The History of White People is a 2010 book by Nell Irvin Painter, in which the author explores the idea of whiteness throughout history, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing through the beginning of scientific racism in early modern Europe to 19th- through 21st-century America.
Overview
The
book describes attitudes toward and definitions of race among
Europeans, and particularly Americans of European descent. The author
says the idea of race is not just a matter of biology but also includes
"concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty".
The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans,
had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social
class, with the lowest class being slaves.
Throughout most of European history, slaves were generally of European
origin, often from conquered countries. From the fifth to the eleventh
century the Vikings were especially prolific slavers, capturing and
selling the inhabitants wherever they went.
It was only in relatively modern times that slavery became associated
with race. In 1790, U.S. citizens were defined as "free white men"; this
excluded white men who were indentured servants.
By the mid 19th century in America, white people (as then defined) were
all free; slaves were of African or part-African descent.
When writers and scientists began to explore the concept of race,
they focused on Europe, describing three or four different races among
Europeans. Much of the classification was done by head shape and skull
measurements, as well as height and skin pigmentation.
The most attractive and most admirable race was that found in
northwestern Europe, while the inhabitants of eastern and southern
Europe were classified as lower races. The categorizing of different
European races had legal and social effects in the United States, where
19th century immigrants from less favored areas such as Ireland, Italy,
and Iberia were treated as less than fully "white" for legal and social
purposes.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States,
discussion of race often included a belief in the permanent superiority
of one racial group over others, and a fear of the loss of racial
purity. Intelligence testing was widely used as a means of ranking
various races and ethnicities; this led to immigration laws that
encouraged immigration from the presumably most desirable racial and
ethnic groups while discouraging or forbidding others. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an influential figure in promoting some of these racial theories.Eugenics became a widely discussed issue and was embraced to some extent by many prominent people including Theodore Roosevelt and David Starr Jordan.
Eugenics proponents urged higher reproductive rates among the most
desirable population and sometimes sterilization of the less desirable
elements.
The author traces four consecutive "enlargements of American
whiteness" by which Irish, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, and other
discriminated-against ethnicities gradually became fully accepted into
white society. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
eliminated legal discrimination by race. As of the book's publication
date, 2010, mixed-race people were more common and were becoming
integrated: "The dark of skin who happen to be rich ... and the light of
skin from any (racial background) who are beautiful, are now well on
their way to inclusion."
The author concludes that race has not disappeared from American
society – "the fundamental black/white binary endures" – but the
"category of whiteness – or we might say more precisely, a category of
nonblackness – effectively expands."
Reception
The book was a New York Times best seller. Professor of English Paul Devlin, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle,
said the book "is perhaps the definitive story of a most curious
adjective. It is a scholarly, non-polemical masterpiece of broad
historical synthesis, combining political, scientific, economic and
cultural history." Historian Linda Gordon, writing in The New York Times,
says the book "has much to teach everyone, including whiteness experts,
but it is accessible and breezy, its coverage broad and therefore
necessarily superficial." She adds that she wishes she had had this
book, "an insightful and lively exposition", to help her teach
undergraduate students about race theory. Editor Thomas Rogers in Salon calls it an "exhaustive and fascinating new look at the history of the idea of the white race". Historian J.R. McNeill in Population and Development Review
praised Neill's "grasp of American history and culture", but criticized
"her forays into ancient history or modern science", giving as an
example for the latter her "ill-advised remarks on the future of natural selection and skin color".
In January 2019, it was translated into French as Histoire des Blancs.
Settlers was first published as a letter-sized pamphlet in 1983 under the title The Mythology of the White Proletariat: A Short Course in Understanding Babylon. Settlers was distributed within covert networks organized by activists associated with the BLA. A fourth edition was published jointly by PM Press and Kersplebedeb in 2014 under the title Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern. The 2014 edition eschews the oversized format and includes two new additions: an interview with Sakai and an essay on reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Marxist–Leninist–Maoist academic Joshua Moufawad-Paul guessed that the book's lack of success in academia is due to its breaking the "implicit rules of intellectual chivalry". Historian Dan Berger noted that the book was more pessimistic than other works on race written during the same time period.
Impact and reception
Settlers went largely unnoticed within academia, though it has been somewhat influential among radicals. Historian David Roediger cited Settlers in his book The Wages of Whiteness making it among the few scholarly publications to reference the work. Roediger stated that while he preferred Ted Allen's
works on white identity, criticizing what he felt was the book's "at
times 'categorical and transhistorical' dismissal of those defined as
white", he had hoped other labor historians would take notice of the
book's arguments. Berger described Settlers as a "paradigm-setting" book that developed conceptions about settler colonialism that would later become axiomatic within the field of critical ethnic studies.
Some critics praised the book's account of the historical construction of whiteness and class in the United States. Kevin Bruyneel, writing in the book Settler Memory, described Settlers
as among the first and most comprehensive works aiming to define
American whiteness by "its historical foundations in settler life". Writing in Labour/Le Travail,
Fred Burrill acknowledged criticisms of the book over its usage of
contingent categories, but otherwise praised the book's "clear
articulation" of the development of classes in the United States.
Fredy Perlman, in a footnote to the essay "The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism", described the work as a "sensitive" application of Mao-Zedong-Thought to American history; however, Perlman objected to its political prescriptions and argued that Settlers blatantly aimed to reproduce the same repressive systems described earlier in the work. In return, former Black Panther Kuwasi Balagoon
wrote a response to Perlman's essay from prison calling him a
"cheap-shot artist who offered an underhanded review" and praising Settlers as a historically faithful work, in spite of its Marxism.
While largely agreeing with Sakai's analysis, Balagoon opined that
grassroots collectives would better serve the oppressed than mass
institutions "under the leadership of a communist party".
Weather Underground militant David Gilbert praised the book's historical content as "revealing and useful",
though he expressed disagreement at the book's conclusions, arguing
that Sakai had downplayed historical examples that evidenced the
possibility for class struggle among white working-class Americans. Both Gilbert and Berger lamented the book's lack of attention to gender, with Gilbert noting that the women's movement could form a progressive current within the white working class. In the Monthly Review Economist Michael Yates critiqued Gilbert's review of the book as "too generous",
calling Sakai's account of white Americans "preposterous on its face"
and "an insult to those whites who have suffered the grossest
exploitation and still do".
Robert Owen (/ˈoʊɪn/; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic
communities, sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, and
'believed in lifelong education, establishing an Institute for the
Formation of Character and School for Children that focused less on job
skills than on becoming a better person'. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester
and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of
his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing co-operatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.
Biography
Early life and family
Baptism record of Robert Owen in the Newtown Anglican Parish Register
Robert Owen was born in Newtown, at a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger
and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming
family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two
of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne,
John and Richard.
Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be an apprentice draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire, for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teenage years. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square.
On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow
philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After
their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up a home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield House in Lanark.
Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom
died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three
daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832).
Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his
daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States,
becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana.
Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary,
remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s.
Textile mills
While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules,
a new invention for spinning cotton threads, but exchanged his business
shares within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in
rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill
at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen
voluntarily gave up his contract of partnership and left the company,
and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and
later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock.
By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit and management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected as a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers.
In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800.
Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to
conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial
ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde
turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest.
About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to
the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh
and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children
well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was
unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to
improve their workers' lives.
Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft,
drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation
neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respectable people
rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills.
Truck system of payment by order of Robert Owen and Benj Woolfield, National Equitable Labour Exchange, 22 July 1833.
Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system,
paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value
outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for
shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost,
passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing
alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the
basis for Britain's co-operative shops, some of which continue trading
in altered forms to this day.
To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working
communities, Owen began experimenting with communal living in the United States in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in the United States before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these.
Owen and his son William sailed to the United States in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana.
In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his funds to purchase an
existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along
the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society,
the religious group that owned the property and had founded the
communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided
in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community.
Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American
thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February
and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the House of Representatives to Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams.
His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the
Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the
United States. Owenism,
among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can
be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.
Owen convinced William Maclure,
a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia
to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's
involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as
Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot.
These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for
educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression.
Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual
Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised
and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long
absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day
management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his
business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic
failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a
thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society
was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists
and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William,
David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen
Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended.
Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with
the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other
reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen,
they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic
devotees to principle", and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists", with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in".
Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty
and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained:
"We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over
again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result ... It
appeared that it was nature's inherent law of diversity that had
conquered us ... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the
individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of
self-preservation". Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members.
Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic co-operatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire,
England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half
years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to
sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely,
Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise
an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to
the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by the
Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge.
Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London
became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After
extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners,
Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark.
He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is
queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer".
Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal
experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he
remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial
equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in
factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a
weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas.
In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency
in which the exchange of goods was effected using labour notes; this
system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London
exchange continued until 1833, with a Birmingham branch operating for
just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834.
Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for
social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets,
periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed.
As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death.
Crowds gather to commemorate Robert Owen at his grave in Newtown, Montgomeryshire on 12 July 1902
Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen
returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died
there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died
penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by
his sons in 1844.
Philosophy and influence
Owen
tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his
workers' confidence and continued to have success through improved
efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international
reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the
future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods.The opinions of many such visitors were favourable.
Some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to
arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813,
for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known QuakerWilliam Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children.
Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which
individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or
blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen
to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called
for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral
and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent
irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an
individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education
and social reform.
Relying on his observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw
his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary
constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers.
Owen hoped for a better and more harmonious environment that
promoted mutual respect, love and moral values. He believed everyone
would have a good education and better living condition to live
righteously.
He valued social and educational reforms for the middle class and
rejected the capitalist power which elevated the powerful figures at the
expense of others.
Regardless of his adversaries' attacks, he remained persuasive of his
goals. Owen funded kids' schools and advocated for free education, equal
rights and freedom. He participated in legislation to improve
labourers' wages and working conditions.
Owen believed compassion, kindness and solidarity corrected bad habits, encouraged self-discipline and enhanced a person's attitude. Force oppressed people and affected their mental health. In his view, unless people were educated in a proper environment, obtained equal opportunities
for jobs and maintained social norms, differences between labour
classes, conflicts, and inequalities would persist just as in the
British colonies.
Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed
that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits.
So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public
mentality by expanding voting rights.
Education
Owen's
work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and
continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of
distributive co-operation, and the founder of nursery schools".
His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for
the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other
programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to
adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act
of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading
members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks
Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe.
Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education".
Supporters of the methods argued that the manners of children brought
up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained;
health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown
and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers
remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth,
regular and commercially successful way.
Perhaps one of Robert Owen's most memorable ideas was his silent
monitor method. Owen was opposed to common corporal punishment;
therefore, to have some form of discipline he developed the "silent
monitor". In his mills, he would hang a four-sided block each displaying
a different colour representing the behaviour of the employee. The
colour for poor performance was black and he believed it aligned with
the Scottish term 'black-affronted' meaning to be embarrassed, while the
opposite is white to symbolize meritorious conduct. His strategy was
successful as employees at the time cared about maintaining a good
relationship with Owen to leave a good impression on him since he took a
different approach to employee regulation. This idea supports his
overall thought that human nature is moulded for better or worse by the
environment. Owen had a significant impact on British socialism as well
as on unionism which helped him set an example for others.
Labor
Owen
adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers
produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed
above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all
who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The
intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no
great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and
their families were idyllic for the time.
Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark.
By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with
the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours
rest".
Socialism
In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes:
... the present arrangement of society is the most anti-social, impolitic, and irrational that can be devised; that under its influence all the superior and valuable qualities of the human race are repressed from infancy, and that the most unnatural means are used to bring out the most injurious propensities ...
Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets,
in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers,
would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However,
Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own.
Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars
drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on
how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the
immediate misery to the wars, he saw it as the underlying cause of
competition of human labour with machinery and recommended setting up
self-sufficient communities.
Owen appealed to the self-interest of capitalists, pointing out
that just as machines need proper care and treatment to guarantee they
work smoothly and efficiently, so do humans.
Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle
on land from 1,000 to 1,500 acres (405 to 607 ha), all living in one
building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may
have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen
also proposed that each family have its private apartment and the
responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three.
Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents
would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen
further suggested that such communities be established by individuals,
parishes, counties,
or other governmental units. In each case, there would be effective
supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results
should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the
best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World".
Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His
developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the
optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would
possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as
possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such
communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be
formed in the circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by a
common interest.
Owen grew to be known as a utopian socialist and his works are
considered to reflect this attitude. Although he could be considered a
member of the bourgeoisie
his relationship with this class was often complicated. He fought to
pass legislation that benefitted workers. He was an advocate for the Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819. He supported socialist ideas so his views did not have an immediate impact in Britain or the United States.
Spiritualism
Tomb of Robert Owen, Newtown, Powys. The Art Nouveau railings were a 1902 addition
In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden,
an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England.
He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The
Future of the Human Race; or great glorious and future revolution to be
effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior
men and women.
Owen claimed to have had medium contact with the spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson
and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the
present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a
true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal
peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and
love."
Owen
was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who
spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of
the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers,
which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade
unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian
communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free
education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race
(1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of
Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience.
Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of
work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct.
Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the
Owenites and his children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in
women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and
museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian
communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New
Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is
closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts.
Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons,
Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter,
Jane, who followed him to America to live in New Harmony, Indiana:
Robert Dale Owen
(1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the
New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He
wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847) and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850,
and argued in support of widows and married women's property and
divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported
public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872).
William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father
in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton goods
manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father
returned to Scotland, and serve as an adviser to the community. He
organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827 but died of unknown
causes at the age of 40.
Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States
in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who
set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry
Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living in New Harmony.
David Dale Owen
(1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New
Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural
scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States
geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana.
Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War
in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in
Tennessee from 1849 to 1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During
the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department from 1864 to 1879. He helped plan Purdue University
and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before
its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent
his retirement years on research and writing.
Honours and tributes
Robert Owen Memorial (left), next to The Reformers Memorial, Kensal Green Cemetery, London
A simple slate tomb for Owen was installed in St Mary's Churchyard in Newtown. In 1902 the co-operative movement erected Art Nouveau railings around the tomb as a monument to him.
In 1956 a bronze statue of Owen by Gilbert Bayes was installed in a small garden dedicated to Owen in Newtown.
In 1994 the Co-operative Bank installed a copy of the Newtown statue in front of its headquarters on Balloon Street, Manchester.
Criticism of Owen
Owen's
project was considered unachievable because he did not establish a
guideline that stipulated the administration of properties and the
conditions of memberships. As a result, some critics found his plans
unsatisfactory and ineffective because the overpopulation and shortage
of supply created antagonism within the community.[90]
Owen's opponents view him as a dictator, and a blasphemer of
Christianity because he rejected sacred beliefs and defied anyone who
differed from his views.
Owen perceived religion as a source of fear and ignorance. Therefore,
people were unable to think rationally if they stayed attached to
"fallacious testimonies" of religion.
Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, even though they viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that is responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic
system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of
that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however,
their scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies.
They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to
coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time,
was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's
"socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists
"socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and
has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by its power."
Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system
could only occur once the working class was organized into a
revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was
completely independent of all capitalist class influence, whereas the
utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists
to achieve the transition to socialism.
Selected published works
A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A
New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character
Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the
Condition of Mankind, for the second edition, 1816
Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815
Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817)
Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818)
An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819)
Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821)
An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823)
An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832
The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849
Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen.
Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and
outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive
ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction.
Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian
socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of
existing society. These visions of ideal societies competed with revolutionary and social democratic movements.
The term utopian socialism is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century by later socialists as a pejorative in order to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic. A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.
Those anarchists and Marxists who dismissed utopian socialism did so because utopian socialists generally did not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution
was necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believed that
people of all classes could voluntarily adopt their plan for society if
it was presented convincingly.
Cooperative socialism could be established among like-minded people in
small communities that would demonstrate the feasibility of their plan
for the broader society. Because of this tendency, utopian socialism was also related to classical radicalism, a left-wing liberal ideology.
Development
The term "utopian socialism" was used by socialist thinkers after the publication of The Communist Manifesto to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communal, meritocratic, or other notions of perfect societies without considering how these societies could be created or sustained.
In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx criticized the economic and philosophical arguments of Proudhon set forth in The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty. Marx accused Proudhon of wanting to rise above the bourgeoisie. In the history of Marx's thought and Marxism,
this work is pivotal in the distinction between the concepts of utopian
socialism and what Marx and the Marxists claimed as scientific
socialism. Although utopian socialists shared few political, social, or
economic perspectives, Marx and Engels argued that they shared certain
intellectual characteristics. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:
The
undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far
superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of
every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they
habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class;
nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once
they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan
of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political,
and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their
ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily
doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the
new social Gospel.
Marx and Engels associated utopian
socialism with communitarian socialism which similarly sees the
establishment of small intentional communities as both a strategy for
achieving and the final form of a socialist society.[7] Marx and Engels used the term scientific socialism
to describe the type of socialism they saw themselves developing.
According to Engels, socialism was not "an accidental discovery of this
or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle
between two historically developed classes, namely the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of
society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historical-economic
succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had
of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus
created the means of ending the conflict". Critics have argued that
utopian socialists who established experimental communities were in fact
trying to apply the scientific method to human social organization and were therefore not utopian. On the basis of Karl Popper's definition of science as "the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test", Joshua Muravchik
argued that "Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real
'scientific socialists.' They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they
tested it by attempting to form socialist communities". By contrast,
Muravchik further argued that Marx made untestable predictions about the
future and that Marx's view that socialism would be created by
impersonal historical forces may lead one to conclude that it is
unnecessary to strive for socialism because it will happen anyway.
Social unrest between the employee and employer in a society
results from the growth of productive forces such as technology and
natural resources are the main causes of social and economic
development.
These productive forces require a mode of production, or an economic
system, that's based around private property rights and institutions
that determine the wage for labor. Additionally, the capitalist rulers control the modes of production.
This ideological economic structure allows the bourgeoises to undermine
the worker's sensibility of their place in society, being that the
bourgeoises rule the society in their own interests. These rulers of
society exploit the relationship between labor and capital, allowing for
them to maximize their profit.
To Marx and Engels, the profiteering through the exploitation of
workers is the core issue of capitalism, explaining their beliefs for
the oppression of the working class. Capitalism will reach a certain
stage, one of which it cannot progress society forward, resulting in the
seeding of socialism.
As a socialist, Marx theorized the internal failures of capitalism. He
described how the tensions between the productive forces and the modes
of production would lead to the downfall of capitalism through a social
revolution.
Leading the revolution would be the proletariat, being that the
preeminence of the bourgeoise would end. Marx's vision of his society
established that there would be no classes, freedom of mankind, and the
opportunity of self-interested labor to rid any alienation.
Since the mid-19th century, Engels overtook utopian socialism in
terms of intellectual development and number of adherents. At one time
almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claimed
to be Marxist. Currents such as Owenism and Fourierism
attracted the interest of numerous later authors but failed to compete
with the now dominant Marxist and Anarchist schools on a political
level. It has been noted that they exerted a significant influence on
the emergence of new religious movements such as spiritualism and occultism.
Utopian socialists were seen as wanting to expand the principles
of the French revolution in order to create a more rational society.
Despite being labeled as utopian by later socialists, their aims were
not always utopian and their values often included rigid support for the
scientific method and the creation of a society based upon scientific
understanding.
In literature and in practice
Utopian socialist pamphlet of Swiss social medical doctor Rudolf Sutermeister (1802–1868)
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) published Looking Backward
in 1888, a utopian romance novel about a future socialist society. In
Bellamy's utopia, property was held in common and money replaced with a
system of equal credit for all. Valid for a year and non-transferable
between individuals, credit expenditure was to be tracked via
"credit-cards" (which bear no resemblance to modern credit cards which
are tools of debt-finance). Labour was compulsory from age 21 to 40 and
organised via various departments of an Industrial Army to which most
citizens belonged. Working hours were to be cut drastically due to
technological advances (including organisational). People were expected
to be motivated by a Religion of Solidarity and criminal behavior was
treated as a form of mental illness or "atavism". The book ranked as
second or third best seller of its time (after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur). In 1897, Bellamy published a sequel entitled Equality as a reply to his critics and which lacked the Industrial Army and other authoritarian aspects.
William Morris (1834–1896) published News from Nowhere in 1890, partly as a response to Bellamy's Looking Backward,
which he equated with the socialism of Fabians such as Sydney Webb.
Morris' vision of the future socialist society was centred around his
concept of useful work as opposed to useless toil and the redemption of
human labour. Morris believed that all work should be artistic, in the
sense that the worker should find it both pleasurable and an outlet for
creativity. Morris' conception of labour thus bears strong resemblance
to Fourier's, while Bellamy's (the reduction of labour) is more akin to
that of Saint-Simon or in aspects Marx.
Many participants in the historical kibbutz movement in Palestine in the Ottoman Empire, then later Mandatory Palestine under British occupation and later Israel were motivated by utopian socialist ideas. Augustin Souchy
(1892–1984) spent most of his life investigating and participating in
many kinds of socialist communities. Souchy wrote about his experiences
in his autobiography Beware! Anarchist! Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) published Walden Two in 1948. The Twin Oaks Community was originally based on his ideas. Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) wrote about an impoverished anarchist society in her book The Dispossessed,
published in 1974, in which the anarchists agree to leave their home
planet and colonize a barely habitable moon in order to avoid a bloody
revolution.
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
_by_John_Cranch,_1845.jpg)
.jpg)
