Owenism
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Owenism is the
Economic thought
Owen's economic thought grew out of widespread poverty in Britain in the aftermath of the
Owen was no theoretician, and the Owenite movement drew on a broad range of thinkers such as
Utopian communities
United Kingdom
- New Lanark founded originally by David Dale, passed on to a partnership that included Robert Owen, who became mill manager in 1800. In Owen's time approximately 2500 people worked at the mill, many from the poorhouses of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He improved conditions there notably, focusing in particular on children, for whom he provided the first infant school in 1817.The mills were a commercial success. When other partners were unhappy at the expense occurred by his welfare programs, Owen bought them out. New Lanark today is recognized by UNESCO and is one of Scotland's six world heritage sites.
- George Mudie, a printer, formed an Owenite community at Spa Fields, in the London Borough of Islington between 1821 and 1824. Mudie published a weekly journal, the Economist, which ran from 27 January 1821 to 9 March 1822. The printer Henry Hetherington was a member. Mudie moved to Orbiston after this community failed.[5]
- Archibald James Hamilton, the radical laird of Dalzell and Orbiston, owned an estate 8 miles outside Glasgow. He was one of the gentlemen who commissioned Robert Owens’ “Report to the County of Lanark”. In 1821, he and several other Owenite sympathizers such as Abram Combe formed the Edinburgh Practical Society that operated a co-operative store, and a school. In addition, Hamilton provided his 290-acre estate, Orbiston, for the first Owenite co-operative community in the United Kingdom, in 1825. The community collapsed in 1827 on the death of its founder.
- Ralahine Community, County Clare, Ireland (1831–1833) was organized on the estate of John Vandeleur by Edward T. Craig. Unlike other Owenite communities, workers were paid “labour notes” which they could spend in the co-operative store. By this time, Owenism had moved on to its Labour Exchange phase. The experiment ended when Vandeleur lost his estate through gambling.
- Harmony Hall Community at Queenwood Farm, Hampshire (1839–1845). This is the only other colony than New Harmony in Indiana founded by Robert Owen himself. In 1839 his Association of Classes of All Nations acquired five hundred acres at Queenwood farm.[6][7][8]
United States
- New Harmony, Indiana (1825–27). Founded by Robert Owen himself. He purchased the community of New Harmony from the religious communists known as the Rappites. The influential Owenite newspaper, "The Free Enquirer" was published here.
- Yellow Springs, Ohio on a site now occupied by Antioch College, Miami Township, Greene County (1825).
- .
- Franklin or Haverstraw Community, Haverstraw, Rockland County, New York (1826).
- Forestville Commonwealth, Lapham's Mills, Coxsackie, Greene County, New York (1826–1827). Also known as the "Coxsackie Community." Founded by Dr. Samuel Underhill, under the influence of Dr Cornelius Blatchly's "An Essay on Common Wealths" (1822). Saddled with debt, 27 members decided to join the Kendal community, leaving on 23 Oct. 1827.[9]
- Kendal Community, Ohio, Massillon, Ohio (1825–9). Also known as "Friendly Association of Mutual Interests at Kendal."[9]
- Valley Forge Community, Valley Forge, Chester County, PA (1826). Also known as "Friendly Association of Mutual Interests."
- Blue Spring Community, Van Buren Township, Monroe County, Indiana (1826)
- Promisewell Community, Munroe County, PA (1843). Also known as the Society of One-Mentians.
- Goose Pond Community, Pike County, PA (1843). An offshoot of Promisewell, built on the site of Fourierist phalanx "Social Reform Unity."
- Hunt's Colony, Spring Lake, Mukwonago Township, Waukesha County, Wisconsin (1843). Also known as the Colony of Equality. Founded by several English organizations.[10]
Canada
- When Orbiston collapsed in 1827 on the death of its founder, most of the residents moved to Upper Canada, where they formed the short-lived Owenite community of Maxwell near Sarnia.[11]
Co-operative movement and labour exchange
Although the early emphasis in Owenism was on the formation of utopian communities, these communities were predicated upon co-operative labour, and frequently, co-operative sales. For example, the Edinburgh Practical Society created by the founders of Orbiston operated a co-operative store to raise the capital for the community. Abram Combe, the leader of that community, was to author the pamphlet The Sphere for Joint Stock Companies (1825), which made clear that Orbiston was not to be a self-subsistent commune, but a co-operative trading endeavor.[12]
For the majority of Owenites who did not live in these utopian communities, the working-class Owenite tradition was composed of three overlapping institutions: "the cooperative store, the labour exchange and the trade union."[13]
The cooperative ideas of Owen and Combe were further developed by the Brighton doctor, William King, publisher of "The Co-operator." Although the paper was only published for two years between 1827 and 1829, it served to unify the movement.
The next attempt to broaden the cooperative movement was the
The
Political and labour organization
Robert Owen was resolutely apolitical, and initially pursued a non-class based form of community organization. However, as the focus of the movement shifted from the formation of utopian communities to cooperatives, Owenites became active in labour organization in both the United Kingdom and the United States. In the United Kingdom, Owenites became further involved in electoral reform (now envisioned as part of a broader
United Kingdom
Between 1829 and 1835, Owenite socialism was politicized through two organizations; the
Owen himself resisted the N.U.W.C.'s political efforts at reform, and by 1833, he was an acknowledged leader of the British trade union movement. In February 1834, he helped form Britain's first national labour organization, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organisation began to break up in the summer of 1834[19] and by November,[20] it had ceased to function.
It was from this heady mix of working class trade unionism, co-operativism, and political radicalism in the disappointed wake of the
United States
The Working Men's Party emerged spontaneously out of strike action by journeymen in 1829 who protested having to work more than 10 hours a day. They appointed a Committee of Fifty to discuss organization, and they proposed running a ticket of journeymen in the legislative elections. At the same time, Owen and Wright were continuing their own efforts to organize New York City's working classes. The two groups uneasily merged, and were encouraged by their success in the elections. To support the movement, George Henry Evans began publishing the Working Man's Advocate.[22]
The new party quickly fell victim to factionalism over several controversial proposals. Owen's controversial contribution was a proposed "state guardianship plan" where children would be removed from their homes at the age of two and placed in government run schools, to protect them from the degeneracy of slum life and allow their optimum development through free schooling.[23] By late 1830, the party was effectively dead.[24]
Canada
Owenism was introduced to Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1835 by the Rev. Thaddeus Osgood, a Montreal-based evangelical minister. Osgood returned to London in 1829. Deep in debt, he was unable to return to Canada, and spent the succeeding five years preaching in London's workhouses and prisons. It was in this working class milieu that Osgood met and debated with Robert Owen. Although attracted by the “home colony” model of poverty relief, Osgood was offended by Owens’ anti-religious rhetoric. Drawing on Owenism, rather than Owen, Osgood proposed to found “Relief Unions” for the poor when he finally returned to Canada in 1835. Through Osgood's influence, Robert Owens’ ideas were widely debated in Toronto.[25] Osgood's proposal elicited support from across Upper Canada in early 1836, and petitions for the Relief Union's incorporation were sent to the Assembly and Legislative Council. Significantly, Osgood's plan was proposed at the same time as the new Lt. Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head was arriving in Toronto. Bond Head was an Assistant Poor Law Administrator, and intent on imposing workhouses for the poor, not Owenite colonies.[26]
Acknowledgements
In Chapter III of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx analyzes Owenism as a species of utopian socialism that developed in the "early undeveloped period" of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat— and that formerly put out literature "full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class". However, Marx interprets Owenism as having, by the time of his writing in 1848, parted ways with Chartism to become a "reactionary sect" that is "compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois class" to receive the funding necessary for utopian communities or other projects. Remaining advocates of Owenism, claims Marx, now "violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class" such as Chartist advocacy for extension of suffrage; ″The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and Reformists."[27]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 0-7190-0501-9
- ^ Claeys, Gregory (1987). Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–60. Cambridge: Polity Press. pp. xviii.
- ^ Bestor, Arthur E. (1959). Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663–1829. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 94–132.
- ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New World Order: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 63–78.
- ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New World Order: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 168–9.
- ISBN 9780719054266.
- ISBN 9780415564311.
- ISBN 9780521364904.
- ^ a b Cherok, Richard J. (1999). "No Harmony in Kendal: The rise and Fall of an Owenite Community, 1825–1829". Ohio History. 108: 26–38.
- ^ Bestor, Arthur E. (1959). Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663–1829. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 235–42.
- ^ Morrison, John (1914). "The Toon o'Maxwell – an Owenite Settlement in Lambton County, Ont". Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records. XII: 5–12.
- ^ Schrauwers, Albert (2009). Union id Strength: W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 106.
- ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New World Order: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 214.
- ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New World Order: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 201.
- ISBN 9780521364904.
- ISBN 9780521364904.
- ^ Palmer, Bryan D. (1980). "Kingston Mechanics and the Rise of the Penitentiary". Histoire Sociale/Social History. 13 (25): 30.
- ISBN 9780521364904.
- ISBN 0-7100-6035-1, p.212
- ISBN 0-7100-7419-0, p.176
- .
- ^ Wilentz, Sean (1984). Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 190–201.
- ^ Wilentz, Sean (1984). Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 179.
- ^ Wilentz, Sean (1984). Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 210.
- ^ Schrauwers, Albert (2009). Union is Strength: W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 35–64.
- ^ Millar, W.P.J. (1977). "The Remarkable Rev. Thaddeus Osgood: A Study in the Evangelical Spirit in the Canadas". Histoire Sociale-Social History. 19: 68.
- ISBN 978-1-4344-9945-5.
External links
- Owenite Societies Archives at the International Institute of Social History
- Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive