Piercy Ravenstone, ?-?

Mysterious British author who flourished in the early 1820s.

Although often classified together with the "Ricardian socialists", Ravenstone was not really a socialist, nor much of a Ricardian, but indeed a vehement critic of the Classical school.

"Piercy Ravenstone" is probably merely a pseudonym of an unknown British author of two deeply pessimistic and polemical tracts in the early 1820s, against the "cold and dreary system" of industrial capitalism and the "accumulating, centralising and amalgamating band of Malthusians and political economists".

Contrary to Malthus, Ravenstone declares the wealth of a nation lies in its number of people. And the people, by their labor, inventiveness and scope for division of labor and specialization, are the source of its prosperity.   Reminiscent of Godwin, Ravenstone is not averse to technological improvements and change, he sees no deep contradictions between industrial advance and human happiness. If there is misery among the masses, Ravenstone declares, it is not because they are too many, but because of the manner in which the system is governed.

Ravenstone follows Locke in accepting a natural right to property as that which labor renders useful. But a good bulk of property, he notes, is conquered and acquired by those who do not labor upon it. The landlord, who claims rents on produce he has not labored for, is the first villain. And upon this artificial claim are the pretensions of the master manufacturer and capitalist similarly built, demanding an unearned share of earnings of labor. "Property is in reality but a rent charge on productive Industry" (1824).

Ravenstone attacks the obsession of Classical economists with "surplus" as the source of growth, their acceptance of a miserable natural wage doctrine, as but an ideological excuse for these unnatural and exploitative social relations.  Prosperity and growth. Ravenstone asserts, does not depend upon them. 

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