Gregory Claeys on Tom Paine's Social and Political Thought

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Luke talks with Gregory Claeys about Tom Paine, including Paine’s ideas of natural rights and natural laws, how a new generation of radicals challenged Paine’s ideas of natural rights, how Machiavellian/neo-Roman republican theories differ from Paine’s republicanism, and why “the age of Paine has barely begun.”

Greg is Professor Emeritus at the University of London and the author of several books, including Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism, Marx and Marxism, and Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought. Luke also mentions an interview with Gary Berton of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.