Our protagonist was a professor of classical literature at the University of Aberdeen Scotland although his passion was agriculture both in terms of the structure of the property and the more technical or agricultural aspects.
land property bookOgilvie has left a work that condenses his ideas Essay on the Right of Property on Land published anonymously in although it would later be republished in . For Ogilvie property was the origin of the peasants' misery. being the main CXB Directory cause of men's unhappiness more than the tyranny of kings the power of the clergy or the "entanglements" of men of law. All men had an inalienable right to an equal share of the land. The State had the obligation to enforce this natural law. The influence of Locke is evident but also of the French physiocracy because Ogilvie defended that agriculture was the source of wealth more than manufacturing and because he valued the work and improvements introduced by the farmer. Thus he was combining or reconciling equality with work . This would be his main contribution to the History of socialism.
Ogilvie did not delve much further and in his formulations there was an evident archaism especially when he did not value industrial production but he was invoking a new social order because he defended the distribution of the land and the products of the land ending the monopoly of the landowners. That order would be made up of farmers with small inalienable and hereditary properties. Some authors have pointed out that Ogilvie did not establish either a revolutionary or reformist method to achieve what he proposed; everything was based on the will.
Ogilvie had great influence among the Chartists a few decades later. Let us remember that in the midst of the implosion of Chartism his work was republished.
發表於 2024-3-16 12:40:36
