Socialist Tradition by Alexander Gray

Author:Alexander Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ludwig Von Mises Institute

(g) JOHN GRAY

John Gray is one of the liveliest of the early English anticipators of Marx; but his greater liveliness has not prevented him from becoming, like some other members of the group, a somewhat shadowy figure. He is said to have been of Scottish extraction, to have worked in London in his younger days and to have returned to Scotland later, where, contrary to the views of Dr. Johnson, greater prosperity awaited him. After the manner of mankind, he would seem to have become less revolutionary with advancing years. Here we are concerned with his earlier days as represented by his Lecture on Human Happiness, which, published in 1825, when Marx was seven years old, provides in many ways a somewhat remarkable anticipation of certain of the cornerstones of the Marxian edifice.

Gray's starting-point is in some ways reminiscent of Adam Smith, who placed Division of Labour in Chapter 1 of Book I, and founded it on a peculiar ‘propensity to truck.’ According to Gray it is a ‘propensity to exchange labour for labour’ that enables men to leave the lower creation behind.1 It is through barter, and not through the defects of government, that the possibility of tyrannising was introduced into the world; it is on barter and barter alone that society is founded; on barter and barter alone that all institutions rest. This startingpoint is cunningly chosen in order to emphasise later the importance of just exchanges. Further, Gray, as becomes his times, is undilutedly utilitarian: happiness is ‘the end and object of every human pursuit.’2 Nor will he be fobbed off with the soothing consolation that happiness consists in the pursuit and not in the possession of the object desired. With the voice of common sense, Gray makes it clear that when he pursues, he means to get there; that while he is prepared to travel joyfully, he also means to arrive.

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