[4] Thomson befriended and was an important influence on Alfred Sohn-Rethel and his theory of the genesis of occidental thought in Ancient Greece through the invention of coining.
Mac Tomáis, as he quickly became known to the islanders, had attended rudimentary Irish classes at a branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in London before he went to Cambridge.
He maintained a special study of the now-extinct community in Ireland, in which he perceived elements of surviving cultural resonances with historical society prior to the development of private property as a means of production.
He had a role in the publication of the memoirs of Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Fiche Bliain Ag Fás (Twenty Years Growing) in 1933.
When he applied for the new position of lecturer of Greek in NUI Galway in 1931 he, in the words of Richard Roche, 'astonished the interview board with a flow of Blasket Irish' and was awarded the post.
From Marx to Mao Tse-tung: A study in revolutionary dialectics (1971); Capitalism and After: The rise and fall of commodity production (1973); and The Human Essence: The sources of science and art (1974).