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6 - Robert Owen and Owenism

from Early Socialisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Gregory Claeys
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Summary

Since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ derogatory description of Robert Owen and his followers as ‘utopian socialists’ in the Communist Manifesto, they have traditionally been classed among those who denied that proletarian revolution was the chief means of achieving socialism, and whimsically imagined instead that mere spinning ‘duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem’ would suffice to persuade the bourgeoisie to abolish capitalism. The Owenites were certainly ‘utopians’ in the sense of aiming at an ideal or model society where behaviour has substantially improved and ‘enhanced sociability’ exists.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 146 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Bestor, Arthur, Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase of Communitarian Socialism in America: 1663–1829, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Claeys, Gregory, Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claeys, Gregory, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Claeys, Gregory, (ed.), The Owenite Socialist Movement: Pamphlets and Correspondence, 10 vols. (London: Routledge, 2005).Google Scholar
Claeys, Gregory, (ed.), Robert Owen: A New View of Society and Other Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991).Google Scholar
Claeys, Gregory, (ed.), The Selected Works of Robert Owen, 4 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993).Google Scholar
Garnett, R. G., Co-operation and the Owenite Socialist Communities in Britain, 1825–1845 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Harrison, J. F. C., Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: The Quest for the New Moral World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).Google Scholar
Royle, Edward, Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium: A Study of the Harmony Community (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Siméon, Ophélie, Robert Owen’s Experiment at New Lanark: From Paternalism to Socialism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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