Robert Owen was. Robert Owen: Pedagogical Ideas and Thoughts on Parenting

Robert Owen

Owen, Robert (1771–1858), English socialist theorist and industrialist.

Born May 14, 1771 in Newtown (Montgomeryshire, Wales) in the family of an artisan. He studied at a local school, at the age of ten he joined the trade in manufactory in Stamford (Northamptonshire). After four years in Stamford, he got a job in Manchester, where he was so successful that by 1790 he was appointed manager of a cotton mill, which employed five hundred workers.

In 1794 he became co-owner and manager of the Chorlton Twist Company in Manchester, and in 1799, together with his partners, acquired a spinning mill from David Dale in New Lanark, near Glasgow.

Owen improved the working and living conditions of workers, installed new machines, opened a store for workers, where he sold goods at reduced prices, a school and a kindergarten for their children.

In 1813 he published a pamphlet New View of Society, or Experiences on the Formation of Human Character (New View of Society; or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character), which reflected some of his ideas.

In 1814, having bought out the shares of the partners, Owen founded a new company, which included, among others, the Quaker William Allen and the philosopher Jeremiah Bentham as shareholders. The essence of Owen's doctrine, tirelessly promoted, was this: a person's character is shaped by circumstances and social environment, so people are not responsible for their actions. They should be taught and softened their morals, as soon as possible begin to instill in them the rules of proper behavior. Owen's economic views were derived from the principle that labor is a universally recognized natural good.

The economic crisis after 1815 prompted Owen to propose a plan for the settlement of the unemployed in "villages of community and cooperation." True, Owen's anti-religious views alienated many supporters of his teachings. Only by 1825 did he manage to create an experimental community, and after it, other communes in Great Britain. The year before, Owen went to America and founded a labor commune in Wabash, Indiana, calling it New Harmony. Owen envisioned the future society as a loose federation of small socialist self-governing communities based on common ownership of property and labor. Difficulties soon arose in the colony, and in 1828 it fell apart.

Owen spent the rest of his life in England. In 1829 he left the management of the factory in New Lanark and began to popularize his teachings; after the failure of the American experience, Owen created "inland colonies", the largest of which was Harmony Hall, which existed from 1839 to 1845. His activism helped consolidate the cooperative movement in the UK and contributed to the introduction of more humane labor laws. Owen's main views were reflected in the works A New View of Society ... (A New View of Society .., 1813), the Book of the New Moral World (Book of the New Moral World, 1836-1844), as well as in his autobiography (1857) .

Bibliography

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://www.krugosvet.ru/ were used.

Robert Owen (May 14, 1771 - November 17, 1858) was an English philosopher, teacher and utopian socialist, perhaps the most prominent representative of the socialist period in England, one of the first social reformers of the 19th century.
Born in the Welsh town of Newtown, in a family of representatives of the petty bourgeoisie. He always strove for knowledge and at an early age helped his teacher. However, after a couple of years he left his education, as he wanted to earn his living on his own.
By the age of 20, Owen was already the director of a textile factory in New Lanark (Scotland), where he began to implement the first attempts at the socialist transformation of society.

Robert Owen - philanthropist manufacturer

Owen's main desire was to bring socialist ideas to life. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, when he was the manager of one of the Scottish factories, he decided to reduce the working day from 13 to 10 hours. For the first time, it was he who organized a nursery and a kindergarten for the children of workers at his factory.
Robert Owen made repeated attempts to create socialist organizations. So in 1824 in the USA (Indiana) he tried to organize the communist colony New Harmony. However, this was not successful, as was the idea of the "Exchange of Goods Market" in London in 1932, where manufacturers could exchange their goods on fair and just terms.

Owen's views and worldview

The weak intellectual development of society was, according to Owen, the main cause of social problems. He believed that with the help of propaganda it is necessary to educate people, to acquaint them with social foundations that correspond to the laws of nature. This, according to the socialist philosopher, would help the public to eliminate their "stupid" existing order at the moment.
Along with this, Owen criticizes and opposes private property and economic inequality. He called private property the cause of a huge number of crimes and all sorts of disasters that a person experiences.

According to Owen, in a just social society, any property, except for items of exclusively personal use, will turn into public property, which will always be in abundance for everyone.
But at the same time, he advocated exclusively a peaceful change in the social system. Revolution, in his opinion, a place only in the mind of man.
Owen believed that a revolution can only take the form of peaceful and gradual transformations, it must avoid turning into a rough, violent coup.

In his opinion, a revolution carried out by the dark, uncultured masses would certainly lead to acts of violence and general social chaos, which in turn would throw back human development.
A revolution organized by completely ideologically unprepared people will lead to such a result, especially if they are obsessed with the idea of class revenge.
Owen paid considerable attention to legal mechanisms and believed that with the help of state laws, in addition to making life easier for workers, a wider range of reforms could be carried out in their interests.
He was one of the first who voiced the idea of "humane factory legislation", which contained such norms as: limiting the working day, improving the working and living conditions of workers, etc.

Scientific works of Owen

The theorist formulated his views in numerous works. The most famous is considered to be the work of 1814 "A new look at society or the science of the formation of character."
He also authored books:

1815 - "Remarks on the influence of the industrial system";
1817 - "Further development of the plan contained in the report"
1842 -1844 - "The Book of the New Moral World";
1850s - "Revolution in the mind and activity of the human race."

Owen's works were rethought by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Lenin and served as a source of the ideas of communism.

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Robert Owen

Marxist view: did not believe in class struggle

Owen Robert (1771 - 1858) - famous English utopian socialist. Born in the family of a saddler. As a child, he served as a clerk in London and other cities, at the age of 20 he received the position of director of a textile factory in Manchester. Owen soon acquired a factory in New Lanark (Scotland), in which he began to practice his social reformist views. He significantly shortened the working day, increased wages, built hygienic facilities, and so on. These measures greatly increased the productivity of workers. Owen's success led him to agitate among industrialists for the issuance of factory legislation in the spirit of his reforms. Not limited to agitation among the English bourgeoisie, Owen made a trip to France, Germany and other countries and negotiated with leading government people about his plan to resolve the labor issue. Having not achieved any results in this direction, Owen leaves for America, where he creates the so-called "communes of organic interests", continuing to conduct his experiments in them, which, however, were not crowned with any significant success. Owen had a negative attitude towards Chartism. He considered the idea of the class struggle of the proletariat wrong and believed in the possibility of peaceful cooperation between the working class and the bourgeoisie.

Literature:

Compositions:

A new view of society. L., 1812;

The book of the new moral world. L., 1820;

A new view of society and other writings. L., 1927 (with bibl.);

in Russian per.: Selected works, vol. 1–4. M. - L., 1950-54.

Literature:

Harrison J. F. C., R. Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America, L., 1969 (lit.).

Morton A. L., The life and ideas of R. Owen, L., 1962;

Podmore F., R. Owen, 1 – 2, L., ;

Liebknecht W., R. Owen, trans. from German., M. - P., 1923;

Call D.G., R. Owen, trans. from English, M.–L., 1931;

Anderson K. M. Communities in the history of Owenism. - In the book: Problems of modern and recent history. M., 1979.

Volgin V.P. Robert Owen, - In the book: Owen R. Selected. op. M.-L., 1950, vol. I.

Volodin A. I. Robert Owen and Russian socialists of the 60s of the XIX century. - Scientific Communism, 1976, No. 4.

Galkin VV Science or Utopia? The experience of studying the socialist teachings of the followers of R. Owen in England in the 20-40s of the XIX century. M., 1981.

Deborin A. M. The teachings of Robert Owen. - In the book: From the history of the working class and the revolutionary movement. M., 1958.

Zastenker N. E. Robert Owen as a thinker. - In the book: History of socialist doctrines. M., 1976.

Lenin V.I., Poln. coll. cit., 5th ed., vol. 2, 4, 6, 29, 45 (see Index of names);

Marx K. and Engels F. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 2 - 4, 18 - 19, 23 - 24 (see Index of names);

Nemanov IN On the question of the nature of Robert Owen's New Lanark experiment. - In the book: Socio-economic development of Russia and foreign countries. Smolensk, 1972.

Plekhanov G.V., Utopian socialism of the 19th century, Izbr. philosophical works, vol. 3, M., 1957;

Podmarkov VG Robert Owen is a humanist and thinker. M., 1976.

Sarkisyan S. A. The Great Utopian Socialist Robert Owen. Yerevan, 1974.

Toritsyn T. M. The teaching of Robert Owen and its influence on the dissemination and development of socialist ideas. Ryazan. 1972.

Feigina S. A. Robert Owen: Biographical sketch. - In the book: Owen R. Selected. op. M,-L., 1950, v. 2.

Prepared

Gurchenkova Anna

Basic views of Robert Owen

Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) - Utopian, socialist, social reformer of the 19th century.

Working in enterprises, Owen constantly reformed the industrial sector. He is one of the founders of the trade union movement. Consequently, in addition to the technical reorganization and rationalization of production, he carried out a set of social measures in relation to ordinary workers. But I do not aim to describe all the reforms and innovations of Owen, I want to talk about his main views and beliefs.

Reforming production and the living conditions of workers, Owen gradually comes to the need to reorganize the whole society on the basis of the formation of productive associations, the task of which "was to organize universal happiness through a system of unity and cooperation based on universal love for one's neighbor and true knowledge of human nature." Thus, he becomes one of the first critics of capitalist society from the standpoint of socialism. Among the main shortcomings of capitalism are a narrowly sharpened division of labor, competition and a general conflict of interests, making a profit only when the supply of goods does not exceed the demand for them.

Having criticized capitalism, he characterized it as an "unreasonable" system, as a "chaotic", "disunited", "contradictory" system, which gives rise to the poor, ignorance, strife and wars. “The acquisition of wealth and the natural desire it creates to increase this wealth gave rise to a love for essentially harmful luxury among a large group of people who had never thought about it before, and at the same time created a tendency to sacrifice the best feelings of human nature to this passion for accumulation” 1 . Owen considered capitalism to be an anti-people system, hostile to the interests of the working people. Owen considered private property to be the worst phenomena of capitalism (“... private property alienates human minds from each other, serves as a constant cause of enmity in society, an invariable source of deceit and fraud among people and causes prostitution among women. It served as the cause of wars in all previous eras known to us human history and prompted countless murders…”), 2 religion and marriage based on property protected by religion. The clergy in Owen's works appears as something negative, having a negative impact on people: "The errors that created the clergy, and the errors created by this clergy during its long reign with the mystery, deceit and all sorts of absurdities introduced by them, made the human race so artificial and unreasonable, that people now do not believe in the possibility of becoming truthful, virtuous and happy” 3 .

Owen was convinced of the inevitable replacement of capitalism by a new society. He sought to transition to a new society through legislative measures and education. “The wide spread of industry throughout the country creates a new character in people; since this character is formed on the basis of a principle most unfavorable to the general well-being and happiness of individuals, it must give rise to the most deplorable and, moreover, undeniably negative phenomena, unless the indicated tendency is stopped by legislative intervention and leadership. The new society was supposed, according to the author, to reveal to people those attractive qualities that nature endowed them with: “With the senseless structure of society that still exists, the attractive properties of people are smaller, less developed and not as stable as in that society. where men and women will be educated and trained to acquire the properties of a rational being and learn to understand their own nature.

Before people can be placed in conditions that allow them to enjoy a good society, this society must be created. Where can you find it now? To what country, to what region should one go to find such an association of people that represents a good society? As yet, it cannot be found among humans. The clergy of the whole world and its dark realm made it impossible to create a good society and in general its existence. The essence of "good society" is knowledge, charity, kindness, love and truthfulness" 5 .

"A good society can only be created by men and women who are brought up to become reasonable in their feelings, thoughts and actions, so as not to have motives for deceit or crime and to use the simple and dignified language of truth" 6 .

The new society must be built on the principles of equality and justice. The abolition of private property will result in everything being "in the public domain, and the public domain will always be in abundance for all" 7 . There will be no stratification into rich and poor, everyone will be equal, unequal marriages and marriages of convenience will immediately disappear, and there will be no spoiled children. In general, marriage, Owen considered a product of private property and was convinced that in the new society “in exchange for [marriage, the union of two people], scientifically based associations of men, women and children should arise in their usual quantitative ratio, numbering from four hundred or five hundred to two thousand people. ; these communities will be organized as a single family, each member of which will unite with others in assisting each other, as far as his knowledge will allow, and the communities themselves will be similarly connected with each other. “Such a united family will constitute a cell of a completely new organization of human society, in which all people will acquire a new consciousness, new feelings, a new spirit and adopt a completely different behavior compared to the man of the former world; the arrangement that will be adopted to provide these families with dwellings, occupations, education and entertainment will be completely different from the arrangement that now exists in the affairs of life” 9 .

Creating a new social environment is Owen's main idea. Man by nature is neither good nor bad, he is what the environment makes of him. “In order to create people of rational thoughts and feelings, it is necessary first to create rational conditions for them, in order to then make humanity itself rational” 10 . If at present a person is bad, then this happened because the economic and social system is bad. On the other hand, Owen did not attach any importance to the natural environment, he saw only the social. Owen excluded all religious influence, especially Christianity. “The clergy first of all use the most effective means to create vice and to force a person to become bad, and then, having achieved their goal, they change their behavior and say that “people are sinful by nature” 11.

It was Owen who was the author of the idea of a beautiful and comfortable environment for work. He proclaimed physical labor the source of wealth: “... this new power provides an inexhaustible and ever-increasing opportunity to make wealth as easily accessible as water, and as superabundant for all the rational needs of the human race as air” 12

In order to change the economic environment, it is necessary, first of all, to destroy profits. The desire for profit is the main evil that led to the fall of the human race. According to Owen, profit is, by its very definition, unfair, since it is a plus on the price of the product, and products should be sold for the price they cost. In addition, Owen believed, profit is a constant danger, the cause of economic crises of overproduction. "" Because of the profit, the worker cannot buy the product of his labor, that is, consume the equivalent of what he has produced. The product immediately after production rises in price, becomes inaccessible to the person who created it, since he can offer for it only a value equal to his labor.

The instrument of profit is money, banknotes, with their help it is realized. Thanks to money, it becomes possible to sell a product at a price higher than its value. This means that it is necessary to destroy money and replace it with bonds of labor. Bona will be a true sign of value, because if labor is the cause and substance of value, then it is quite natural that it will be its measure.

How many hours of labor will be spent on the production of a product, so many bonds of labor will be received by its producer when he wants to sell it - no more, no less. The consumer will have to give the same amount when he wants to buy it. Thus, the profit will be destroyed.

Profit, money and monetary relations go hand in hand with private property, which Owen also criticizes. “Private property has been and is the cause of innumerable crimes and disasters experienced by man, and he should welcome the advent of an era when scientific advances and familiarity with the methods of forming perfect character in all people will make the continuation of the struggle for personal enrichment not only superfluous, but also very harmful to everyone; it does incalculable harm to the lower, middle and upper classes. Ownership of private property leads to the fact that its owners become ignorantly selfish, and this selfishness is usually proportional in size to the size of the property” 13 .

In his address to the professional statesmen of Europe and America, Owen wrote that the replacement of the existing order by the new one has already begun, that this is a revolution that "will lead from untruth to truth, from lies to truth, from oppression to justice, from deceit and suffering to straightforward honesty and happiness" 14 . It is not necessary to oppose this process, but simply to facilitate the transition to a new society. “The required transition consists simply in replacing existing harmful and bad conditions with good and excellent ones in all areas of life, and this replacement can be carried out only by a complete change in all external orders in public life” 15. It is necessary to start precisely with government bodies, but everything must pass on a voluntary level, without violence. Owen was convinced that if the governments of the countries to which he addresses will meet his ideas, then “the population of both continents will easily be made reasonable by the correct direction of all daily and other periodicals and by other methods of education; the dark glass of delusion that people are now looking through and deceiving them will be removed and people will see things for what they are and start acting intelligently in less than a year.

Such is the simple power of truth.”16

1 R. Owen. Notes on the impact of the industrial system

2 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

3 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

4 R. Owen. Notes on the impact of the industrial system

5 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

6 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

8 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

9 R. Owen. Book about the new moral world

10 R. Owen. A revolution in the consciousness and activity of the human race

Robert Owen is considered the main representative of utopian socialism in England. Owen was born into a petty-bourgeois family. From the age of ten, he independently earned his livelihood. By the age of twenty, he was already a factory director. From 1800, Owen managed as a co-owner of a large textile enterprise in New Lanark (Scotland). Owen's work in New Lanark made him widely known as a philanthropist. Owen introduced at the factory a relatively short working day for that time, at 10.5 hours, created a nursery, a kindergarten and an exemplary school for children and workers, carried out a number of measures to improve working conditions and the living conditions of workers. In 1815, Owen came up with a draft law that limited the working day for children and established compulsory schooling for working children. In 1817, Owen wrote a memorandum to a parliamentary commission in which he put forward the idea of a labor commune as a means of combating unemployment. By 1820, Owen's social ideas had finally taken shape: he became convinced of the need for a radical restructuring of society on the basis of community ownership, equality in rights and collective labor.

Owen's utopian ideas.

English utopian socialism has some peculiarities in comparison with French, because in England capitalism and the class struggle of the proletariat were more developed. R. Owen opposed all large private owners. He believed that the new social system could exist without capitalists, because "private property was and is the cause of countless crimes and disasters experienced by man", it causes "incalculable harm to the lower, middle and upper classes."

Owen imagined the future "rational" society in the form of a loose federation of small socialist self-governing communities, including no more than 3 thousand people. The main occupation in the community is agriculture; but Owen was against the separation of industrial labor from agricultural (the community also organizes industrial production). With common ownership and common labor, there can be neither exploitation nor classes. Work is distributed among citizens according to needs. Considering, following the French materialists of the 18th century, that human character is a product of the social environment surrounding man, Owen was convinced that a new man would be born in his new society. Proper upbringing and a healthy environment will teach him to feel and think rationally, and will eradicate selfish habits in him. Courts, prisons, punishments will become unnecessary.

Owen was convinced that it was enough to found one community, and its advantages would inevitably cause a desire to organize others. In an effort to demonstrate the practical feasibility and advantages of labor communes, Owen went to the USA in 1824 to organize an experimental colony there on the basis of community ownership. However, all of Owen's experiments in the United States served only as proof of the utopian nature of his plans. After a series of failures, Owen returned to England, where he took an active part in the cooperative and professional movement.

Simultaneously with the reorganization of circulation, Owen promoted a broadly conceived utopian reorganization of production, also as a measure for a peaceful transition to the socialist order. Owen assumed that the trade union organizations of workers could take over the respective branches of industry and organize production in them on a cooperative basis without resorting to any violent measures. In 1834, the "Great National United Union of Industries" was organized, which set itself the task of implementing this Owen plan. Capitalist reality shattered Owen's utopian hopes. A number of organized lockout entrepreneurs, as well as unsuccessful strikes, harsh court sentences led to the liquidation of the "Great Union" in the same 1834.

Owen's labor theory of value.

Owen was an opponent of the class struggle, he addressed the plans for the reorganization of society to the powerful of this world. In developing projects for the future social order, Owen was very scrupulous. He thought carefully about what diets should be in the future society, how rooms should be distributed for married, single, etc. Of course, there were elements of fantasy in such a meticulous setting. But Robert put forward a number of practical proposals, became the initiator of the adoption of factory legislation on limiting the working day, on the prohibition of night work for women and children, demanded that the state actively intervene in economic life in the interests of workers. The fantastic element is generally less pronounced than in the teachings of Saint-Simon and Fourier.

In his works, R. Owen acted as a critic of capitalism, but, unlike the French utopian socialists, he relied on classical bourgeois political economy, in particular on Ricardo's labor theory of value. Owen agreed with Ricardo's position that labor is the main source of value. However, unlike Ricardo, Owen believed that this important law does not work in the existing society, because if labor is a source of wealth, then it should belong to the working people. R. Owen noted that in his contemporary society, the product of labor does not completely go to the worker, but is distributed among the workers, capitalists and farmers, and the workers get only an insignificant share. Owen considered such a distribution of products unfair, demanded a reorganization of society that would ensure that the manufacturer would receive the full product of his labor. This is R. Owen's merit in that he drew a socialist conclusion from Ricardo's theory of labor value and tried, relying on this theory, to prove the need for radical changes in society.

R. Owen and his followers argued that the value of goods is measured not by labor, but by money. Money, on the other hand, distorts the true value of value, is not a natural, but an artificial measure, masks the true expenditure of labor for the production of commodities, and this creates a situation where some get rich, while others go bankrupt and beg. “A rightly understood interest of society,” wrote Owen, “requires that the man who produces value receive a fair and fixed share of it. This can be done only by establishing an order in which the natural standard of value will be applied in practice. He considered labor to be such a natural measure, believing that the cost of production eats the amount of labor contained in the product. The exchange of one thing for another must take place in accordance with the "cost of their production," by such a means as will represent their value, and, moreover, the value is "real and immutable." "A new measure," wrote Owen, "will quickly destroy poverty and ignorance in society ... will make it possible to gradually improve the conditions for the existence of all social groups."

One of Owen's merits in his critique of capitalism is that he pointed out the deterioration in the condition of the workers in connection with the driving of machines. On this issue, he took the right position, noting that the world is saturated with wealth, while there are huge opportunities for their further increase. However, poverty reigns everywhere. Since the introduction of machines worsens the situation of workers, R. Owen saw the cause of economic crises of overproduction in the underconsumption of the working masses, the fall in their wages, and the reduction in domestic demand for consumer goods.

An important merit of Owen was the criticism of the Malthusian "law of population". Refuting the concept of Malthus, Owen, with figures in hand, argued that the growth of productive forces significantly exceeded the growth of population, and the cause of poverty is not a lack of food at all, but an incorrect distribution. Owen wrote that "with the right management of manual labor, Great Britain and the countries dependent on it can provide the means of subsistence to an infinitely increasing population, and moreover, with greater profit."

R. Owen brought his criticism of capitalism and bourgeois political economy to the recognition of the need to create a new social system in which there would be no poverty and unemployment. He called this system socialist, and considered its cell to be a cooperative community in which the population would be engaged in both agriculture and industrial labor.

Although R. Owen played a huge role in promoting communist ideas, his theory and practice were controversial. After all, Owen objectively fought for the interests of the working class, but at the same time spoke on behalf of all mankind. He believed that material goods are created by the working people, but assigned them a passive role in the transformation of society. Owen stigmatized the bourgeois order and at the same time believed that the capitalists were not to blame for this, as they were poorly educated.