“I think Paine was one of the original socialists”
Based upon what? I cannot think of anything more opposite. Can you explain that?
If you read his writings beyond Common Sense, he is a pretty caustic atheist who advocates the redistribution of wealth for the common good. It hurt me when I read the stuff.
There are curious parts of this. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote an essay against Capitalism and in favor of Socialism titled “Agrarian Justice.” To quote him...
“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.”
Just a side point. ‘Agrarian Justice’ sounds an awful like ‘social justice’ to me.