What Can We Learn from the History of Owenite Communities about the viability of Owen’s Communitarian Ideas?

Robert Owen is famous as the father of the Socialist movement, however, what is noteworthy is the spectacular failure of many of the communities he was involved in. What this essay will seek to demonstrate is how, following his successes in factory reform at New Lanark, was it that his communities failed. Through this, we will demonstrate that whilst Owens ideas were viable in a reformed manufacturing setting they are not in a Communitarian setting. Furthermore, it was the transformation from pragmatic factory reform into a pseudo-scientific ‘ism’ that was far too rigid to make Robert Owen’s ideas viable.

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To begin with, we must define the parameters in this discussion, first of all in the Communities we will actually consider. It would be impossible to completely analyse all the Owenite communities due to the restrictions of evidence, as well as the limitations imposed on the length of this work. As such we shall take a case study of two Owenite Communities, New Harmony and Harmony Hall. These have been chosen due to the direct and important role that Owen himself had in directing these communities. These shall then be compared to New Lanark, as whilst not a full Communitarian experiment per se it did operate in a literal factory community, and furthermore, demonstrates the contrasts between its success and the failure of the communities.

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These ideas are what we shall now go on to discuss, as to demonstrate the divisions between theory and practice within the Owenite movement, and how this reflects the viability of these ideas within a Communitarian context. The core of his ideas is the belief that a person’s character is developed and shaped by the environment around them.[1] This is something he constantly repeats in the first systematic introduction of his ideas A New View of Society, for instance, he states ‘man may be trained to acquire any sentiments and habits, or any character’.[2] As such, in setting up Communities Owen was trying to shape the environment around individuals for their own improvement and the improvement of wider society.[3] It is from this idea that his wider communitarian plans develop in his Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor published in 1817. In this report we see the beginning of his more radical ideas on planned communities. He describes villages of around 1,200 people organised in a square around a central building which would provide the public kitchen and the mess rooms. There would also be infant schools, schools for older children and places for adult education. Between these buildings would be a space for recreation. In addition, there would be dormitories for children as ‘Any plan, then, to ameliorate their condition, must prevent bad and vicious habits from being taught to their children, and provide the means by which only good and useful ones may be given to them’.[4] This meant, at least at the start, to reduce the contact with their parents to enable their proper training. The whole purpose of this was to reform individuals to live in unity. As such the aim was also through agriculture and small-scale manufacturing to develop an economy between these villages which would then bring in surplus income which would be held in common.[5]

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What is immediately striking is that neither New Harmony nor Harmony Hall followed this movement. Indeed, there never was a completely pure Owenite experiment. As such it could be argued, as Owen himself argued, that Owenite Communitarianism cannot be properly evaluated as there was no full implementation of his ideas.[6] However the nature of theory and practice means that when Utopian ideas are put into place there must be some flexibility, yet whilst it is unfair to the movement to assess it entirely based on the successes and failures of theoretical standards, the failure in being able to successfully adapt these ideas into the real world does bring into question how much success Owenite ideas could have. As such the measures for defining the viability of the Owenite Communities must be a different metric. We shall use three interlinked and overlapping criteria to consider the success. First is the financial stability and relative security, as a community that couldn’t pay its own way, ultimately, is doomed to fail. The longegity of the community is the second issue that shall be explored. Whilst K. Kumar argues that longevity isn’t a fair test this author disagrees.[7] As the role of these communities was ultimately to reshape the world they needed to last long enough to provide a viable scheme of alternate social organisation. We shall also consider the unity these communities actually managed to develop, as a communitarian movement without developing a sense of union and community has failed a key task. To begin with, then we shall explore the financial stability of both New harmony and Harmony Hall.

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Following his purchase of Harmonie in 1825 Owen subsidised the running costs of the community at the cost of around $30,000 during the first nine months.[8] However whilst a substantial sum it is only to be expected that whilst a community is being set up and developed it would need external support. However, the failure of New Harmony was its inability to get the community producing its own income. Production from agriculture and manufacturing soon began to lag.[9] Ultimately the community never became self-sufficient and before he bought himself out K. Gould estimates that Owen lost more than four-fifths of his capital through the experiment.[10]

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Where Harmony Hall suffered was different compared to New Harmony, in that it actually developed quite a successful agricultural industry, indeed visitors were impressed by its effectiveness, particularly since other local farms struggled with the tough flinty soil of the region.[11] However initial extravagance from Owen meant that the Community began with a large amount of debt which they were never able to pay off and it grew year on year. Harmony Hall only ever reached a half-completed state yet this on its own cost ￡30,000.[12] Such expense was noted at the time and George Holyoak a visitor describes that ‘Everything has been provided in the most expensive way. Eonomy appears to have been laughed at in its erection.’ And that ‘They went on until their coffers were exhausted’.[13]

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The question this immediately prompts is why the successful and profitable industrial capitalist was unable to make these communities pay. The ‘failure to realise the success of New Lanark as a dynamic capitalist enterprise under his management could hardly be replicated in multifunctional villages where the profit motive was secondary to cooperation, social and moral improvement’ has been blamed.[14] Whilst Harrison states ‘The main economic weaknesses of the communities were due not so much to the system of cooperative production as to other factors’, such as inadequate resources in the early years of the communities to tide them over, as well as too much investment in over-ambitious and unneeded projects.[15] Whilst it is clear, particularly in the case of Harmony Hall poor financial use crippled the community, the explanation that there are fundamental issues in transplanting industrial management into a communitarian model is the more accurate. Indeed, it provides the cause of Harrison’s explanation, that over extravagance found its cause in the motivations of building a New Moral World and furnishing the communities with the infrastructure fitting for this purpose. These increasing financial struggles aggravated divisions within communities which helped bring the downfall of these attempts to implement Owenism, it is this issue of unity we shall now go on to explore.

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New Harmony provides one of the best examples of how quickly a community can fragment along pre-existing fault lines due to financial pressures. The community began to split up into separate individual groups following a split by a group of Methodists, who due to their religious differences with Owen set up a sub-community called Macluria, this then opened the floodgates with a group of English Farmers splitting to create Febia-Peveli.[16] Whilst highlighting the divisions within the community neither of these caused great catastrophe for the wider community of New Harmony. However, it was the attempt by a group of intellectuals, many from the ‘Boat Load of Knowledge’, to set up Community Four that caused wider problems.[17] This was seen by many as an elitist coup d’état and were angered at this, indeed the division between the intellectuals and the manual labourers was a particularly potent mix for the rest of the communities existence.[18] This was an issue of too large a population growing too quickly, as such there was a lack of communal assimilation and as such it failed to become a real community.[19] This, in turn, would cause the lag in agricultural production which would bring on more pressure causing further divisions. In an attempt to deal with this vicious circle Robert Owen attempted to reorganise the community based on occupations, however as Carmony argues, this only ‘strengthened the trend towards decentralisation and splintering, and attachment to the entire community was further weakened’.[20] Kelogg, a member of the community argued in his reflections that the problem was in the lack of a selection process stating ‘Had there been a proper regulation for the admittance of those only who might become useful and devoted to its future success the experiment would have had a longer trial’. A criticism echoed by modern historians.[21]

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The populations of the community remained subdivided by pre-existing conditions such as occupations, nationalities and denominations. For these communities to truly work based on Owen’s ideas they needed to last for a few generations, at which point, at least according to Owen’s theory, the members would then have grown up in an environment that would have promoted unity amongst the members. However as it was these, communities only existed for a short time, due in part to financial issues and the divisions, which then didn’t have the time to be worked through as they provided too much pressure for the communities to resist. Harmony Hall for instance whilst technically lasting for six years, had by 1840 only nineteen members surviving on a subsistence diet.[22] Whilst new Harmony barely lasted more than a year. In fact, Owenism as a movement did not last particularly long and had fallen apart after 1846 prompted by the abject failure of Harmony Hall.[23]

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Based on these criteria then, the two major communities overseen by Owen failed dramatically. The question once again then arises, how was Owen so successful in implementing his ideas within a factory setting, rather than within a Communitarian movement. By exploring where Owenite ideas and practice began we will demonstrate the fundamental differences which led to such diametrically opposed outcomes.

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Under Owen’s ownership living and factory conditions for the workers were vastly improved. Furthermore during the trade embargo with the United States of America Owen continued to pay the workers for three months, which Harrison suggests the total cost of amounted to ￡7000.[24] Yet between 1809 and 1813 the factory earnt a net profit of ￡160,000, and the factory itself and its new facilities such as the first infant school became a place of pilgrimage for numerous social reformers.[25] Yet what differentiated New Lanark and the latter communities in part was its place in Owenite chronology, and in part the pragmatism surrounding it. Innovations such as the silent monitors as well as the welfare provisions were put in place to improve the workers which in turn improved the output and profit of the factory. It is this combined with the fact that Owenism, as an ideology was still in its developing stages, gave it pragmatic flexibility. However, New Lanark’s success was the downfall of the Owenite movement. Owen and his backers became more confident in the theoretical side of the movement. Indeed, before this point, the workers at New Lanark would have been unaware of the wider implications of the reforms being carried out.[26] ?Gould is mostly correct in stating that ‘wherever Owen could complete control and supervision it worked brilliantly’. Whilst perhaps a bit too enthusiastic, this does demonstrate the issue. In the case of New Lanark, Owen the reformist capitalist was in control. However, by New Harmony and Harmony Hall, Owen the ideology, convinced of his own theoretical systems lost the sense of pragmatism and as an ‘ism’ Owen became to ridged and the movement ‘increasingly took on the characteristic of an esoteric and millennialistic sect’.[27]

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Owen’s ideas worked in a reformist, capitalist and pragmatic context. However, when these same ideas became an inflexible ideology of communitarianism it became too optimistic about the reforming power and the New World it would supposedly bring in. Thus, failures in the unity of community and financial stability led to shortly lived communities which proved the lack of viability within Communitarian Owenism.

Bibliography

[1] K. Taylor, The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (London, 1982), p.72

[2] R. Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings (London, 1812), in Everyman’s Library (London, 1972), p.63

[3] K.M. Gould, ‘Robert Owen: Backwater of History?’, The American Scholar, Vol.7 No.2 (1938), p. 158

[4] R. Owen, p.159

[5] R. Owen, p.176

[6] J.F.C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America, The Quest for the New Moral World (London, 1969), p.154

[7] K. Kumar, ‘Thought and Communal Practice: Robert Owen and the Owenite Communities’, Theory and Society, Vol.19 No.1 (1990), pp. 23-24

[8] C. Coates, Utopia Britannica (London, 2001), pp.84-85

[9] Ibid. p. 170

[10] K.M. Gould, ‘Robert Owen: Backwater of History?’, p.166

[11] C. Coates, Utopia Britannica (London, 2001), p.96

[12] Ibid. 95

C. Coates, Harmony, climate change and why the sky is blue, [web blog], 11 August 2013, https://blog.utopia-britannica.org.uk/362, (accessed 7 March 2018)

[13] G.J. Hollyoake, A Visit to Harmony Hall (Reprinted from the “Movement”) with emendations, and a new and curious introductory chapter: dedicated to the Socialists of England and Scotland (1844) from Cowen Tracts, Newcastle University, pp.8, 9

[14] OU

[15] Harrison, Robert Owen, p.191

[16] F. Carmony, and S. Elliott, ‘New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Owen’s Seedbed for Utopia,’ Indiana Magazine of History, Vol.76 No.3 (1980), p.174

[17] C. Coates, Utopia Britannica (London, 2001), p.85

[18]Carmony, F. and Elliott, S. p.175

[19] C. Coates, Utopia Britannica (London, 2001), p.84

[20] Carmony, F. and Elliott, S. p.173

[21] L. L. Sylvester, and C.W. Hakensmith, (eds.) ‘Miner K. Kellog: Recollections of New Harmony’, Indiana Magazine of History, Vol.64 No.1 (1968), 39-45

K.M. Gould, ‘Robert Owen: Backwater of History?’, p.160

[22] C. Coates, Utopia Britannica (London, 2001), pp.94, 96

[23] Harrison, Robert Owen, p.235

[24] Harrison, Robert Owen, p.154

[25] Taylor, The Political Ideas, p.73

[26] Harrison, Robert Owen, p.156

[27] R. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Witney, 2nd edn. 2011), p.46

Mr Christopher Viney MSc

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