ROBERT OWEN. - Socialist, b. at Newtown on 14 May 1771, d. there on 17 Nov. 1858. A theorist of social thought and a reformer, he is one of the most striking figures of English socialism. The evolution of his thought and practical activity ranges from what Dolléans defines as “paternalistic philanthropy” (when, in the New Lanark cotton mill of which he was part-owner, O. put into effect complex provisions for the workers) to the subsequent stage in which he postulates a kind of authoritarian and communal agrarian “communism,” but one prepared and fostered by the government itself.
Many of his attempts at organization failed (among them the colony of New Harmony, founded in the United States in 1825), but R. O. remains one of the principal architects of pre-scientific socialism, in which the vision of a future society, with man’s “character” remade anew (which depends on economic conditions as well as education), is centred on a specific “automatism” of the good: O. accepts only the concept of a rational religion and accuses the clergy of binding humanity with the chains of an artificial society. Favourable to a policy of high wages, he stands this side of “industrial” communism: the labour theory of value remains realizable within the framework of free associations or cooperatives. The struggle which O. waged against “profit” (despite the failure of practical attempts to abolish it, among them the Labour Exchange Bank, 1832-34) passed into the most important legacy to later socialism.