Thomas Spence

Thomas Spence (born June 21, 1750, Newcastle, Northumberland, now in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear—died Sept. 8, 1814, London) was a British pamphleteer known for his early advocacy of the socialization of land.

Spence came of Scottish working class origins. At 25 he presented to the Newcastle Philosophical Society his paper The Real Rights of Man, advocating that land be owned by democratically organized local corporations that would rent it out at moderate rates and distribute the net proceeds to the inhabitants. There would be no need for taxes. Spence maintained that men in their natural state held land in common and viewed the establishment of property as usurpation. He pressed his views in pamphlets and poems throughout the rest of his life. He spent six months in prison in 1784 for publishing a pamphlet distasteful to the authorities and in 1801 was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for seditious libel in connection with his pamphlet The Restorer of Society to its Natural State. In 1792 he established himself in London, where he was active in a number of contemporary reform movements. After his death his followers organized the Society of Spencean Philanthropists in 1816.