Henry Mayers Hyndman

Henry Mayers Hyndman , 1842-1921, English Socialist, an early advocate of Marxism in England. He was a journalist by profession. In 1881 he founded the parent organization of the Social Democratic Federation, which in 1911 became the British Socialist party, with Hyndman as chairman. In World War I the party was disrupted, many members becoming Communists. Hyndman reorganized the Social Democratic Federation in 1920. Among his works are The Historical Basis of Socialism (1883), The Economics of Socialism (2d ed. 1896), A Record of an Adventurous Life (1911), and Further Reminiscences (1912).

Bibliography: See biography by R. Hyndman (1923); study by C. Tsuzuki (1961).

Hyndman, Henry Mayers (1842–1921). Socialist. Born into riches, Hyndman was converted to Marxism by reading Das Kapital. In 1881 he published a kind of précis of it under the title England for All, which he distributed to delegates at the first (Social) Democratic Federation conference in order to convert them to socialism. From 1884 he edited the leading British Marxist journal Justice. A committed anti‐imperialist, he opposed the Boer War, but then supported the First World War, which estranged him from most of his fellow‐socialists.