The Cincinnati Time Store (1827-1830) was the first in a series of retail stores created by Americanindividualist anarchistJosiah Warren to test his economic labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827 until May 1830. He sold things at-cost plus a small markup for his time. It is usually considered to be the first time alternative currency labor notes were used, and as such the first experiment in what would later be called mutualism. He also founded stores in New Harmony, Indiana and at Modern Times, Long Island. The store in Cincinnati
closed in 1830 with Warren being satisfied he demonstrated running and
managing a business without the "erection of any power over the
individual". His theory — replacing money with time — was turned into an actual practical demonstration project.
It was the first such activity, preceding similar labor notes in
Europe by more than 20 years, and still has implications for other
concepts of currency such as cryptocurrencies. Nonetheless, at the time it was the most popular mercantile institution in Cincinnati.
History
Warren
embraced the labor theory of value, which says that the value of a
commodity is the amount of labor that goes into producing or acquiring
it. From this he concluded that it was therefore unethical to charge
more labor for a product than the labor required to produce it. Warren
summed up this policy in the phrase "Cost the limit of price,"
with "cost" referring the amount of labor one exerted in producing a
good. Believing the labor is the foundational cost of things, he held
that equal amounts of labor should, naturally, receive equal material
compensation. He set out to examine if his theories could be put to
practice by establishing his "labor for labor store." If his experiment
proved to be successful, his plan was to establish various colonies
whose participants all agreed to use "cost the limit of price" in all
economic transactions, hoping that all of society would eventually adopt
the tenet in all economic affairs.
A 19th-century example of barter: A sample labor for labor note for the Cincinnati Time Store. Scanned from Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren (1846)
In the store, customers could purchase goods with "labor notes" which represented an agreement to perform labor.
The items in the store were initially marked up 7% to account for the
labor required to bring them to market with the price increasing the
longer the time that a customer spent with the shopkeeper, as measured
by a timer dial; later this markup was reduced to 4%. Corn was used as a
standard, with 12 pounds of corn being exchangeable with one hour of
labor. The result of the system was that no one was able to profit from
the labor of another — every individual ostensibly received the "full
produce" of his labor. Adjustments were made for the difficulty and
disagreeableness of the work performed, so that time was not the only
factor taken into consideration. Warren also set up boards on the wall
where individuals could post what kind of services they were seeking or
had to sell so that others could respond, and trade among each other
using labor notes.
After a rough initial period, the store proved to be very
successful. Warren's goods were much cheaper than competitors', though
he maintained that he was not trying to put other stores out of
business. Another store in the neighborhood converted to Warren's
methods. The fact that prices for goods rose the more time a customer
spent with Warren resulted in very efficient transactions. Warren said
that he was doing more business in one hour than normal businesses do in
one day, leading him to close shop part of the day to rest. Though the
store was successful, the problem of equal labor times for different
difficulties of work was a concern for Warren. He was never able to
reconcile the objectivity of his "labor for labor" prescription —
treating all labor as essentially fungible goods
— with the subjectivity employed in determining how much time used for
one type labor entailed the same amount of work exerted during a
different amount of time performing another type of labor. He settled to
simply credit it with being a matter of individual judgment. Warren
closed the store in May 1830 in order to depart to set up colonies based
upon the labor-cost principle (the most successful of these being "Utopia"), convinced that the store was a successful experiment in "Cost the limit of price."
In fact, the store became Cincinnati's most popular at the time. As Cincinnati librarian Steve Kemple noted:
When the advantages of the store became known and its
method understood, it was the most popular mercantile institution in the
city. The people called it the “Time Store,” not because it gave credit
or sold goods on installments, but on account of the peculiar and
original method adopted to fix and regulate the amount of the merchant’s
compensation. This was determined on the principle of the equal
exchange of labor, measured by the time occupied, and exchanged hour for
hour with other kinds of labor.
Josiah Warren credited Robert Owen with the creation of the idea for the labor-for-labor note. It was Warren, however, that actually put it into practice at the Time Store. Indeed, Owen thereafter opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange, which embodied the same concept and practice.
The Cincinnati Time Store experiment in use of labor as a medium of
exchange antedated similar European efforts by two decades.
Reception
Betty
Joy Nash noted that, to varying degrees, the time store "communities
strived to eliminate discrimination by class, sex, and race, and
fostered education and scientific inquiry".
The documentary film Anarchism in America (1981), by Pacific Street Films and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, argued that Anarchism had its roots in 19th America with people like Josiah Warren and the Time Store.
Although it goes back to 1827 through 1830, Josiah Warner's
"Cincinnati Time Store", which sold merchandise in units of hours of
work called "labour notes" which resembled paper money, this was
"[p]erhaps ... the anticipator of all future" Local exchange trading systems, and was even a precursor to modern cryptocurrency.
Economist Robert J. Shiller used the perceived failure of the Cincinnati Time Store as an analogy to suggest that cryptocurrencies (e.g., Bitcoin) are a "speculative bubble" waiting to burst.
co-operator; social reformer, textile mill co-owner; philanthropic capitalist
Spouse(s)
Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale
Children
Jackson Dale (b. 1799) Robert Dale (b. 1801) William (b. 1802) Ann (or Anne) Caroline (b. 1805) Jane Dale (b. 1805) David Dale (b. 1807) Richard Dale (b. 1809) Mary (b. 1810)
Parent(s)
Robert Owen and Anne (Williams) Owen
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 cooperative
movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted
experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective
approach to child rearing, including government control of education. 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 model for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years; other Owenite
Utopian communities also failed. In 1828, Owen returned to London,
where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.
Early life and education
Baptism record of Robert Owen in the Newtown Parish Register
Robert Owen was born in Newtown, 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 apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens.
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]
While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules,
a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business
share 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 a contracted promise of partnership, 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, management
skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was
elected 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.
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 home in New
Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland.
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.
New Lanark mill
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 respected 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.
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 the 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.
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".
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.
However, 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 Quaker William 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.
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. 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 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 own 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'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 cooperation, 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 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.
Eight-hour day
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".
Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, and began pursuing what he described as 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. In addition, as misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars
captured national attention, the government invited Owen to offer
advice on what to do to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although Owen
attributed the immediate misery to the wars, he argued that the
underlying cause was competition of human labour with machinery, and
recommended setting up self-sufficient communities.
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 is
likely to have been influenced by the size of the village of New
Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private
apartments 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 circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common
interest.
Arguments against Owen and his answers
Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas.
Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty.
The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of
everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles.
Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in
workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence.
Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion.
His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to
accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of
religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the
character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they
would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social
order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put
into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more
freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working
classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more
useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to
the security of the state when given more freedom than the British
Constitution did at the time. 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.
Other notable critics of Owen include and Friedrich Engels, who 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 are 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 own 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 was a
Utopian, since his objective was "to discover a new and more perfect
system of social order and to impose this upon society".
They believed that socialism would erupt from within the class conflict
itself as a result of the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
Moreover, socialism could only be achieved by violent revolution, since
the bourgeoisie would always be able to deflect and block peaceful
attempts.
To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working
communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in
1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America 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 America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana.
In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own 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 U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. 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) – as well as 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 town, his grand plan was never fully realised, and
Owen 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 own 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 cooperatives 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 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 by means of labour notes;
this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The
London exchange continued until 1833, 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.
In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false.[63] 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 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."
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.
Death and legacy
Crowds of locals gather to commemorate Robert Owen at his grave in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in the 1890s
Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen
returned to his native village 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.
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 of his own 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 at 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 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 who lived at 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 in 1849–1859, 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 in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University
and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before
its first classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He
spent his retirement years on research and writing.
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 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, 181
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)
Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies. For example, although the 2005 Eurobarometer survey indicated that the majority of Europeans hold some form of belief in a higher power, fewer point explicitly to the Christian God.
Some scholars have disputed the global decline of Christianity,
and instead hypothesized of an evolution of Christianity which allows it
to not only survive, but actively expand its influence in contemporary
societies.
Decline of Christianity
A deconsecrated church in Australia, now in use as a restaurant. Declining attendance can lead to the consolidation of congregations and repurposing of church buildings.
A post-Christian society is one in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion but that has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews
that are not necessarily Christian (and also may not necessarily
reflect any world religion's standpoint or may represent a combination
of either several religions or none). Post-Christian tends to refer to
the loss of Christianity's monopoly, if not its followers, in historically Christian societies. Postchristian societies are found across the Global North/West: for example, though the 2005 Eurobarometer survey indicated that the majority of Europeans hold some form of belief in a higher power; fewer point explicitly to the Christian God.
Despite this decline, Christianity remains the dominant religion in Europe and the Americas. According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 76% of the population of Europe, 77% of North America and 90% of Latin America and the Caribbean identified themselves as Christians.
Postchristianity is the loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in public affairs, especially in the Western world where Christianity had previously flourished, in favor of alternative worldviews such as secularism, nationalism, environmentalism, and organized atheism; sometimes militant as well as other ideologies such as veganism or ethical veganism,
that are no longer necessarily rooted in the language and assumptions
of Christianity amongst many other ideologies. They previously existed
in an environment of ubiquitous Christianity (i.e. Christendom).
As an example, an era of increasing fascination and common
conversion to eastern religions rooted in Asia has been documented among
Western folk of white Christian heritage and liberal backgrounds.
Alternative perspectives
Other
scholars have disputed the global decline of Christianity, and instead
hypothesized of an evolution of Christianity which allows it to not only
survive, but actively expand its influence in contemporary societies.
Philip Jenkins hypothesized a "Christian Revolution" in the Global South,
such as Africa, Asia and Latin America, where instead of facing
decline, Christianity is actively expanding. The susceptibility to
Christian teachings in the global South
will allow the Christian population in these areas to continually
increase, and together with the shrinking of the Western Christian
population, will form a "new Christendom" in which the majority of the
world's Christian population can be found in the South.
Charles Taylor,
meanwhile, disputes the "God is dead" thesis by arguing that the
practices and understandings of faith changed long before the late 20th
century, along with secularism itself. In A Secular Age
Taylor argues that being "free from Christendom" has allowed
Christianity to endure and express itself in various ways, particularly
in Western society; he notes that otherwise secular ideas were, and
continue to be, formed in light of some manner of faith. He stresses
that "loss of faith" reflects simplistic notions on the nature of secularization, namely the idea of "subtraction." Thus "post-Christian" is, after a fashion, a product of Christianity itself.
Other uses
Some American Christians (primarily Protestants) also use this term in reference to the evangelism of unchurched individuals who may have grown up in a non-Christian culture where traditional Biblical
references may be unfamiliar concepts. This perspective argues that,
among previous generations in the United States, such concepts and other
artifacts of Christianese would have been common cultural knowledge and that it would not have been necessary to teach this language to adult converts
to Christianity. In this sense, post-Christian is not used
pejoratively, but is intended to describe the special remediative care
that would be needed to introduce new Christians to the nuances of Christian life and practice.
Some groups use the term "post-Christian" as a self-description. Dana McLean Greeley, the first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, described Unitarian Universalism
as postchristian, insofar as Christians no longer considered it
Christian, while persons of other religions would likely describe it as
Christian, at least historically.
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.[1][2]
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 and in some cases as reactionary. These visions of
ideal societies competed with Marxist-inspired revolutionarysocial democratic movements.[3]
As a term or label, utopian socialism is most often
applied to, or used to define, those socialists who lived in the first
quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label utopian by later
socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naiveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic.[4] A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.[5]
One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists such as most anarchists and Marxists is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution
is necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believe that
people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it
is presented convincingly.[3]
They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among
like-minded people within the existing society and that their small
communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society.[3]
The thinkers identified as utopian socialist did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
were the first thinkers to refer to them as utopian, referring to all
socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an
ethically just society as utopian. This utopian mindset which held an
integrated conception of the goal, the means to produce said goal and an
understanding of the way that those means would inevitably be produced
through examining social and economic phenomena can be contrasted with scientific socialism which has been likened to Taylorism.[citation needed]
This distinction was made clear in Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1892, part of an earlier publication, the Anti-Dühring
from 1878). 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.
Development
The term utopian socialism was introduced by Karl Marx in "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything" in 1843 and then developed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, although shortly before its publication Marx had already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy
(originally written in French, 1847). The term was used by later
socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist
intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, 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:[7]
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.[8] 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.[9]
Since the mid-19th century, Marxism and Marxism–Leninism
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.[10] Currents such as Saint-Simonianism and Fourierism attracted the interest of numerous later authors but failed to compete with the now dominant Marxist, Proudhonist, or Leninist
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.[11][12]
In literature and in practice
Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478–1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his book Utopia, published in 1516. The contemporary definition of the English word utopia derives from this work and many aspects of More's description of Utopia were influenced by life in monasteries.[13]
Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His ideas influenced Auguste Comte (who was for a time Saint-Simon's secretary), Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and many other thinkers and social theorists.
Robert Owen was one of the founders of utopian socialism.
Robert Owen
(1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman who devoted much of his
profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew
when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarianJeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. He wrote about his ideas in his book A New View of Society which was published in 1813 and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilized parts of the world in 1823. He also set up an Owenite commune called New Harmony in Indiana.
This collapsed when one of his business partners ran off with all the
profits. Owen's main contribution to socialist thought was the view that
human social behavior is not fixed or absolute and that humans have the
free will to organize themselves into any kind of society they wished.
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) rejected the Industrial Revolution
altogether and thus the problems that arose with it. Fourier made
various fanciful claims about the ideal world he envisioned. Despite
some clearly non-socialist inclinations,[clarification needed]
he contributed significantly even if indirectly to the socialist
movement. His writings about turning work into play influenced the young
Karl Marx and helped him devise his theory of alienation. Also a contributor to feminism, Fourier invented the concept of phalanstère,
units of people based on a theory of passions and of their combination.
Several colonies based on Fourier's ideas were founded in the United
States by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.
Many Romantic authors, most notably William Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote anti-capitalist works and supported peasant revolutions across early 19th century Europe. Étienne Cabet (1788–1856), influenced by Robert Owen, published a book in 1840 entitled Travel and adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria in which he described an ideal communalist society. His attempts to form real socialist communities based on his ideas through the Icarian movement did not survive, but one such community was the precursor of Corning, Iowa. Possibly inspired by Christianity, he coined the word communism and influenced other thinkers, including Marx and Engels.
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 Backwards,
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 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.
Classless modes of production in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to as primitive communism by Marxists to stress their classless nature.
A related concept is that of a socialist utopia, usually depicted in
works of fiction as possible ways society can turn out to be in the
future and often combined with notions of a technologically
revolutionized economy.
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