OWEN, ROBERT. — Socialist, born in Newtown on 14 May 1771, died there on 17 November 1858. A theorist of social thought and an implementer of reforms, he is among the most compelling figures of English socialism. The development of his thought and practical activity extends from what Dolléans defines as paternalistic philanthropy (when, at the New Lanark cotton mill, of which O. was co-owner, he implemented complex provisions for the workers) to the subsequent stage in which he postulated a kind of “authoritarian and communal” agrarian communism, but one prepared and promoted by the government itself.
Many of his attempts as an organizer failed (including the colony of New Harmony, founded in the United States in 1825), but R. O. remains one of the principal theorists of pre-scientific socialism, in which the vision of a future society, with man’s “character” reshaped anew (a character dependent on economic circumstances as well as on education), is centered on a specific “automatism” of the good: O. accepts only the concept of a rational religion and accuses the clergy of binding humanity in the chains of an artificial society. In favor of a policy of high wages, he remains short of “industrial” communism: the labor theory of value remains realizable within the circle of free associations or cooperatives. The struggle that O. waged against “profit” (despite the failure of practical attempts to abolish it, including the Labour exchange bank, 1832–34) passed as the most important legacy to later socialism.