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Owenism
Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative movement.Ronald George Garrett (1972), ''Co-operation and the Owenite socialist communities in Britain, 1825–45'', Manchester University Press ND, The Owenite movement undertook several experiments in the establishment of utopian communities organized according to communitarian and cooperative principles. One of the best known of these efforts, which were largely unsuccessful, was the project at New Harmony, Indiana, which started in 1825 and was abandoned by 1829. Owenism is also closely associated with the development of the British trade union movement, and with the spread of the Mechanics' Institute movement. Economic thought Owen's economic thought grew out of widespread poverty in Britain in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. ...
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Robert Owen
Robert Owen (; 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 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 cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support c ...
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Abram Combe
Abram Combe (15 January 1785–11 August 1827) was a British Utopian socialism, utopian socialist, an associate of Robert Owen and a major figure in the early co-operative movement, leading one of the earliest Owenism, Owenite communities, at Orbiston, Scotland. Life Early Years Combe was born in Edinburgh on 15 January 1785, son of George Combe, a brewer and strict Calvinist. He attended Edinburgh High School but, unlike his brothers George Combe, George and Andrew Combe, Andrew, he preferred practical pursuits to academic ones and became apprenticed to a local Tanning (leather), tanner. After his apprenticeship Combe worked as a currier in London and Glasgow, before returning to Edinburgh in 1807 to set up his own tannery business. He married Agnes Dawson in 1812 and started a family. Combe was a hard-working and successful businessman, motivated by self-interest but honourable in his dealings with others. He strongly believed that every man was responsible for his own character ...
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New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana. It lies north of Mount Vernon, the county seat, and is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. The town's population was 789 at the 2010 census. Established by the Harmony Society in 1814 under the leadership of George Rapp, the town was originally known as Harmony (also called Harmonie, or New Harmony). In its early years the settlement was the home of Lutherans who had separated from the official church in the Duchy of Württemberg and immigrated to the United States. The Harmonists built a new town in the wilderness, but in 1824 they decided to sell their property and return to Pennsylvania. Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and social reformer, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian community and renamed it New Harmony. The Owenite social experiment failed two years after it began.Ray E. Boomhower, "New Harmony: Home to Indiana's Communal Societi ...
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John Gray (19th Century Socialist)
John Gray (1799 – 26 April 1883) was a British newspaper proprietor and economist. His first published work, ''A Lecture on Human Happiness'', was broadly supportive of the ideas of Robert Owen, although he would later criticise Owen's communitarianism. Gray's critique of laissez-faire capitalism is usually associated with the school of Ricardian socialism and he was one of the earliest writers to advocate a centrally-planned economy. Biography Early life Gray was born in Derbyshire and attended Repton School. He was, by his own admission, a poor scholar, who spent most of his time fishing, climbing trees and playing marbles, and his final school report described him as "possessing abilities, rising barely to mediocrity". He left school at fourteen and was employed by a wholesale and manufacturing company in Cheapside, London. His job took him all over London and the conditions that he witnessed convinced him that there was something wrong with the way that the economy fu ...
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Utopian Socialism
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. 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 naïveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic.''Newman, Michae ...
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William Thompson (philosopher)
William Thompson (1775 – 28 March 1833) was an Irish political and philosophical writer and social reformer, developing from utilitarianism into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the cooperative, trade union and Chartist movements as well as Karl Marx. Born into the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy of wealthy landowners and merchants of Cork society, his attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death sparked a long court case as his family fought successfully to have the will annulled. According to E. T. Craig, this decision to will his estate to the cooperative movement was taken after a visit to the pioneering Ralahine Commune. Marxist James Connolly described him as the "first Irish socialist" and a forerunner to Marx, who cited Thompson in his works as well as being an influence upon Marx's thought. Life Born in Cork, William was the son and heir of one of the most prosperous merchants of that city, Alderman John Thompson ...
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New Lanark
New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometres) from Lanark, in Lanarkshire, and some southeast of Glasgow, Scotland. It was founded in 1785 and opened in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there in a brief partnership with the English inventor and entrepreneur Richard Arkwright to take advantage of the water power provided by the only waterfalls on the River Clyde. Under the ownership of a partnership that included Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, a Welsh utopian socialism, utopian socialist and philanthropy, philanthropist, New Lanark became a successful business and an early example of a planned settlement and so an important milestone in the historical development of urban planning. The New Lanark mills operated until 1968. After a period of decline, the New Lanark Conservation Trust (NLCT) was founded in 1974 (now known as thNew Lanark Trust(NLT)) to prevent demolition of the ...
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Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like James J. Martin and Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchistPalmer, Brian (2010-12-29What do anarchists want from us?, ''Slate.com'' (although Warren never used the term anarchism himself) and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', the first anarchist periodical published,William Bailie, ''Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist – A Sociological Study'', Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906, p. 20 was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates. Life Warren was born June 26, 1798. He moved from Boston to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked as a music teacher and orchestra leader. They had two children, Caroline ( ...
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William King (physician)
William King (17 April 1786 – 19 October 1865) was a British physician and philanthropist from Brighton. He is best known as an early supporter of the co-operative movement through the paper he founded, ''The Co-operator''. William King was the son of Rev. John King, a master at Ipswich School, and Elizabeth Sarah (née Bishop). One brother, John, was a writer of legal books, and another, Richard Henry was a naval officer who served under Philip Broke – a former pupil at Ipswich School – during the capture of USS Chesapeake. King was born in Lower Brooke Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, but the family subsequently moved nearby to Witnesham when his father retired to the rectory there in 1798. He was educated at Westminster School in London, and then Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge where he obtained a BA and MA. He subsequently studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and then in France in both Paris and Montpellier before returning to Peterhouse where in 1819 ...
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John Francis Bray
John Francis Bray (26 June 1809 – 1 February 1897) was a radical, chartist, writer on socialist economics, and activist in both Britain and his native America in the 19th century. He was hailed in later life as the "Benjamin Franklin" of American labor. Life John Bray was born in Washington, D.C., while his father was performing with a theatrical company based in the city. Bray's father had been born into a Yorkshire family of farmers and clothiers around Huddersfield. In 1822 they moved back to the West Riding, to Leeds. But their initial plans were stymied when his father died shortly after their return. Young John was then lodged with a relative and was apprenticed into the printing trade around the West Riding. He moved back to Leeds in 1832 and worked on a local paper and became involved in the working class movement in Leeds, including the Chartist Movement, then growing in Leeds around Feargus O'Connor's Northern Star. He also helped to found the Leeds Working Men's ...
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George Mudie (Owenite)
George Mudie (1788 – unknown) was a Scottish social reformer, Owenite, co-operator, journalist and publisher. He founded one of the first co-operative communities in the United Kingdom and edited several publications in which he attacked the established theories of political economy. Biography Early life Mudie was born in Edinburgh in 1788. In 1812 he was a member of a discussion group that met in St Andrew's Chapel, Edinburgh, and he tried to persuade that group to form a newsroom. When the group refused to take up this idea, he left Scotland and spent the next few years working as the editor of a succession of English provincial newspapers: ''The Nottingham Gazette'', ''The Leeds Intelligencer'', ''The Leeds Independent'' and ''The Leeds Gazette''. In 1816, while living in Leeds, Mudie met Robert Owen and quickly became a supporter of the latter's co-operative principles and ideas for social reform. ''The Economist'' and Spa Fields Mudie moved to London in 1820, whe ...
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Spa Fields
Spa Fields is a park and its surrounding area in the London Borough of Islington, bordering Finsbury and Clerkenwell. Historically it is known for the Spa Fields riots of 1816 and an Owenite community which existed there between 1821 and 1824. The park, or open common, was once of 14 hectares but was mostly built over in the 19th century, beginning in the 1830s, and is now a small park, popular with office workers at lunchtime, and as a children's playground. A large surrounding area was once called by the name, but this is now less common. In the 18th century it was a disreputable area, known for "the rude sports that were in vogue, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting, and others of an equally demoralising character", and "seems to have been much infected by sneaking footpads, who knocked down pedestrians passing to and from London, and despoiled them of hats, wigs, silver buckles, and money", The moral tone gradually improved after the Spa Fields Chapel was erecte ...
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