideas and those of other Ricardian socialists to a critique in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), alleging that Gray had not understood that money represents a definite system of relations of production
Relations of production
Relations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism, and in Das Kapital...

. Not much else is known about John Gray. In 1846 there is a reference to him in the Law Times as 'a bankrupt whose estate has been fully administered.'

Though 1883 is given as the year of his death in most of the more recent sources, many sources give the year as 1850.

Sources

  • Thompson, N.W., The People's Science. Cambridge, 1984.
  • Kimball, J., The economic doctrines of John Gray, 1799-1883. Washington, 1948.
  • Cole, G.D.H., A History of Socialist Thought. Vol. 1: The Forerunners, 1789-1850. London and New York, 1953.
  • The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1979.
  • Saad-Filho, A., 'Labour, Money, and "Labour Money": A Review of Marx' Critique of John Gray's Monetary Analysis.' History of Political Economy. 1993 25(1), pp. 65–84.
  • Thompson, N., The Market and its Critics: Socialist Political Economy in Nineteenth Century Britain. London and New York, 1988.
  • Lowenthal, E., The Ricardian Socalists. New York, 1911.
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