 |
Robert Owen. New View of Society. London, 1818.
This compilation of Robert Owen’s thought includes a map his ideal
factory community, a square in which all people lived with all their
needs fulfilled by locally produced and manufactured goods. Owen,
who was friendly with Oxford men and Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill, produced a plan that eerily resembles Yale’s
Old Campus.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Click on images to enlarge |
|
|
|
|
NEW HARMONY
Robert Owen was the preeminent
utopian thinker of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A factory
owner, he was influenced by industrialization in his native Scotland
and the utilitarian philosophy of his friend and business partner, Jeremy
Bentham. He purchased the Harmony land and buildings from the Rappites
to establish the first socialist commune organized on the principle
of rational ethics and not religion.
Owen rebelled against the “trinity of evils:” private property,
irrational systems of religion, and marriage founded on property and
religion. He developed a plan of progressive paternalism in his commune
at “New” Harmony– curfews, house inspections, and fines
for drunkenness and illegitimate children. He equated happiness
with docility, and as a result was criticized for condescending to the
working class.
Owen introduced the trade school to the US, stressing
practical training and character building rather than classical education. But Owen’s
character indoctrination irked many parents who rarely saw their children
during their years of schooling when Owen would “shield children
from the unwanted negative influence of their parents and families.” And
although Owen stressed gender equality, girls only studied home economics
and had little influence in the politics of New Harmony.
Owen’s naïve belief in the power of rational humanism was
eventually denigrated by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels; but Engels once
wrote of Owen that, in the early 18th century, all social movements and
all real advance made in England in the interest of the working class
were associated with Robert Owen’s name.
|
|
