Once regarded by John Adams as the most important person of his age, the legacy of Thomas Paine today is one shrouded in what I call “historical amnesia.” When discussing Paine with others, I have found that people’s knowledge of him often lies somewhere in between having no idea who he is and having full knowledge of his historical significance.
“I think I have heard of him,” I will often hear. When asked something he is famous for, I will often say that he wrote Common Sense. “Oh! I have read that!” But this is where the knowledge that my interlocutor has of Paine will cease, and from there, if we continue speaking of Paine, most of the information I might tell them is new.
Why is this a tragedy to me? Beyond the fact that I consider him to be one of the most important political theorists of the past 500 years, Paine’s legacy, I would argue, is key to understanding the establishment of America, and the future that it will have.
Thomas Paine is perhaps the least famous of the main group of men called the “founding fathers” of America. However, his descent into obscurity in no way reflects a lack of importance in his own time. Being the premier pamphleteer of the American Revolution, his pamphlet Common Sense was America’s first best seller.
What made Paine unique wasn’t simply that he was an effective propagandist, but that he was able to effectively communicate the contemporary political theory of his time to masses of people who often did not have access to such ideas. In the age of the Internet and Google, we often forget that in the past, certain ideas were often reserved for the educated classes who had the time and resources to be able to study them.
Paine’s significance comes from the fact that he was able to describe the fledgling republican ideology of his day to a large audience in a language and tone that they could understand. Most political treatises of the time often had quotes in Latin or different languages, automatically assuming that the reader was educated.
In Common Sense, Paine more often quotes the King James Bible and other forms of literature that a common American would have been more familiar with. Beyond being delivered in a “plain,” vernacular style, Paine’s writing is also significant for being persuasive and powerful. In my own opinion, I have rarely read or heard speakers able to combine simplicity of language with a powerfulness of use. Simplicity is rarely the vehicle of powerful prose. Similar to the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Paine’s language often combines poignancy and plainness.
After the American Revolution, Paine’s fortunes began to change when he went to Europe to support the French Revolution. During its initial, significantly less violent period, Paine and his associate Mary Wollstonecraft were involved in a significant debate over the nature of revolution with English political theorist Edmund Burke. While Paine and Wollstonecraft argued that revolution is not only justified but necessary under what they viewed as tyrannical conditions of the French monarchy, Burke argued that reform, rather than revolution, and the maintenance of time-tested traditions were the best routes to pursue for political stability. This early debate set the foundation for the ideological beliefs that would define revolutionary and conservative Western politics.
When the Reign of Terror began during the French Revolution, Paine was imprisoned for his opposition to the violence and his opinions, which always refused to yield to any kind of authority. While imprisoned, he began writing the book that would be the death knell of his reputation, The Age of Reason. An attack against religion worthy of Nietzsche and Spinoza, I would argue that this book is more dangerous to a religious establishment than anything the former two have produced.
This is the case not because its venom towards organized religion is more potent, but because it is more accessible to the common masses that would have been plainly literate during Paine’s day. It is one thing for a few highly educated, often reclusive scholars to question a church; it is another thing for an entire populace to learn why the religious institutions they rely on are incorrect. This book soured his relations with even his most ardent supporters. When he was released from prison, he found he had few allies on the outside who were willing to go as far as he would, even among his fellow “founding fathers.”
His last major work, Agrarian Justice, argued that the government should provide all citizens with a universal basic income. His logic for this came from his view that when wealthy members of society own a large enough amount of land, they take away potential revenue from other citizens. This can lead them into abject poverty. Furthermore, Paine believed that those in poverty cannot properly assert their political rights and are thus excluded from the democratic process.
Thomas Paine died in 1809. His funeral was virtually unattended due to his reputation at the time. Unfortunately, his reputation did not recover with time. His contributions to the American and French revolutions as well as Western political thought, while not completely forgotten, were severely downplayed. Many people thought of him as a “filthy little atheist,” as Teddy Roosevelt once called Paine.
So, what can Paine’s life teach us today?
The first thing it can teach is that the founding of America was a lot less uniform than people would argue. Given that Paine was essentially a proto-communist and strongly against organized religion, the idea that America was founded as an essentially conservative country and a “Christian nation” becomes highly unrealistic.
Secondly, we can learn the value of clear communication in the process of politics. Modern political philosophy, especially on the Left, can often be mired in the esoteric process of history and enough dialectics to make even Socrates want to drink hemlock. If politics are to be effective, we must learn how to communicate political ideas effectively, rather than restricting them to an “educated” class.
Finally, we can learn that struggles for political rights are never truly done in vain. Although Paine’s reputation took a hit, his influence on many prominent leftist thinkers such as Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Godwin is undeniable. Through them, he was able to encourage many positive political changes. The pursuit of truth and political justice, although rarely easy and hardly materially rewarding, may still be useful to many of our contemporaries and also to those of the future.
