Robert Owen

Robert Owen

Robert Owen is considered one of the original socialists. His ideas about cooperation and workers' rights laid the foundation for socialist principles and trade unions and influenced thinkers such as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Robert Owen was born in Newtown, Wales, on May 14, 1771, the son of a shopkeeper. Though he left school at the age of 9, he was precocious and learned business principles rapidly in London and Manchester. By 18 he was manager of one of Manchester's largest cotton mills. In 1799 he purchased the mills at New Lanark, Scotland; they became famous for fine work produced with high regard for the well-being of the approximately 2,000 employees, of whom several hundred were poor children.

A reader and thinker, Owen counted among his acquaintances Robert Fulton, Jeremy Bentham, and the poet Samuel Coleridge. Owen's reforms emphasized cleanliness, happiness, liberal schooling without recourse to punishment, and wages in hard times. As his fame spread, he considered implementing ideas that would increasingly negate competitive economics. His attack on religion at a London meeting in 1817 lost him some admirers. His pioneer papers of the time, including "Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes" (1818) and "Report to the County of Lanark" (1821), held that environment determined human development.

Owen learned of the religious Rapp colony in America at New Harmony, Ind., and determined to prove his principles in action there. In 1825 he purchased New Harmony and drew some 900 individuals to the community for his experiment. Despite the work of talented individuals, New Harmony did not prosper. By 1828 Owen had lost the bulk of his fortune in New Harmony, and he left it.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to institute a comparable experiment in Mexico that year, Owen returned to England to write and lecture. He propagated ideas first developed in 1826 in Book of the New Moral World. A kind, selfless man, he failed to perceive that the industry and responsibility that had made New Lanark great were not present in New Harmony and in other experiments he sponsored. Nevertheless, his views created theoretical bases for developing socialist and cooperative thought.

In The Crisis (1832) Owen advocated exchanging commodities for labor rather than money to relieve unemployment. The Equitable Labour Exchange founded that year failed but led to the Chartist and Rochdale movements. Labor unrest further fed on Owenite tenets, and in 1833 the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was formed. It rallied half a million workers and fostered such new tactics as the general strike but fell apart within a few months, owing to opposition by employers and the government.

Owen continued to write and propagandize. Such experiments as Harmony Hall, in Hampshire, England (1839-45), derived from his theories. But new revolutionary forces and leaders put him out of the main current. His conversion to spiritualism in 1854 and his New Existence of Man upon the Earth (1854-1855) seemed to him a broadening of reality, rather than a retreat. His Autobiography (1857-1858) is one of the great documents of early socialist experience. He died in Newtown, Wales, on Nov. 17, 1858.

Owen & Socialism

Owen's main premise was that humans are not inherently good or bad but are shaped by their environment and heritage. It would, therefore, follow that, in the right environment, anyone would develop a good character and moral values. Owen's contemporaries believed that the poor were lazy and ignorant and that they always would be. Owen believed, however, that the poor were poor because they were unemployed and uneducated--that better housing, food, and clothing would improve the character of the poor. It was this idea that he put into practice at the New Lanark mill.

Owen's changes included reducing workers' hours, improving company housing, and improving sanitary conditions. He often met with difficulties from his partners but in 1813 entered into a satisfactory partnership with a few benevolent Quakers and the Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. He believed that schooling was necessary not to teach facts and figures but to develop children's character so that they would become well-adjusted adults. He set up a school for children that included play, music, and affection rather than abuse. He also prohibited anyone under ten from working and reduced hours for workers under 18. In 1816, he established the Institution for the Formation of Character, which was used as a school during the day and an adult education and community center at night.

New Lanark was soon well known throughout Europe as a model community and enjoyed many visitors. Owen hoped to see his success duplicated across England and campaigned for a bill in 1815 that regulated the employment of children in the textile industry. His bill, however, found no supporters.Owen continued to develop his plan, realizing that self-government and equality would be necessary for a cooperative settlement to succeed.

In England, however, the working class was gaining ground. Trade unions were legalized in 1824, and laborers became leaders in their own movement. Workers adopted Owen's ideas as an agenda, forming trade communities and artisan societies. These societies empowered workers and gave them a sense of value. Owen's opinion that labor is a source of wealth and that workers have certain rights greatly contributed to the labor movement and the development of a new working class. Owen did not, however understand or promote class struggle, feeling that a transformation to a cooperative, egalitarian society would be peaceful and natural.

Frederick Engels developed Owen's ideas of cooperation and socialism into a new civilization based on industry and workers. He agreed that workers could master their existence and need not toil as slaves. Owen also criticized religion and marriage, feeling that these institutions had been forced on mankind to keep them ignorant and enslaved. Engels and Karl Marx agreed that religion would have no place in the new society. They saw the move towards a cooperative society as a natural progression from capitalism; however, they believed a revolution was necessary. Robert Owen gave workers confidence and presented ideas for a socialist government. Great thinkers of his time and since were influenced by his ideas, and many of them have been put into practice.