Owenism is theutopian socialistphilosophy of 19th-century social reformerRobert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known asOwenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of thecooperative movement.[1] The Owenite movement undertook several experiments in the establishment ofutopian communities organized according to communitarian and cooperative principles.[1] One of the best known of these efforts, which was unsuccessful, was the project atNew Harmony, Indiana, which started in 1825 and was abandoned by 1827. Owenism is also closely associated with the development of theBritish trade union movement, and with the spread of theMechanics' Institute movement.
Owen's economic thought grew out of widespread poverty in Britain in the aftermath of theNapoleonic Wars. His thought was rooted in 17th-century English "moral economy" ideals of "fair exchange, just price, and the right to charity." "Utopian socialist" economic thought such as Owen's was a reaction to thelaissez-faire impetus ofMalthusianPoor Law reform. Claeys notes that "Owen’s 'Plan' began as a grandiose but otherwise not exceptionally unusual workhouse scheme to place the unemployed poor in newly built rural communities."[2] Owen’s "plan" was itself derivative of (and ultimately popularized by) a number of Irish and English trade unionists such asWilliam Thompson andThomas Hodgskin, co-founder of theLondon Mechanics Institute. When this poverty led to revolt, as it did in Glasgow in April 1820, a "committee of gentlemen" from the area commissioned the cotton manufacturer and philanthropist, Robert Owen, to produce a "Report to the County of Lanark" in May 1820, which recommended a new form of pauper relief; the cooperative village. Owen's villages thus needed to be compared with the Dickensian "Houses of Industry" that were created after the passage of the 1834 Poor Law amendment act. Owen's report was to spark a widespread "socialist" movement that established co-operatives, labour exchanges, and experimental communities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.[3] Owen was to disseminate his ideas in North America beginning in 1824. His ideas were most widely received in New York and Philadelphia, where he was greeted by nascent working men's parties.
Owen was no theoretician, and the Owenite movement drew on a broad range of thinkers such asWilliam Thompson,John Gray,Abram Combe,Robert Dale Owen,George Mudie,John Francis Bray, DrWilliam King, andJosiah Warren. These men rooted their thought inRicardian socialism and thelabour theory of value.[4]
Although the early emphasis in Owenism was on the formation of utopian communities, these communities were predicated upon co-operative labour, and frequently, co-operative sales. For example, theEdinburgh Practical Society created by the founders ofOrbiston operated a co-operative store to raise the capital for the community.Abram Combe, the leader of that community, was to author the pamphletThe Sphere for Joint Stock Companies (1825), which made clear that Orbiston was not to be a self-subsistent commune, but a co-operative trading endeavor.[12]
For the majority of Owenites who did not live in these utopian communities, the working-class Owenite tradition was composed of three overlapping institutions: "the cooperative store, the labour exchange and the trade union."[13]
The cooperative ideas of Owen and Combe were further developed by the Brighton doctor,William King, publisher of "The Co-operator." Although the paper was only published for two years between 1827 and 1829, it served to unify the movement.
The next attempt to broaden the cooperative movement was theBritish Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge (B.A.P.C.K.) founded in 1829. It was the successor to theLondon Cooperative Society, and served as a clearing house of information for Britain's 300 cooperatives. It provided pamphlets, lectures and "missionaries" for the movement. It held its quarterly meetings in theLondon Mechanics Institute, with frequent lectures fromWilliam Lovett, and many other radical Owenites who would go on to lead theLondon Working Men's Association.[14] B.A.P.C.K. rejected joint stock cooperative efforts as "systems of competition."[15] Its aim was the establishment of an agricultural, manufacturing or trading community. They recognized that the success of cooperation depended upon parliamentary reform, and this proved the basis for working with the radical reformers who would go on to create the Chartist movement.[16]
TheNational Equitable Labour Exchange was founded in London in 1832 and spread to several English cities, most notablyBirmingham, before closing in 1834. Beginning from the Ricardian Socialist view that labour was the source of all value, the exchange issued "Labour Notes" similar to banknotes, denominated in hours.[17]John Gray proposed aNational Chamber of Commerce as a central bank issuing alabour currency. A similar time-based currency would be created by an American Owenite,Josiah Warren, who founded theCincinnati Time Store. A short-lived Labour Exchange was also founded in 1836 in Kingston, Upper Canada.[18]
Robert Owen was resolutely apolitical, and initially pursued a non-class based form of community organization. However, as the focus of the movement shifted from the formation of utopian communities to cooperatives, Owenites became active in labour organization in both the United Kingdom and the United States. In the United Kingdom, Owenites became further involved in electoral reform (now envisioned as part of a broaderReform Movement).
Between 1829 and 1835, Owenite socialism was politicized through two organizations; theBritish Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge, and its successor, theNational Union of the Working Classes (founded in 1831, and abandoned in 1835). The aim of B.A.P.C.K. was to promote cooperatives, but its members recognized that political reform was necessary if they were to achieve that end. They thus formed a "Political Union" which was the principal form of political activity in the period before theReform Act 1832. Political Unions organized petitioning campaigns meant to sway parliament. The B.A.P.C.K. leadership thus formed the National Union of the Working Classes (N.U.W.C.) to push for a combination of Owenism and radical democratic political reform.[19]
Owen himself resisted the N.U.W.C.'s political efforts at reform, and by 1833, he was an acknowledged leader of the British trade union movement. In February 1834, he helped form Britain's first national labour organization, theGrand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organisation began to break up in the summer of 1834[20] and by November,[21] it had ceased to function.
It was from this heady mix of working class trade unionism, co-operativism, and political radicalism in the disappointed wake of the1832 Reform Bill and the1834 New Poor Law, that a number of prominent Owenite leaders such asWilliam Lovett,John Cleave andHenry Hetherington helped form theLondon Working Men's Association in 1836. The London Working Men's Association led the Chartist movement demanding universal suffrage. Many have viewed Owenite socialism andChartism as mutually hostile because of Owen's refusal to engage in politics. However, Chartists and Owenites were "many parts but one body" in this initial stage.[22]
Robert Dale Owen emigrated to the United States in 1825 to help his father runNew Harmony, Indiana. After the community dissolved, Robert Dale Owen moved toNew York City and became the co-editor of theFree Enquirer, a socialistic and anti-Christian weekly, withFrances Wright, the founder of theNashoba community, from 1828 to 1832. They also founded a "Hall of Science" in New York like those being created by Owenites in the United Kingdom. From this base, Owen and Wright sought to influence theWorking Men's Party.
The Working Men's Party emerged spontaneously out of strike action by journeymen in 1829 who protested having to work more than 10 hours a day. They appointed a Committee of Fifty to discuss organization, and they proposed running a ticket of journeymen in the legislative elections. At the same time, Owen and Wright were continuing their own efforts to organize New York City's working classes. The two groups uneasily merged, and were encouraged by their success in the elections. To support the movement,George Henry Evans began publishing theWorking Man's Advocate.[23]
The new party quickly fell victim to factionalism over several controversial proposals. Owen's controversial contribution was a proposed "state guardianship plan" where children would be removed from their homes at the age of two and placed in government run schools, to protect them from the degeneracy of slum life and allow their optimum development through free schooling.[24] By late 1830, the party was effectively dead.[25]
Owenism was introduced toUpper Canada (now Ontario) in 1835 by the Rev. Thaddeus Osgood, a Montreal-based evangelical minister. Osgood returned to London in 1829. Deep in debt, he was unable to return to Canada, and spent the succeeding five years preaching in London'sworkhouses and prisons. It was in this working class milieu that Osgood met and debated with Robert Owen. Although attracted by the "home colony" model of poverty relief, Osgood was offended by Owens’ anti-religious rhetoric. Drawing on Owenism, rather than Owen, Osgood proposed to found "Relief Unions" for the poor when he finally returned to Canada in 1835. Through Osgood's influence, Robert Owens’ ideas were widely debated in Toronto.[26] Osgood's proposal elicited support from across Upper Canada in early 1836, and petitions for the Relief Union's incorporation were sent to the Assembly and Legislative Council. Significantly, Osgood's plan was proposed at the same time as the new Lt. Governor, SirFrancis Bond Head was arriving in Toronto. Bond Head was an Assistant Poor Law Administrator, and intent on imposing workhouses for the poor, not Owenite colonies.[27]
In Chapter III ofThe Communist Manifesto,Karl Marx analyzes Owenism as a species ofutopian socialism that developed in the "early undeveloped period" of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat— and that formerly put out literature "full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class". However, Marx interprets Owenism as having, by the time of his writing in 1848, parted ways with Chartism to become a "reactionary sect" that is "compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois class" to receive the funding necessary for utopian communities or other projects. Remaining advocates of Owenism, claims Marx, now "violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class" such as Chartist advocacy for extension ofsuffrage; ″The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and Reformists."[28]
