The
position of Owen in the history of social reform and legislation is
comparable to that of Plato in the history of philosophy. The germs
of all subsequent movements can be found in his teaching. There is no
single measure of social or industrial reform which has since been
advocated about which he did not have something to say. Thus he has
been acclaimed as the apostle of many contradictory things,
C. E. M. JOAD
ROBERT
OWEN, IDEALIST.
Introduction
The position of Owen in the history of social reform and
legislation is comparable to that of Plato in the history of
philosophy. The germs of all subsequent movements can be found in his
teaching. There is no single measure of social or industrial reform
which has since been advocated about which he did not have something
to say. Thus he has been acclaimed as the apostle of many
contradictory things,
C. E. M. Joad
Robert Owen (14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was an intellectual
and political titan in the 19th century, who cast a deep
shadow on the political developments of social reformers and
socialists in Britain and internationally. His influence has since
shrunk throughout the 20th century and now in the 21st
even in his native Wales Robert Owen lingers on as a footnote. He
still retains his title of the “Father of British socialism” and
titbits about his time as reformist mill owner and early co-operator
and founder of Utopian villages are scattered about popular histories
of Industrial Britain. There is still a strong presence for material
about Robert Owen in academia, with multiple large biographies still
being published, so he hasn’t been completely forgotten. Its more
that he occupies a space down a narrow and overlooked path.
I do not remember where I first heard of Robert Owen, he was one
of the few names of the early socialist theorist Marx discussed that
I recognised, unlike St. Simon and Fourier, so it must have been
before 2008. Regardless, since then I’ve occasionally come across
bits and pieces of his work and legacy other the years, I remember
after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, I
was surprised to learn that Sinclair had lived for a time in a
planned community he funded largely from the profits of the novel.
The village was called the Helicon Home Colony, it was founded in
1906 in New Jersey but collapsed in 1907 due to a fire. The
biographical source I read drew connections to Owen’s earlier
attempts to found similar model communities in the United States. But
aside from accidental run-ins I had largely ignored studying Robert
Owen in a direct manner beyond the sections about him in G.D.H.
Cole’s mega collection The History of Socialist Thought.
When I decided to correct that
oversight I searched for an accessible introduction to man and his
ideas before moving along further. My search has convinced me that
C.E.M. Joad’s 1917 essay Robert Owen, Idealist, is
the best out there. I don’t agree fully with the authors viewpoint
and commentary but it covers a lot in a short space of time and after
reading more of Owen’s own works I do not disagree with Joad’s
evaluations of Owen’s work. This pamphlet was published as part of
a series by the Fabian Society, whom for the unfamiliar are a
collection of socialists heavily tied to the Labour Party. The
Fabians were one of the founders of the Labour Party and for a time
in the 20th
Century they were the parties unofficial intellectual wing, the
Fabian flavour of socialism or Fabianism as its commonly known is
heavily tied to democracy (there were some exceptions) and civic
participation. In the present day their impact on the Labour Party
and the wider British political currents is minimal, but back when
Joad’s pamphlet was first circulated its views mattered.
Joad
the author was also quite a prominent voice at the time of its
publication. He had a successful career as a civil servant and
philosopher, and was credited with popularising philosophy with the
general public. He was also an active self publicist who in addition
to strong book sales and a spot on a popular war time radio show The
Brain Trust, looked guaranteed
for a peerage. Alas, his honours, popularity and career were all
derailed in 1948 when he was arrested for fare dodging on a train
from Waterloo to Exeter. The collapse in his career was followed by a
collapse in his health, and he passed away in 1953 at the age of 61.
My
hope is that by making this text more accessible that it will not
only prove popular and useful as an educational aide, but also
inspire further interest in both Owen and Joad’s ideas and lead to
further study of both.
Reddebrek
Robert
Owen, Idealist.
THE main facts about Robert
Owen's career as successful business man, and his endeavours to bring
about social reform by means of State action, have been already
described in a previous Tract treating of "Robert Owen, Social
Reformer." Finding politicians unsatisfactory, the public
thick-headed, and his attempts to create a Utopia on the basis of
existing institutions impracticable, Owen diverted his eloquence, his
energies, and his wealth to the task of setting up model communities
which should realise those ideals of a rational life founded upon
communal ownership of property which were peculiarly his own.
The amazing optimism with
which he continuously prophesied sudden and complete moral and social
revolutions, and the unflagging enthusiasm which led him to embark on
new communities after repeated failures, spring from, and were in the
main conditioned by, that particular view of human character for
which he is perhaps most famous. It was because he believed that
human nature was entirely malleable to impress, that he so
continually strove to impress it with his own mark. It was because he
was convinced that men could be made to lead any kind of life, that
he never tired of preaching the life he wanted them to lead. Hence
his practical efforts at community-forming arise directly from his
psychological view of character-forming – otherwise their
persistence would seem incredible.
The objects of this Tract
are therefore twofold. Firstly, to give some account of Owen's
peculiar view of human nature. Secondly, to describe the more
important communities which resulted from that view.
PART
I.
Owen 's Psychology.
The Five Fundamental Facts.
Owen was one of the most
thoroughgoing materialists whoever lived. That is to say, he
conceived of human consciousness as a purely incidental phenomenon
occurring in a world of matter, and not as the essential underlying
reality of the universe. He would so define the world as to leave
man's soul upon it as a sort of outside passenger, or alien, as
opposed to the spiritualist conception which insists that the
intimate and human must surround and underlie the material and the
brutish. Thus he tended to regard sequence as proceeding always from
the inanimate to the animate. Whereas we most of us agree that the
inanimate may have a limiting influence on the actions of the
animate, Owen thought that the phenomena of consciousness were
entirely caused and explained by the influence of the inanimate.
With regard to the old
opposition of character and environment in the total human compound,
he was continually emphasising the importance of environment, and
belittling that of character. He carried this attitude to the point
of denying absolutely that character was in any sense formed or
controlled by the individual. It was formed for the individual by
external circumstances independently of his will.
The view that the
individual is in any way responsible for his character is regarded by
Owen as the fundamental delusion, the arch-error, which is
responsible for all the ills of society and the sufferings of the
human race. He speaks of it in the fiercest terms. It is ''this hydra
of human calamity, this immolater of every principle of rationality,
this monster which has hitherto effectually guarded every avenue that
can lead to true benevolence and active kindness."
Once dragged to light by
Owen's writings, this principle, "conscious of its own horrid
loathsome deformity, will instantaneously vanish, never more to
appear." In contradistinction to this principle, which has
hitherto reigned paramount both in ethics and politics, Owen asserts
his five fundamental facts, which explain the basis of human nature.
The statement of and implications arising from the facts, repeated in
various connections, form the contents of Owen's gospel of character,
"The New Moral World."
The facts are:-
1. That man is a compound
being whose character is formed of his constitution or organisation
at birth, and of the effects of external circumstances upon it from
birth to death: such original organisation and external circumstances
continually acting and reacting upon each other.
2. That man is compelled by
his original constitution to receive his feelings and his convictions
independently of his will.
3. That his feelings and
his convictions, or both of them united, create the motive to action
called his will, which stimulates him to act and decides his actions.
4.That the organisation of
no two human beings is ever precisely similar at birth, nor can art
subsequently form any two human beings from infancy to maturity to be
precisely similar.
5. That, nevertheless, the
constitution of every individual, except in the case of organic
disease, is capable of being formed into a very inferior or a very
superior being, according to the qualities of the external
circumstances allowed to influence his constitution from birth.
Implications
of the Facts.
I. EDUCATION.
Conjoin the fifth
fundamental fact, and the principle that characters are formed for
individuals not by them, and the supreme importance of education in
Owen's system is immediately apparent. "The Government," he
says "of any community may form the individuals of that
community into the best, or into the worst characters."
"That great
knowledge," therefore, with which it is Owen's privilege to
enlighten the world, is that "the old collectively may teach the
young collectively to be ignorant and miserable or to be intelligent
and happy.''
Instruction of the young
becomes the keystone of his system, for, unless children are
rationally trained, the State cannot hope to produce citizens
sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the truth of Owen's system.
The then existing education must be "scrapped''
utterly. "Reading and writing do not in themselves constitute
education: they are the instruments by which knowledge, true or
false, may be imparted." Thus, "according to the present
system children may learn to read, write, account, and sew, and yet
acquire the worst habits and have their minds irrational for life."
The true object of education is to teach the young to
reason correctly, to develop their critical faculty, and to enable
them to sift the true from the false. Only their memories, he says,
are exercised under the present system, and these are only used to
retain incongruities. The most controversial religious questions, for
instance. are solved in a phrase, and the answer is taken on trust.
"Children," he says, "are asked theological questions
to which men of the most profound erudition cannot make a rational
reply; the children, however, readily answer as they had been
previously instructed, for memory in this mockery of learning is all
that is required."
In his conviction that children must be taught
primarily to think for themselves, Owen anticipated many educational
reformers. To carry out his system of education, the most capable
persons in the State were to be appointed teachers. State seminaries
were to be established for the instruction of the teacher, and the
children to be given uniform attention in community schools.
Owen rarely condescends to details, but a sketch of
the various stages in a child's education is to be found in "The
New Moral World."
There are to be four classes of children in the model
community:
I. From birth to the age of five. They are to acquire
the primary characteristics of Owen's system: confidence in others,
unselfishness, toleration, with knowledge of simple objects. These
qualities will be inculcated by the automatic action of a healthy
environment.
II. Class II, from five to ten, will “discard the
useless toys of the old world." Education will be confined to
handling objects, and conversations with older persons. They will
help in domestic arrangements, but there will be no tasks. They will
work only for "amusement and exercise."
III. From ten to fifteen:
(a) Children from ten to twelve will instruct
and supervise the work of those in Class II.
(b) From twelve to fifteen they will learn the
more advanced arts and handicrafts. They will also receive
instruction in the mechanical sciences.
IV. From fifteen to twenty, the Communists will be
engaged in becoming "men and women of a new race, physically,
intellectually, and morally.'' They will instruct the class below,
and become'' active producers on their own account.'' A sketch of the
future activities of the model Communist may as well be inserted
here. His life is divided into eight stages, of which we have already
described four.
V. From twenty to twenty-five, the members, aided by
the inventions of science, will be engaged in producing all the
wealth required by the community. Further, they will be general
directors in every branch of education and production.
VI. From twenty-five to thirty, the main activities
of the Communists will be directed to the distribution of the wealth
produced by the lower classes, but this only for a few hours a day.
For the rest, they will engage in study and intercourse.
VII. Those between the ages of thirty and forty will
govern the internal affairs of the community, settle disputes and
administer justice.
VIII. The eighth class, between forty and sixty, will
undertake the duties of exchange of goods with other Communists, and
the maintenance of friendly relations; in the course of these duties
they will spend much of their time in travelling, partly on pleasure,
partly on communal business.
Thus Owen maps out the whole life of man.
II.
TOLERANCE AND CHARITY.
A conviction that men are in no way responsible
individually for their characters will engender a universal tolerance
for the shortcomings of others.
People will no longer be rewarded according to their
deserts, for they are no longer responsible for their deserts.
Distinctions of wealth will go the way of distinctions of birth,
which are, of course, entirely irrational. Pharisaism will disappear
with intellectual snobbery. Anger, jealousy, and revenge will give
way to regret, perhaps, that other people's instincts are so
unfortunate, but never to reproach.
"With insight into the formation of character,
where is there any conceivable reason for private displeasure or
public enmity?"
With this doctrine Owen lays one of the foundation
stones of community life. Remove anger, jealousy, and revenge, and
there is really no reason why people should not live happily together
in communities, with common aims and common ownership of all
property.
To remove those differences
between individuals which operate in the main to create malice and
enmity, Owen's system of education will act in two ways:-
First,
children trained under a rational system will exhibit few
shortcomings. More especially, the desire to overreach one's
neighbour in competition, which makes the majority of persons
unfitted for community life, will disappear. Secondly, even if such
short-comings do exist, we shall find no cause of offence, for
"rationally educated children will realise the irrationality of
being angry with an individual for possessing qualities or beliefs
which, as a passive being during the formation of these qualities, he
had no means of preventing."
Prisons will disappear in
company with workhouses. Illuminated addresses and knighthoods will
be thought as illogical as satires and sermons.
Instead of blaming, "we
shall only feel pity for individuals who possess habits or sentiments
destructive of their own pleasure or comfort."
The problem of what to do,
assuming these opinions, with the burglar who is caught stealing your
silver will be solved by the considerations, firstly, that the
burglar will have no incentive to steal, will, in fact, become
extinct, and, secondly, that in stealing my silver he will be
stealing the community's silver, which already belongs to him as much
as it does to me.
Thus Owen's doctrine of
character seemed to him to abolish at one blow the corrective and
retributive functions of government, with all the difficulties they
carry in their train.
III.
THE LAWS OF NATURE.
Owen is continually
reiterating the assertion that while all other systems, previous and
present, have done violence to the laws of nature, his alone is in
conformity with them.
"We undertake to explain the
principles of nature," he says in the preface to "The New
Moral World."
He conceives, in fact, of the present system
of society as of something artificially imposed upon human nature
which should be, and, in point of fact, has been at some period of
the world's history, exempt from it. The Greeks thought that society
was necessary to man, because it was only as a member of society that
he could realise all that he had it in him to be. Owen felt, on the
other hand, that the social structure, as it existed in his time, so
far from developing, restricted the development of human nature.
Thus "it will be
obvious," he says," to children rationally educated that
all human laws must be either unnecessary, or in opposition to
nature's laws."
Like the Social Contract
writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Owen envisaged a
kind of Golden Age, existing before the institution of society, in
which everybody did precisely what they pleased. One characteristic
of this age was the fact that everybody lived according to Owen's
principles, although, perhaps, they were never formulated. Owen's
system, then, was an attempt to revive the freedom of the Golden Age,
with the added advantages of a communal society somehow tacked on to
it. So, under Owen's system, ''none will be engaged in administering
laws, at once an improvement and a return, in opposition to the laws
of nature; or in adjudging artificial rewards and punishments to
counteract those of nature, which are all wise and all efficient."
The sequence of the
argument then proceeds as follows. The laws of nature are also the
laws of the nature of individuals. But the laws of nature are not to
be counteracted; therefore no restriction is to be imposed upon human
action, or check upon human feeling. Hence, "justice will be
done for the first time to human nature by every feeling, faculty,
and power inherent in each child being cultivated for its work to its
full extent." It follows logically that every law which
conflicts with individual pleasures, or violates any individual
belief, is tyrannical and contrary to nature; for it is Owen's belief
that pleasures, being formed entirely independently of our will,
"every individual is so organised that he must like what
produces agreeable sensations in him.”
Human laws, therefore,
either (a) express our beliefs and pleasures, in which case
they are expressing the laws of nature and are superfluous, or (b)
conflict with them, in which case they are wrong. Owen never thought
out all the implications of this doctrine. The following, however,
which he recognises and accepts, appear as cardinal points in his
system.
IV.
(I) MARRIAGE. (2) PROPERTY. (3) COMPULSION.
(I) Free divorce:
for there is no reason why people should continue to live together
when it violates their feelings or proclivities to do so; in fact,
Owen sometimes speaks as if he accepted the full Platonic doctrine of
the possession of wives in common.
(2) No distinction of
individual property. In a state of nature things were held in
common. The principle of the division of property is, further, the
basis of the principle of division in the community, of the
distinction between rich and poor, of poverty, of jealousy and of
war. That harmony, therefore, which Owen claimed for his system can
only exist if the institution of private property is abolished. There
will be no difficulty about this, however, in Owen's state. Harness
the inventions of science to the service of the community, and you
will produce more than enough for all. Owen was tremendously
impressed by the advance of scientific discovery. "In the time
of your ancestors, sire," he writes to King William IV, "fifteen
millions of men could produce enough to supply the wants of fifteen
millions, and no more. But now, a population of twenty-five millions
can, with the same expenditure of energy, supply the wants of six
hundred millions.'' Thus, "wealth being made abundant beyond the
wants or the wishes of the human race, any desire for individual
accumulation or inequality of condition will consequently cease."
(3) "No
compulsion." Since no compulsion is possible where free play
is to be given to every individual feeling we can say nothing either
to the criminal or to the debauchee. Owen at times accepts his
implication, looking to his system of education to abolish both. At
others we find him faltering. Thus, although we are told that pure
affection and unreserved knowledge of each other's character is
sufficient reason for any and apparently any number of sexual unions,
he makes provision in "The New Moral World" that marriage
shall be formal, and shall not be entered into without three months
public notice, and that no separation shall take place under a year
of union, and six months further notice, i.e.., eighteen months in
all.
V.
EUGENICS.
At times, moreover, a
tendency to flirt with Eugenics is difficult to reconcile with free
play to nature and to individual choice. "We have learnt to
improve the breed of the lower animals," says Owen, "but in
the much more important matter of breeding human beings we are
content to leave all to chance.'' Regulations are therefore laid down
to prescribe only the unions of the fit; which seems rather unfairly
to penalise the unfit for what of course they are not responsible.
Such minor inconsistencies abound in Owen's work. It would, however,
be wasted labour and captious criticism to continue to score academic
points against a system which appears as an ebullition of Quixotic
enthusiasm, and yet, strangely enough, a movement of sound common
sense, rather than as a logical structure, watertight in every
compartment, propounded to delight Dons.
PART
II.
The Community Ideal.
It is undoubtedly to Robert
Owen that the conception of the community in the modern sense must be
attributed. The promulgation of his ideas forms a landmark; it is the
beginning of modern Socialism. The idea arose directly out of the
distress caused by the cessation of the European war in in 1815. In
I8I6 a public meeting of the "Association for the Relief of the
Manufacturing and Labouring Poor" appointed a committee to
enquire into the prevailing distress, under the presidency of the
Duke of York. Of this committee Owen was a member. Having impressed
himself upon the committee by a powerful speech, in which he ascribed
the prevalent distress as due to (1) the cessation of the
extraordinary demand occasioned by the war, and (2) to the
displacement of human labour by machinery, Owen was commissioned to
draw up a report to the committee. This report, also called the "Plan
for the Regeneration of the World," embodies for the first time
a definite statement of the community theory. Any successful plan
which takes into account the present demoralisation of the poor must,
says Owen, "combine means to prevent the children from acquiring
bad habits, and... provide useful training and instruction for them;
it must provide proper labour for adults, direct their labour and
expenditure so as to produce the greatest benefit to themselves and
society, and place them under such circumstances as shall remove them
from unnecessary temptations and closely unite their interest and
duty."
**********************************************************
To serve these ends the working class are to be
gathered together into an establishment; not too small, or else the
cost of superintendence would be too high; not, on the other hand,
too large to be effective. Hence the community of 500 to I,500
persons. The community should be self-sufficing, and its members were
therefore to engage in various branches of agriculture and
manufacture. All were to work at suitable tasks, according to their
ability. The necessary capital to build the required establishment
was to be raised by voluntary subscription or advanced by the
Government. Thus three main advantages are aimed at in the
communistic scheme:-
(1) It is the simplest and most effective method for
educating the children of the poor.
(2) It enables a greater population to be supported
in a given area than under any other conditions.
(3) It is so easy to put in practice that it may more
conveniently be started than a new factory.
The original plan, then, in germ aimed simply at
finding employment for the poor. Owen's optimism once having grasped
the idea, saw far and quickly. A month later we find him stating not
only that the community system was the only possible form of society
for the whole world, but that, when it had once been promulgated by
himself, "the principle and plan are so fixed and permanent that
hereafter the combined power of the world will be found utterly
incompetent to extract them from the public mind. Silence will not
retard their course, and opposition will only give increased celerity
to their movements."
The scheme was put forward under fashionable
patronage, the papers were not unfavourable, and Owen was ingenious
enough to propitiate the press as a customer and propagandise the
country as a prophet at a single stroke by buying 30,000 copies of
the papers containing his plan and distributing them to the clergy of
every parish in the kingdom.
In 1819 the Duke of York held a meeting to appoint a
committee to report on Owen's plan. The report whittled away the
full-fledged communism of the plan to a joint-stock enterprise on a
large scale. According to the report, the workmen would indeed feed
in common and be housed in the same building, but "they will,"
says the committee, "receive their wages in money, and the mode
in which they would dispose of them will be entirely at their own
option."
A wealth of criticism and controversy centred not
only round the extreme measures of the original plan, but even the
milder recommendations of the other. The main point of vantage of the
attack was the economic one.
Were Mr. Owen's communities, it was asked, to be
self-sufficing or not self-sufficing? If they were to be the former,
the number of workmen would not be sufficient to secure the
sub-division of labour essential to modern processes, and the cost of
production would be increased; if the latter, and barter and exchange
were permitted with other bodies, the community would lose many of
those exclusive advantages for which alone it had been formed, and
would become subject to the commercialism and fluctuations of
ordinary markets.
Owen met such objections by emphasising the enormous
ease and wealth of production which modern machinery had made
possible, the importance of which, as we have already seen, ':'
he continually tended to exaggerate. The colonists were to labour in
a "community of interests." There would be no disputes
either about the division of property or with neighbouring
communities, because all "would produce the necessaries and
comforts of life in abundance." Nobody, at present, says Owen,
wants more than his fair share of air and water, simply because we
have these things in abundance. The same would happen to property if
society were rationally organised.
Despite, however, Owen's continual propaganda,
despite the elaboration of his scheme contained in the "Report
to the County of Lanark," the country still remained
incredulous, and it was left to America to be the recipient of the
first model Owenite community.
 |
|
Figure
: Design sketch for New Moral World, the community that Owen
believed would succeed New Harmony. It was never built.
|
New
Harmony.
Early in 1825 there
assembled at New Harmony, Indiana, several hundreds of persons drawn
from various parts of the United States to make a practical
experiment in Communism. New Harmony had previously been the abiding
place of a religious sect, the Rappites, who, cemented by a narrow
and intense religious creed, had themselves not unsuccessfully
grappled with the problems of Communism. The land was fertile, the
climate good. Owen in 1824 had paid £3o.ooo down for the village as
it stood.
The society was to be open
to all the world except " persons of colour." The existing
situation of the houses would not permit the establishment of an
ideal community in all its completeness forthwith, nor would the
inhabitants be able to adjust themselves to Communism without
training. The society was at first to achieve only temporary objects;
it was to be a half-way-house on the road to the communistic goal, in
which materials were to be collected and preparation made for the
final burst from ''the chrysalis stage of semi-individualism into the
winged glory of full Communism."
Accordingly, although at
first there was to be pecuniary inequality in view of the superior
talents or capital which certain members were bringing into the
society; although members were to bring and to keep their own
furniture and effects; although individual credit was to be kept at
the outset for each member at the public store for the amount of work
done and against it a debit registered for the amount of goods
supplied: although, in short, these clogging traces of an obsolete
individualism were still temporarily to cling to the embryo
community, Owen hoped and stated that within three years the members
would be prepared to constitute a community of equality “and so for
ever bury all the evils of the old selfish individual system."
The response to the appeal
for members was somewhat overwhelming at first, both in quality and
quantity. Robert Dale Owen, the founder's son, describes them as a
"heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic devotees to
principle, honest latitudinarians and lazy theorists, with a
sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in.'' Of many it seems to
have been true that their only credentials for the ideal world to
come were constituted by their total failure in the world that is. A
few of the most unsatisfactory were weeded out, but, in pursuance of
Owen's principle, no general process of selection seems to have been
exercised.
In spite of this, however,
Owen on his return to New Harmony in January, 1826, after a visit to
England to collect men of science and learning to leaven and instruct
the community, found the experiment so far advanced that he was
induced to cut short the period of probation and constitute
immediately the finally developed community.
A committee of seven were
elected to draw up a constitution. It will be as well to give the
main articles of" Union " in full, as they embody fairly
well what may be taken to be the main tenets of the community ideal,
whether realised or not, aimed at in all the Owenite experiments.
Objects
of New Harmony.
''A ll the members of the
community shall be considered as one family, and no one shall be held
in higher or lower esteem on account of occupation.
"There shall be
similar food, clothing, and education as near as can be, furnished
for all according to their age and, as soon as practicable, all shall
live in similar houses and be accommodated alike.
"Every member shall
render his or her best service for the good of the whole."
The governing body was to
be constituted as follows: Agriculture, Manufactures, Literature,
Science, Education, Domestic Economy, General Economy, Commerce etc..
Should each form one department. Each department should again be
divided under intendants. Each intendant was to choose four
superintendents. All the officers with the addition of a secretary
were to form the executive council. The real estate was to be vested
in the community as a whole.
We shall have cause to
comment on the amazing intricacy of the governing body when we come
to consider the community ideal in general. In the meantime it may be
considered that complete communism was established. There was to be
no discrimination between one man's labour and another's, and no
buying and selling within the bounds of the community. Each was to
give of his labour, according to his ability, and to receive food,
clothing, and shelter according to his needs.
Success
of the Community.
For the year following the
emergence of the society into full communism all went well. A paper
called the New Harmony Gazette gives a glowing account of the
activities of the society. “The society is gradually becoming
really as well as ostensibly a community of equality, based on the
equal rights and equal duties of all. Our streets no longer exhibit
groups of idle talkers, but each one is busily engaged in the
occupation he has chosen for his employment."
Robert Dale Owen, arriving
in 1826, is particularly enthusiastic. There were concerts, weekly
dances, and all manner of social intercourse in the community hall;
there were weekly discussions, and complete freedom of view was
allowed. The housing, it is true, was of the simplest, and the fare
of the rudest, while there was plenty of hard work to do. But there
does seem to have been a real spirit of unity and enthusiasm
pervading the community in the early days. Many distinguished persons
also came to visit and observe the settlement.
Signs
of Breaking-up.
From one of these latter,
the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, we have the first note of discord. He
observed in particular two disquieting signs: the extreme frugality
of the living, and the difficulty of amalgamating the different
social grades. This last is significant. We are told that at the
dances the ''working men did not join in the dances in the public
hall, but used the newspapers scattered on the table."… While,
when partners were assigned for the cotillion, “the young ladies
turned up their noses at the democratic dancers who often fell to
their lot.'' In the lectures, the work, and the amusements alike, the
better educated classes kept together, and eschewed their social
inferiors. Some such social divergence was probably the real cause of
the split of the main community into two smaller ones, Macluria and
Feiba Peveli. Robert Owen finds only cause for increased optimism in
this duplication of communities. Both societies contemplated pure
Communism, it is true, and we find Owen saying that “the formation
of communities is now pretty well understood among us, and is entered
upon like a matter of ordinary business." But it is to be feared
that Owen was gilding his facts to reflect his expectations.
Divergence in the main community cannot be looked on as a healthy
sign, and by 1827 no less than seven different communities had
evolved from the parent society in a similar manner.
Already in 1826 we hear of
dissension in the society. The real estate of the society was to be
transferred from Owen to twenty-five representatives. Apparently,
however, so much confusion arose in the financial affairs of the
community that the transfer was never accomplished. The members
complain that they are stinted in food allowance (two meals a day,
costing, on an average, about three-pence in all, constituted their
diet), while Owen is sumptuously regaled at the tavern. The accounts
are complicated, and far too large a proportion of the members are
engaged in the unproductive drudgery of clerkships. Thefts of
community money occur.
Three changes of
constitution took place during the next year, 1827, and an editorial
in the Gazette of 1827 practically owns the scheme a failure.
We hear that "the
whole population, numerous as they were, were too various in their
feelings and too dissimilar in their habits to unite and govern
themselves harmoniously in one community." Again, and very
significantly, the admission is made that " the deficiency of
production appeared immediately attributable in part to carelessness
with regard to community property; in part to their want of interest
in the experiment itself-the only true incitement to community
industry; and these, again, were to be traced to a want of confidence
in each other, increased by the unequal industry and discordant
variety of habits which existed among them."
In fact, all the bogeys
visioned and marshalled in critical array by the Individualist, when
making orthodox assault on Communism, do really seem to have
appeared, and in May, 1827, the parent community was formally
dissolved.
Dissolution
of Community.
At the dissolution of the
parent society into five separate villages, the inhabitants of which
voluntarily selected each other, Owen offered land and pecuniary
assistance to anyone who wished to settle on the estate. Of the
inhabitants, all who did not join one or other of the daughter
communities were warned that they must either support themselves by
their own industry or leave New Harmony. ''Under the circumstances,"
says Owen," many families left New Harmony with their feelings
more or less hurt." Even now Owen's faith does not fail him.
"The cheering prospects before the daughter communities,"
he tells us at this time, "induce a belief that nothing can
prevent a spread of the social system over the United States."
After this we hear little
of the future history of New Harmony. In April, 1828, Owen, after a
visit to England, returned to the place, and in a public address to
the inhabitants practically confesses that the great experiment has
failed.
Speaking of the leases of
land that had been made a year previously to the daughter
communities, he says: "Upon my return, I find that the habits of
the individual system were so powerful that the leases have been,
with a few exceptions, applied for individual purposes and for
individual gain, and in consequence they must re- turn again into my
hands. This last experiment has made it evident that families trained
in the individual system, founded as it is upon superstition, have
not acquired those moral qualities of forbearance and charity for
each other which are necessary to promote full confidence and harmony
among all the members, and without which communities cannot exist.''
This confession on the part of the founder sounded the death-knell of
New Harmony. In June, 1828, Owen bade farewell to the place, and the
relics of the community soon lapsed into complete Individualism.
Queen
wood.
After an interval of some
dozen years, marked by several abortive attempts to establish
communities, and by numberless societies formed for that purpose, the
ideal once more materialised in the settlement of Queenwood, at
Tytherly, in Hampshire. Queenwood was started and financed by the
"Community Society," founded by Owen. Each branch of this
society which subscribed £50 for the enterprise was entitled to
nominate one of its members to join the community. In 1839 the
members, to the number of some sixty, entered upon possession of a
large farm at Tytherly. Once again, however, no real process of
selection appears to have been exercised. Dissension took place in
the first few weeks in the community, members were asked to resign,
and the chosen residue, some nineteen in all, were entrusted with the
whole management of the experiment. After numerous early struggles,
mainly financial, into which it is unnecessary to enter, the
community was fairly established in an apparently flourishing state
by 1842. They were in full possession of a magnificent building,
costing some £ 30,000, some six hundred people had now been
collected to inhabit it, and a sketch of the life of the place at the
time, given by a visitor, who writes in the Morning Chronicle,
signed "One who has Whistled at the Plough," is full of
interest.
After a description of the
fields, garden, and outside of the building called Harmony Hall, we
hear next of the kitchen. When the writer entered, three or four
women were washing dishes with incredible speed and the aid of a
mechanical contrivance. The kitchen was fitted up with every modern
convenience, and communicated with the dining hall by a tunnel, along
which ran trucks containing plates, dishes, etc. A bathroom and the
sleeping accommodation are also described. On the estate itself we
are told of the activities of builders, gardeners, brickmakers,
roadmakers, and shepherds. Labourers had been hired from the
neighbouring villages, and were paid at nine shillings a week, a wage
apparently considerably in excess of the normal rates for Hampshire
at that time.
An account of the behaviour
of the Queenwood Socialists is given in a letter refuting the doubts
recently expressed by the Bishop of Exeter respecting their
morality:-
They are bringing, from all
parts of the kingdom, the best improved implements and methods of
working... Amid a poor population they are creating and enjoying
wealth; amid an ignorant population they are dispensing education;
amid an imperfectly employed population they are spreading
employment; amid a population not remarkable for moral conduct they
are showing themselves an example which compels the respect of all
who know them, and who at first di3trusted them. If their principles
are as dangerous to society as has been often said, what is to be
done to counteract them? The anathemas of the bishops neither sink
their thousand acres in the sea nor set a blight upon their crops.
Another
Socialist visitor gives us a description of their meals.
"Coffee
without cream and buttered bread form the breakfast, puddings and
dainty vegetables the dinner. Meat is not eaten." The visitor
fed on cauliflower with sauce, a turnip nicely prepared a potato
moulded into tempting shapes, and home-made bread. Certainly the
Socialists did not expend their substance in riotous living. And yet,
in 1844, the committee are faced with a deficit of £2,900 on the
year's working, and new managers, "business men," are
elected. Even they could not stave off the impending financial
bankruptcy, and by the summer of 1845 the residents had melted away
and the enterprise ended.
Only
the fees from the community school had kept the settlement going for
as long as six years ; and before we examine some of the causes which
led to the failure of New Harmony, Queenwood, and similar
enterprises, we may pause a moment for a brief view of Owen's
educational ideals working in practice in the communities we have
described.
Community
Schools.
Owen held that the
individualistic tendencies of men and women, as he found them, were
largely grown and fostered by the competitive spirit prevalent in the
normal school. The one incentive to work was to do better than your
neighbour. If you did notably better than your neighbour-or, as Owen
would say, over-emphasised your individuality at the expense of
his-you were given a prize; if notably worse, the cane. Had he known
of Nietzsche's "Will to Power, " he would have recognised
in the existing school system a good example of it s working. Hence,
in the New Harmony Schools no rewards and no punishments were
permitted. The boys, a lawless lot, were restrained and disciplined
by sheer common-sense and good will on the part of Robert Dale Owen,
the head-teacher. As the interest of the work itself was the only
incentive recognised for the doing of it, it was plain that dull and
informative textbooks would not succeed. In this matter, again, Owen
held peculiarly enlightened views. He recognised that teaching does
not necessarily involve a conception of a child's head as an empty
box which you fill with facts as you fill a jar with jam. It was
possible, he felt, to take into account the aptitudes of each
individual child, and to let them to some extent dictate the
teaching, in stead of laying down a uniform curriculum for all; while
a sense of discipline could be inculcated by setting the older
children, as a reward of proficiency, to Instruct the younger.
Hence we are told that the
boys and girls at New Harmony "have a very healthy look, are
cheerful and lively, and by no means bashful. The girls are as little
oppressed as the boys with labour and teaching. These happy and
interesting little children were much more employed in making their
youth pass as happily as possible."
Each boy was taught a
definite trade from the very first, and the rest of his education
moulded accordingly. Apparently the children were not overfed, rose
at five o'clock, saw their parents not more than once a year, and
were otherwise subjected to a Spartan discipline.
At Queenwood a school was
started on Owen's principles, the fees for which were £25 a year,
including clothing, and to which the children of people who were not
members of the settlement were admitted. The school was one of the
few financial successes of Queenwood. In 1844 it numbered ninety-four
children, of whom sixty-four were paying fees The curriculum embraced
the widest range of subjects, including astronomy, chemistry,
anatomy, painting, vocal and instrumental music, land surveying,
French, and German. The school, however, came to an end at the
collapse of the settlement. This apparent failure does not impair the
excellence of the system on which the schools were based. In
education, perhaps, more than any other subject, Owen saw far in
advance of his time, and it is only to-day that we are tentatively
beginning to pay practical tribute, in the shape of schools on
Owenite lines, to the merits of a system which has been loudly
acclaimed in theory for years past.
Orbiston.
The Community of Orbiston,
though prior in date to the Queenwood venture, has not been described
hitherto, as Owen himself was not directly concerned with the
founding of the community. He was, however, interested in the
experiment, which drew its inspiration from his teaching, and he once
visited the place.
In 1825 Abram Combe, a
successful Edinburgh business man, who had become an ardent convert
to Owen's system, associated himself with two or three sympathetic
capitalists, and purchased the estate of Orbiston, about nine miles
east of Glasgow.
An enormous stone building was here planned for the
accommodation of a projected community, of which the left wing only,
holding some three hundred persons, was ever finished.
On Saturday, April 8th, 1826, the new settlers took
possession, although the building was still incomplete. The objects
of the community were practically identical with those already
described at New Harmony and Queenwood. Each adult was to have a
private room, but all the cooking and eating arrangements were to be
in common.
A special feature of interest, however, was
introduced in the provisions with regard to children. In each of the
other communities we have noticed, the care and education of the
children was to be a charge on the community. At Orbiston it was
agreed that each child should be debited with the entire cost of his
maintenance and education, in the confident expectation that, on
growing up, the children would willingly repay the sums expended on
their education out of the profits of their labour. Unfortunately, as
the community only lasted for a year and a half, it was never
possible to judge whether these optimistic expectations were
justified.
As at New Harmony, no principle of selection with
regard to the members of the community appears to have been
exercised. "A worse selection of individuals-men, women, and
children-could scarcely have been made," said one of their
number. They were described as " a population made up for the
most part of the worst part of society."
Combe, however, justified his action in admitting all
comers by insisting on the truths of Owen's system. He explained: "
We set out to overcome ignorance, poverty, and vice; it would be a
poor-excuse for failure to urge that the subjects of our experiment
were ignorant, poor, and vicious." As Combe maintained the
strictest adherence to the Owenite ideals of no compulsion and
laissez faire, the communists were at first left without
organisation or direction of any kind. Each was to act on his own
account, and the only incentive to work was that of loyalty to the
community. In these circumstances the familiar traits of
individualism began at once to reappear. Those who wished
appropriated to themselves the fruits of their labour; those did not,
acted on the principle of taking as much from the community and
giving as little to it as possible.
Consequently, Combe was forced, in order to keep the
community going, to take in hand some measure of organisation: Squads
were formed from among the communists, according to the capacities of
the workmen. There was an iron foundry, a horticultural company, a
dairy company, and a building company, whose first task was to
complete the unfinished community buildings. Similarly, there were
squads of hatmakers, clothworkers, and shoe-makers, the necessary
capital for each of these industries being provided as loan by the
initiators of the community.
The domestic arrangements were divided among the
women in a similar way. Payment for work done was given at ordinary
market rates by book credit at the communal store, and the members
were at first permitted to hire their labour to outside employers. In
September, 1826, however, the members passed of their own accord the
following resolution, affirming the principle of equal remuneration
for all kinds of labour, according to the time given:
That all the members of the
society unite together to produce a common stock’ out of which all
our common expenditure, hereafter to be agreed upon, will be paid;
and that an equal share of the surplus of our labour be placed to the
account of each member of the community, according to the time
occupied by each.
At the
same meeting the members agreed to take over the ownership of the
land and premises from the proprietors, paying them five per cent.
interest on their outlay, and ultimately the whole of the capital
advanced, so that the community should be in every sense the owners
of their dwelling-place.
By the
spring and summer of 1827 the community appears to have attained a
very real measure of success. The external aspect of the settlement
had considerably improved. Roads had been made, and the gardens were
well kept. The iron foundry was doing well, and the domestic
arrangements under the squads of women were running efficiently. The
boys, at first unusually unruly, had been reduced to cleanliness and
order, without any grave departure from Owen's principles. The
communists were, above all, remarkably happy. One lady member writes:
'' It is like another world... I have been at a meeting last night,
and such mirth I never knew. There is dancing three time a week.
Indeed, there is nothing but pleasure, with the best of eating and
drinking.'' Nor did the stress of making ends meet preclude leisure
for the cultivation of the arts. The boys were taught music,
preparatory to the formation of an orchestra; and, as a crowning
achievement, a theatre was actually built, and plays performed by the
members. At this stage (summer, 1827) Owen paid a visit to Orbiston,
and found the community afloat on the high waters of success.
Break-up
of Orbiston.
Signs
of disaster were not wanting, however, even while matters presented
so fair an outward show.
It has
already been noticed that all comers had been admitted at the opening
of the settlement, and many abused to the full the privileges granted
by the communist system. The method by which credit at the communal
store was entered to the account of each member, according to the
number of hours work returned, was particularly open to abuse.
Members were constantly cheating the timekeeper by returning more
hours than they had actually worked, and so inflating their credit at
the store.
A large
section of the communists worked just sufficiently to procure a
requisite amount of food and clothing at the common store, for the
remainder of their time hiring out their labour for wages to outside
employers. Thus they were enabled to live in what was comparatively a
state of luxury, while the more conscientious members were labouring
and stinting to maintain the public burdens. Thus, in June, 1827, out
of two hundred and ninety-eight persons, only two hundred and
twenty-one fed at the public mess. The remaining seventy-seven fed
privately, being enabled by their outside earnings to purchase at the
store food superior both in quantity and quality to that which fell
to their more public-spirited fellow-members. It is further hinted
that some of the surplus food purchased by the individualistic
seventy-seven was exchanged with outsiders for commodities which the
exchangers would have been better without.
In
August, 1827, Combe, the founder, died. His brother William
endeavoured to carry on the community for a few weeks after his
death, but from September, 1827, onwards our records cease entirely.
All we know is that William Combe, probably under pressure from the
mortgagees, gave all the members notice to quit the premises in the
autumn of 1827, and that the whole concern was shortly afterwards
sold by public auction.
There
can be no doubt that financially the community was a great failure,
that two at least of the founders lost all their money in the
experiment, and that lack of capital accounted for the abrupt close
of the venture.
Co-operative
Societies.
The communities described
above were by no means the only expression of the effects of Owen's
teaching. Another important development is now to be traced which
resulted in the formation of co-operative societies. The rise of
these societies, as contrasted with the parallel growth of
communities, seems to have been due to the feeling that, assuming the
validity of the main contentions of Owen's doctrine, it was still
true that any attempt on the part of the working classes to better
their condition must, to ensure success, originate among themselves.
The communities had been artificial structures, in the sense that
they had been founded from outside, and subsisted on funds provided
by a few wealthy men. When outside support was withdrawn the
communities went smash.
Referring to such attempts
and their wealthy promoters, the Co-operative Magazine says:
"Since their way is not our way, there could hardly be that
unanimity and boundless confidence in a community established by them
that there would be in one founded upon a system of perfect equality,
every member of which may say, “This is ours and for us.'"
Between 1820 and 1835 a
considerable number of co-operative societies were formed, implicitly
or explicitly, as a result of this conviction.
Their immediate objects are
defined by the editor of the Brighton Co-operator as follows,
though there were, of course, numerous varieties: "To protect
their members against poverty, to secure comforts for them, and to
achieve independence." The means to these three ends are, first,
a weekly subscription from the members to secure capital to trade
with; second, the manufacturing of goods for themselves; "lastly,
when the capital has still further accumulated, the purchase of land
and living upon it in community."
The immediate method by
which profit was to be secured for the co-operators, and the chief
advantage of the co-operative system, lay in the exclusion of the
middleman. William Thompson, author of the "Distribution of
Wealth,'' one of the ablest exponents of Owen's system, had done much
to inspire the movement by his insistence on the doctrine that, as
all wealth is the product of labour, the labourer has an indefeasible
right to the whole of what he produces. He then goes on to define the
primary object of a co-operative community formed of the producing
classes to be the acquisition of the whole of the fruits of their
labour by means of" mutual co-operation for the supply of each
other's wants, and equal distribution amongst all of the products of
their united industry.''
Thus two more or less
distinctive stages can be traced in the development of these
societies:-
1. They were joint-stock
trading enterprises, the goods produced by the members being
accumulated in a common store. These goods were to be retailed to the
members at practically cost-price, and to the outside public at a
considerable profit, which was to go to a common fund. Thus the
middleman and the capitalist were abolished together.
2. Out of the profits so
realised, and an accumulation of weekly subscriptions, land was to be
purchased and a community formed, wherein all the more revolutionary
tenets of Owen's system, more particularly with regard to the
education of children, were to be put in practice. In this second
stage incomes were to be pooled and all possessions held in common.
The first of these
societies to be noticed, the London Co-operative Society (1824),
placed in the forefront of its activities the popularisation of
Owen's views. The "Crown and Rolls," in Chancery Lane, the
headquarters of the society, witnessed nightly debates between Owen's
followers and the individualist members of the young Liberal Party,
including John Stuart Mill.
A plan was formed for the
establishment of a community within fifty miles of London, and
suitable farms were advertised for. Only Owen's return from America
was awaited to put the project into operation.
As in the case of the
Dublin Co-operative Society (1826), which was formed with the same
object, and to which some thousands of pounds were subscribed, it
does not appear that this project ever passed beyond the stage of
optimistic anticipation.
The Devon and Exeter
Co-operative Society of 1826, financed by a Mr. Vesey, seems to have
been the first whose plans for a community passed beyond the paper
stage. A small estate near Exeter was actually purchased, and
thirteen co-operators started to prepare buildings for the expected
communists. A month later twelve cottages were ready. Mr. Vesey,
however, soon after this period withdrew his financial support, and
the original settlement was abandoned.
In August, 1827, a fresh
farm was purchased, crops were harvested, and several trades started.
Although no new recruits for the society could be obtained, the
prospect was regarded as not by any means discouraging. From this
point, however, all record of the society in our only authority, the
Co-operative Magazine, ceases.
In 1826 a more hopeful
venture, independent of outside support, entitled the Co-operative
Community Fund Association, was started. The objects of this
association were identical with those already mentioned. The new
departure lay in their method of obtaining the funds. £1,250 was the
requisite capital aimed at, to be raised by means of fifty shares of
£25 each. The shares were to be obtained by a weekly subscription of
not less than four shillings from each member. When £500 had been
thus accumulated, the purchase of land for a community was
contemplated. The children of the members were to be supported at the
common charge, and the government of the contemplated community was
to be strictly democratic, consisting of committees elected from the
members by the members, and sitting for short terms of office only.
With the establishment of
the Auxiliary Fund by the London Co-operative Society in 1827, a new
departure was made. From this time forward the characteristic
feature, both of this and of the other societies whose course we are
tracing, is the development of co-operative trading enterprises.
Henceforward the second of the two objects noted above, the community
ideal, tends to become more and more subordinated to the first. The
general store or shop, financed by the Auxiliary Fund of the
Co-operative Community Fund Association, is the first step in a
course of developments which ended in the famous Owenite labour
exchanges.
The general store was
primarily designed for the sale of articles produced by the members
of the association. Before long, however, provisions and other goods
in common use, by whomsoever manufactured, were admitted into the
store and sold to the members at wholesale prices.
The store was very
successful, and great hopes were formed of extending it. An
optimistic prophecy contemplated the association as being in
possession of one such repository in each of the main thoroughfares
of London, which, by diverting the tide of riches from its present
tendency to flood the pockets of capitalists and middle-men into the
pockets of the producers, i.e., the members of the association, would
''emancipate the millions from the control of the units."
The Union Exchange Society,
1827, was also formed about this time. The members agreed to meet
together once a month, and sell each other such goods as they could
command, ten percent, being levied on the sales and handed over to a
common fund, which was to be distributed equally among the members.
Tea, bread, flour, boots, umbrellas, and brass and tin ware were sold
in this way.
The Brighton Co-operative
Provident Fund Association, founded with the same objects as tl~e
Union Exchange Society, had a much longer life. It started with a
membership of one hundred and fifty, each member paying a penny a
week subscription into the common funds. Shortly afterwards this was
transformed into a trading association, with a capital in £5 shares,
forty of which were taken almost at once. The association issued a
circular, stating that they regarded "the real cost of all
commodities to be the amount of labour employed in preparing them for
use."
In order, as far as
possible, to secure that the exact cost of production and no more
should be paid, a joint store, repository, or exchange was
established, "in which a confidential agent will receive from
members of the association such articles as they produce, and,
according to a scale authorised by a committee or council of work,
give them an order for other commodities in store to an equal value
at prime cost, or a note for the value of so much labour as is
brought in, which note may be cancelled when articles of that value
are issued for it, so that the labour notes may always represent the
quantity of goods in store and work unrequited" (Co-operative
Magazine, November, 1827).
It will be seen that it was
but a step from a project of this kind to the complete labour
exchange system.
Little more remains to be
said of the co-operative societies. The Brighton Association, whose
objects have just been described, is considerably the most important.
It lasted for several years, started the earliest provincial
co-operative magazine, the Brighton Co-operator, and exercised the
greatest care in the selection of its members, to which fact in
particular its success was attributed.
By 1830 there were no less
than three hundred co-operative societies in the United Kingdom. In
1831 the first co-operative congress was held. In 1832 the number of
societies had risen to from four to five hundred. These societies
were becoming more and more directly simply co-operative trading
associations, and the legitimate development of this aspect of the
movement into labour exchanges soon followed. It is interesting to
note, however, that these early co-operators never thought of
competing for profit with capitalist enterprises. They were simply
anxious that each man should receive the due reward of his labour,
and for the great majority the immediate necessity of getting a
living thrust the more inspiring aims of Owen's teaching into the
background. Trading bazaars and labour exchanges took the place of
communities.
 |
Figure
: Truck system of payment by order of Robert Owen and Benj
Woolfield, National Equitable Labour Exchange, 22 July 1833. |
The
Labour Exchanges.
It is in the Report to the
County of Lanark that we first find Owen suggesting that as "the
natural standard of value is human labour," a standard labour
unit should be established for purposes of exchange.
The inadequacy of the
monetary currency system, which became a subject of acute controversy
between 1830 and 1834, and was regarded by many reformers as an
important factor in the prevailing poverty of the masses, together
with the possibilities opened up by the stores and bazaars of the
co-operative societies, combined to direct Owen's attention about
this time to the question of evolving some satisfactory system of
labour currency. Owen was at this time the editor of a paper called
the Crisis, and in an editorial for June, 1832, thus states
the theory which inspired the labour exchanges: "Hundreds of
thousands of persons of all the various trades in existence rise
every morning without knowing how or where to procure employment.
They can each produce more than they have occasion for themselves,
and they are each in want of each other's surplus products." He
goes on to point out that the usual course then pursued is (1) to
convert the goods into money by selling them to a middleman, and (2)
with that money to buy the articles required again from a middleman,
who thus intervenes at two points in the transaction, and diminishes
the real value of the labour expended by the profits he keeps for
himself.
"Now there is no necessity for the middleman,"
says Owen. ''Producers can do without him if they merely want to come
in contact with each other, and they can exchange their respective
produce to their mutual advantage and to the advantage of the general
consumer."
A standard of value and a medium of exchange is.
however, required. The argument then proceeds as follows: All wealth
proceeds from labour and knowledge. Labour and knowledge are
generally remunerated according to the time employed. Hence time
should be the standard or measure of wealth, and notes representing
time or labour value will be the new medium of currency.
In practice the doctrine lost something of its
simplicity in view of the fact that different kinds of labour were
paid at different rates, and an hour's labour expended by a skilled
mechanic was more valuable than an hour's labour on the part of a
navvy.
When the labour exchanges were actually working, the
value of a man's labour was assessed as follows: The average day's
labour was regarded as ten hours; the average rate of pay at sixpence
an hour. Required, to value different kinds of labour according to
this standard.
Mr. Podmore gives the following illustration: "If
a cabinet maker, whose value in the open market was paid for at the
rate of a shilling an hour, brought a chest of drawers to the
Equitable Labour Exchange to be valued, its price in labour hours
would be computed as follows: First, the value of the raw material
would be set down in vulgar pounds, shillings, and pence; then the
value of the labour would be added in the same base medium. The whole
would then be divided by sixpence, and the quotient would represent
the number of hours to be entered on the labour note." Clearly a
purely artificial result, and not representative of anything in
particular!
On Monday, September I 7th, 1832, the first "National
Equitable Labour Exchange" was opened in the Gray's Inn Road,
near King's Cross. The deposits of goods produced, in exchange for
which labour notes were issued, were during the first few days so
numerous that the pavement outside the exchange was blocked. The
goods stored at the Exchange were sold on receipt of cash as well as
of labour notes issued by the exchange; but in the former case a
small commission was charged, in order, as far as possible. to
discourage the use of money.
For a time it looked as if the labour notes system
was likely to spread. They were accepted as payment for tickets at
the social festivals given at the institution run in connection with
the Exchange, and many local tradesmen put up notices in their shop
windows to the effect that labour notes would be accepted as payment
for goods. During the remainder of the year 1832 the popularity of
the Exchange continued to grow, the chief depositors being tailors,
cabinet makers, and shoemakers. For the seventeen weeks ending
December 22nd, the deposits represented 465,501 hours, and the
Exchanges 376,166 hours, leaving a balance in stock representing
69,335 hours, i.e., £1,733· 7s. 6d.
The greatest difficulty Jay in valuing the pile of
diverse goods deposited, and there is no doubt that in some cases
anomalies resulted. A tailor, for instance, wrote to the Times,
stating that he had paid thirty-six shillings for cloth and trimmings
to make a coat, made it, and took it to the Exchange, where it was
valued at thirty-two shillings. Owen replied, justifying the
assessment, on the ground that a low valuation of all goods had been
purposely adopted in order to compete with outside traders; and that
the tailor had suffered no real loss, inasmuch as all the goods at
the Exchange were valued at the same low standard: an explanation
which was clearly not very satisfactory to the tailor.
The following week, however, another tailor also
wrote to the Times, stating that he had received the full
market price at the Exchange tor a coat and trousers, both of which
were clearly misfits and unsaleable elsewhere, so that it is pretty
obvious that some of the assessments tended to be capricious.
The first Exchange, in the Gray's Inn Road, was
brought to an untimely end by a dispute with the landlord, and moved
to new premises in Fitzroy Square. Here, however, it passed under
entirely new management; and whereas it had started as a kind of
clearing house for the products of individuals, it now became a mart
or bazaar for the exchange of the products of various co-operative
societies.
This change took place in the following way. In I833
a new body had been formed, entitled the United Trades Association.
This association comprised societies numbering among their members
representatives of all the chief producers. The main object of the
association was to find employment for the out of work members of the
societies. A weekly contribution provided a fund to procure material
and workroom accommodation for unemployed members. The goods produced
were sent to the Labour Exchange to be valued by persons elected by
the societies from among themselves. In most cases the products were
exchanged direct at the Exchange. Thus notes appear in the Crisis,
the successor to the Co-operative-Magazine, to the effect that
the Surrey Society had made a quantity of clothes, for which they had
received in exchange a quantity of leather. The carpenters likewise
report that they have engaged to fit up a shop for the shoemakers,
who have promised shoes in exchange.
It soon became apparent, however, that something was
inherently wrong with the financial arrangements of the Exchange. For
a considerable time the accounts were kept straight by entering on
the credit side large amounts received from the lectures and
festivals held by the different societies, many of the lectures being
given by Owen, while at the same time a considerable amount of
business continued to the transacted at the Exchange.
During the latter half of 1833 the deposits averaged
over 10,000 hours a week, but by January, 1834, this figure had
diminished to 5,284 hours. During the early part of 1834 the deposits
continued to shrink at an alarming rate, and we find that many
articles were sold for three-fourths cash payment and only one-fourth
notes, so that the peculiar currency system of the Exchange seems to
have been falling into disuse.
By the summer we find the affairs of the Exchange to
be in such a bad way, and the surplus stock in hand so small, that
the secretary of the association, who was in direct charge of the
management,. writes to Owen, recommending that the affairs of the
Exchange be wound up. After this we hear no more of the Exchange, and
the various subsidiary Exchanges that were opened about the same time
in some of the provincial towns appear to have closed down also.
The immediate cause of the failure of all these
Exchanges was simply that they did not pay. Their financial
difficulties were according to William Lovett, who had been at one
time storekeeper to one of the London associations, caused by
"religious differences, the want of legal security, and the
dislike which the women had to confine their dealings to one shop."
Owen's rationalistic lectures appear to have caused much disturbance
among the more religious members of the co-operating societies, and
were ultimately the cause of many withdrawing their support from the
Exchange.
The Exchanges had no legal safeguards, as they were
not enrolled societies, and could not obtain legal redress when their
servants robbed them. Love of shopping on the part of the women, and
the unwillingness they felt for their husbands to be acquainted with
the exact extent and nature of their purchases, precluded much
enthusiasm on their part for the experiment.
Owen, however, never appears to have been heart and
soul in favour of the Exchanges. He explains in the" New Moral
World " that it was not his wish to start a Labour Exchange at
the time and in the manner chosen, and speaks of the experiment as
being forced upon him by the inexperience of impatient friends. There
appears to have been always at the back of his mind the feeling that
mere buying and selling arrangements were a trivial matter in
comparison with the complete revolution he contemplated, and unworthy
of the attention of a comprehensive reformer.
Syndicalism
and Guild Socialism.
The position of Owen in the history of social reform
and legislation is comparable to that of Plato in the history of
philosophy. The germs of all subsequent movements can be found in his
teaching. There is no single measure of social or industrial reform
which has since been advocated about which he did not have something
to say. Thus he has been acclaimed as the apostle of many
contradictory things, and among others of Guild Socialism.
We have seen how the co-operative societies were, to
begin with, miscellaneous associations of men of different trades.
They discharged the functions now performed by the sick and benefit
funds of a trade union, and during a certain stage of their
development frequently maintained a Labour Exchange for the
employment of their out of work members. As time went on it was found
more convenient and more profitable for members of the same trade to
associate together. As such the societies became to all intents and
purposes trade unions, and during the disturbed times of 1832-1834
indulged in strikes for better conditions and more wages, mainly
unsuccessful, on modern lines. The policies of these trade unions
were directly inspired by Owen's teaching, and, though he disapproved
of their more militant aspect, he made great efforts to capture the
leadership of the whole movement.
These early trade unions rapidly took on some of the
functions with which the modern National Guild movement is anxious to
endow them. Thus in 1834 the operative tailors address a circular
manifesto to their employers, stating that they have decided to
introduce some new regulations into the trade. The Circular
concludes: "Your workmen, members of the society, will cease to
be employed by you should you decline to act upon the new
regulations. In that case they will no longer consider it necessary
to support your interest, but will immediately enter upon the
arrangements prepared by the society for the employment of such
members for the benefit of the society."
A Grand National Guild of Builders was actually
formed in 1834, and set to work on building a guildhall in
Birmingham. The guild hall was, however, eventually finished by the
landlord, as the association lacked the necessary funds to complete
the work.
Owen seized upon the opportunity provided by these
tentative experiments as the occasion for delivering a lecture, in
which he outlined all the fundamentals of the modern Guild Socialist
scheme. "We have long since discovered," he said, "that
as long as master contends with master, no improvement either for man
or master will be possible. There is no other alternative, therefore,
but national companies tor every trade. All trades shall first form
associations or parochial lodges, to consist of a convenient number
for carrying on the business." These parochial lodges should
send delegates to county lodges, and so on, up to the Grand National
Council. "This is the outline for individual trades. They shall
be arranged in companies or families; thus all those trades which
relate to clothing shall form a company, such as tailors, shoemakers,
hatters, etc., and all the different manufactures shall be arranged
in a similar way. No secret shall be kept from public knowledge. Any
information respecting costs and profit shall be freely communicated,
and shall be done by a gazette."
Owen later made it clear that he contemplated unions,
including not only operatives, but also masters and manufacturers,
and ultimately the Government itself.
As a result of this propaganda there was founded in
1834, under Owen's auspices, a" Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union of Great Britain and Ireland," which in a few weeks
time is said to have enrolled between half a million and a million
members, with auxiliary branches-" lodges," they were
called-in all the large industrial towns.
The programme of the union and the objects it set out
to achieve are insufficiently recorded in the evidence available on
the subject, but it appears that in some rather vaguely defined way
it aimed at securing control of the conditions under which its
members worked in all the leading industries, the strike being the
weapon contemplated in the case of recalcitrant employers.
The Grand National caused profound alarm among the
propertied classes, but its career was lamentably brief. The first of
its activities was the organisation of a monster procession to
present a petition to the Government against the sentence of
transportation passed upon six Dorsetshire labourers for an alleged
offence against an out of date Act with regard to the administering
of illegal oaths (the swearing of oaths was a preliminary formality
to joining a trade union lodge). But the Government was determined to
break the strength of the movement, and acted with a high hand.
Several unsuccessful and costly strikes on the part of various unions
followed. We hear incidentally that the Potters' Union expended
£6,223 2s. 11d. in strikes during ten months, 1833-1834 There seems
at length to have been a growing weariness of strikes among the
unions, and a desire to return to the earlier method of co-operative
trading and exchange, and the Grand Lodge was accordingly shortly
remodelled on co-operative lines.
In August, 1836, a special meeting of delegates was
convened in London under Owen's presidency. Owen stated in his
address that the union "had experienced much more opposition
from the employers of industry and from the wealthy portion of the
public, as well as from the Government, than its promoters
anticipated."
It was then resolved that the name of the union
should be changed to '''The British and Foreign Consolidated
Association of Industry, Humanity, and Knowledge,' that the
initiatory ceremony of membership should be dispensed with so as to
conform with the law, that effective measures should be adopted to
reconcile the masters and operatives throughout the kingdom, and that
a charter should be applied for from the Government."
At the same time Owen, in an editorial in the last
number of the Crisis, announces that the "awful crisis"
in human affairs is now happily terminated; that the old world will
pass away "through a great moral revolution of the human mind,
directed solely by truth, by charity, and by kindness."
Henceforth, Owen drifted further and further away
from the trade union movement. His distrust of reform springing from
the people themselves left him at bottom out of sympathy with the
fundamental doctrines of what we should now call Guild Socialism. At
the same time his attitude was often akin to that of the modern
Syndicalist.
A Syndicalist tendency is manifested in Owen's
distrust of political measures as a means of engineering the
revolution. He was not, for instance, in favour of enlarged political
rights for the masses, and refused to co-operate with the Chartists.
" The Owenites,"says Bronterre O'Brien, "seek every
opportunity to speak sneeringly and contemptuously of their
possession (the vote) as a consideration of no value.”
Owen was impatient of the slowness of all agitation
on political lines, and refused, for instance, to work with Oastler
for his propaganda in support of an eight hour day. Such things were
mere palliatives; they delayed the revolution by chloroforming the
workers. "Why waste your time in useless theories," he
says, in a manifesto to the Chartists, "instead of going
straight forward to the immediate relief of your wants-physical,
mental, moral, and practical? You, the Chartists, have been gradually
stimulated to expect the most unreasonable and impracticable results
from the Charter. If It were to be obtained to-morrow and its
workings known, there are none who would be more disappointed with
its effects than the Chartists themselves. It is not any mere
political change in your condition that can now be of any service to
you or society." The true remedy, he intimates, can only be
found in the Socialist Community at Queenwood.
Bureaucratic
Tendencies.
On the other hand, Owen's whole attitude towards the
people whom he desired to reform was strongly bureaucratic. He always
tended to regard the community ideal as something imposed on the
people from without, not arising spontaneously from within. In effect
he said to them: "You can lead a better life than the life you
are leading: to wit, the community life as I have pictured it. But
you are so stupid and ignorant that unless I keep urging, teaching,
and directing you, you will never discover this for yourselves."
He distrusted a spontaneous movement for social
betterment because he was convinced of the ignorance of the people.
At present they were not fit; they must be remade. He was convinced
of the practicality of his own proposals because his view of human
nature told him that people could be remade; his view of his own,
that he could remake them. He could not tolerate half measures. He
preached the revolution on the Owenite plan or nothing; but this is
quite intelligible when we remember his belief that nothing could
prevent the revolution on the Owenite plan. He is said to have stated
in an interview, explaining his high-handed conduct on a committee,
that" we must consent to be ruled by despots until we have
sufficient knowledge to govern ourselves.''
To Metternich, Prime Minister of Austria, he reports
himself to have said that "it will be much easier to reform the
world by Governments properly supported by the people than by any
other means. Let Governments once be enlightened as to their true
interests in promoting the happiness of their peoples, and they will
lend their willing assistance and powerful aid to accomplish this
ever to be desired result.''
Such a view constitutes the very antithesis of the
conception of a spontaneous movement among the people towards
self-government. Owen never seems to have recognised the almost
theoretic impossibility of devising an efficient government which is
truly representative of the people, and it is on this rock that his
community ship was found ultimately to split.
Reasons
for Failure of Communities.
The really important question that arises for
consideration from this short sketch of Owen's efforts to found
communities is whether the actual failure and break-up of every
community that was founded was due to incidental defects of bad
management in each successive case, or to anomalies inherent in the
community ideal itself, which made it unworkable in practice. Did the
communities fail simply because all communities must fail, or because
these particular communities were badly organised, insufficiently
financed, unwisely selected as to membership and so forth?
Now the most thorough and comprehensive scheme of
Communism ever put before the world is that contained in the Fifth
Book of Plato' s "Republic." Theoretically perfect and
logically complete, it embodies an ideal so inspiring and
comprehensive that we cannot but believe that Owen endeavoured to
model his own attempts at realisation closely upon it.
Against this plan for a communistic society Aristotle
makes certain criticisms, which derive great interest from the
significant manner in which they were borne out by Owen's
experiments.
In the first place, the distribution of the common
property, says Aristotle, will be a perpetual source of dispute.
Members will protest that they are not receiving in proportion to
their worth.
Secondly, compulsory association with others will not
bring harmony, but friction.
Thirdly, common property, inasmuch as it belongs to
nobody in particular, will be apt to be neglected by everybody.
Fourthly, it is obviously better to share voluntarily
with others what is your own than to hold it compulsorily in common.
Communism destroys generosity and hospitality by making them
unnecessary.
Fifthly, unless the community is very small, there
will be no real self-government by the members. Now the truth of
nearly every one of the strictures is exemplified by the course of
events at New Harmony and at Queenwood. Taking the last point first,
we have been struck already by the extraordinary elaboration of the
governing committee at New Harmony. With a community of a thousand
persons, some kind of delegation and representation was obviously
necessary; but in a community of equality, the mere existence of
superintendents and intendants, a group of officials, who might
conceivably act as a check upon one another, but were officially
uncontrolled during the period of office by the community,
constituted a grave inequality.
Hence the parent community is found to split up into
daughter communities. Dissension and distrust prevailed among the
members, we are told, because they had no real voice in the
governance of their affairs; the committee of government was
delegated from above.
Again, New Harmony made it clear that a most careful
selection of members was necessary before success could be achieved.
Sharpers, unsuccessful speculators, and amiable visionaries do not
form a good amalgam. There is no scourge for idleness, no incentive
to work. All very well if you are a set of religious fanatics who,
having abolished man-made law, will work owing to your possession of
divine grace, and eschew material goods. In New Harmony, however,
material goods were desired, but, being shared equally amongst all,
went to the idlers equally with the workers, There were further
social inequalities, religious and racial difference, yet the members
were compulsorily associated. Hence we are told that "it was
found much easier to assimilate a few with the same pursuits than
many having different occupations."
Two lessons emerge: make your community small enough
to be really self-governing, and make your members homogeneous, bound
together by a common enthusiasm, preferably religious, and it may
succeed.
So far we have pointed only to mistakes in the actual
experiments; we have not invalidated the ideal. To say that New
Harmony was run badly is not the same as saying that a community
cannot be run well. Is this latter statement true?
The
Community Ideal.
Roughly, the community ideal may be said to rest upon
the theory that there is a certain kind of good life that all men
should lead, and that this life should be roughly the same for all
men. Differences come from private property and the inequalities
thereof. Abolish differences and inequalities of property, and a
common kind of life may result.
Now, in the first place, equal participation in
common property predicates a great degree of intimacy and power of
getting on with each other among the participators. Intimacy and
knowledge are required both to avoid squabbling and to ensure a
proper selection of rulers. On the other hand, as soon as your
community is extended beyond a small number, it is difficult to make
the bulk of the members feel that they are taking part in the
direction of their own property. Could you then extend those
principles, which have had so little success even among small
communities, to a large heterogeneous population, compelled to rely
solely on itself for internal government and external defence? It
seems unlikely.
Nor must it be forgotten that the disadvantages which
attach to the administration by the members of property held in
common are serious. It is open to question whether they do not
outweigh its advantages.
The path of the individual in modern life is not a
path, but a groove. He has little scope for expanding his personality
or stamping his impress upon environment. His voice is a pipe in the
world, but it may be a thunder in his own home. It is here alone that
he may give expression to his own will and to the aspirations of his
own personality.
If you give to each only according to his worth, you
restrict his activities to definite tastes. On the other hand, the
possibilities of falling into distress through lack of wisdom in
management, and the contrary possibility of success by contrary
conduct, are valuable elements in the life of the citizen. So long as
private property exists, a man may, at least in that restricted
sphere, possess the power of carrying out his own plans in his own
way, and of displaying his own initiative. Under Communism he would
simply do the State's work under regulations. It is only in the home
that the capitalist may be said at present not to have got hold of
the worker. Without the control of a certain amount of material
property, then, a man cannot be said properly to give expression to
his own will.
Finally, as Aristotle naively remarks, "the
possession of private property is a source of harmless pleasure, and
therefore desirable."
The
Good Life.
The institution of Communism is not without
objections; but it was not advocated as an end in itself. It was
embraced and preached by Owen because he definitely desired to
produce a certain kind of life in his citizens, and he considered
that private property, by introducing the principle of difference,
militated against it. We have already seen reason to doubt Owen's
ethical principle that character and life may be formed for
individuals, and not by them. We have noticed the distrust and
opposition which his view of re- form, as something imposed upon the
worker from without, produced. Finally, we cannot subscribe to his
principle that there is one kind of good life for all men. This was
the Greek view, which lay at the basis of the Greek view of the
State. The State, according to Greek thinkers, was the one
organisation which made the good life possible for its members. It
was only within the State that they realised their full nature.
Similarly, in Owen's view, it was only in a community that man could
realise all that he had it in him to be.
We, on the other hand, have come to hold, as the
result of the individualist and democratic thinking of the last
century, that neither the State nor any individual is in a position
to predicate a certain kind of good life for others. We hold it vital
that each man should judge for himself what he holds to be valuable
in life; while, if we are to accept authority on such matters, it
must be self-chosen. Hence modern Utopias have always inspired a
feeling of repulsion, because men do not happen to want to live the
life which the authors of these hopeful and aggressive works want
them to live. It is here, I suspect, that we must look for the root
reason of the failure of Owen's communities. The members did not all
want to live one kind of life, nor was it the one kind of life Owen
favoured. For the first and last time the hack anti-Socialist
criticism hit the mark, "The Socialist did not take account of
human nature."
Value
of Owen's Work.
The communities were the concrete embodiment of all
that Owen stood for. They failed, but their failure did not negative
the value of his work. In an age when Individualism was rampant, Owen
was the first to emphasise the need of State control:
The Individualism of the Manchester School of
Liberals was based upon the view that man being fundamentally
selfish, he himself was the person most capable of looking after his
own profit and interests, without interference from his neighbours.
In a state of society with equality of power, wealth,
and opportunity, this position may be sound; it is obviously better
than to have everybody meddling with everybody else’s affair and
the State poking its inspectors into every household. Economically,
however, it rested on three fallacies:-
I. That each individual is equally farsighted and has
an equal power of knowing what he wants.
2. That each individual has an equal power of
obtaining it and equal freedom of choice.
3. That what all the individuals want is identical
with the well-being of the community as a whole.
The results of Individualist policy were the hideous
cruelties which necessitated the Factory Acts. It was seen that the
State must step in to prevent some individuals exploiting their
fellows in their efforts to satisfy their wants. As a result of his
experiences at New Lanark, Owen realised this fact very clearly. The
State must control its members; but, in order more efficiently to do
this, it must delegate its functions to self-supporting communities
wherein men may be trained to govern themselves.
We have said above that only the communities which
have banded themselves together for religious purposes have
approached success, but it is fairly clear that to some of the
settlers at Queenwood their community was a religion. An austere
enthusiasm for the millennium was illuminated by a devoted veneration
for their own community, which was pointing the way.
Hymns to community, a strange goddess, in the
Socialists' Hymn Book, bear witness to the devotion of the early
Communists to their ideal. And they worshipped Owen as a divinely
inspired prophet. Amid much that is ridiculous, both in the man
himself and in his followers, something cast in the heroic mould
remains. Owen saw and thought far in advance of his age. But it is
not in his intellectual creed that his greatness lies. Owen stands
out permanently as a prophet and a dreamer. Pervaded by a real hatred
of the iniquities of the social system as he found it, he combined
the inspiration which he drew from this source with an unflagging
enthusiasm in the pursuit of his ideals. It was the great force of
sincerity which enabled him to appeal so strongly to the imaginations
of men, and to suffuse his creed with a religious tinge. If he was a
dreamer, he was not content to dream his life. He possessed that
greatest of faiths, the faith to live his dreams.
NOTE.
The best life of Owen is entitled "Robert Owen:
a Biography," by Frank Podmore, two vols. Hutchinson, 1906. It
is out of print. Another is" The Life, Times, and Labours of
Robert Owen," by Lloyd Jones, third edition, 1900. Allen &
Unwin. 3s. 6d.
The most extensive bibliography available is
published at 1s. net (54 pages) by the National Library of Wales,
Aberystwyth, for the Welsh Bibliographical Society, "A
Bibliography of Robert Owen, the Socialist, I77I-I858," compiled
by A. J. Hawkes (1914). The best collection of Owenite literature is
in the Goldsmiths' Company's Library of Economic Literature.
University of London, Imperial Institute, S.W.7, which contains a
large part of the library of Owen's "Institute" in John
Street, Tottenham Court Road.
Posts
.jpeg)
