Thursday, May 14, 2020

Robert Owen on This Day in History


This Day in History: Welsh textile manufacturer Robert Owen was born on this day in 1771. While a successful businessman, he was also a believer in Socialism, and may have even coined the term. About 200 years ago Robert Owen bought land in Ohio to set up a Socialist community. While American may be thought of as a Laissez-Faire country back then, it was also a hotbed of Socialist experimentation, particularly in Ohio. Owen called his community "New Harmony" but like all such Socialist communities, they all failed...usually within 2 years. As Alexander Winston wrote: "They couldn’t run anything properly—flour mill, saw mill, tannery or smithy—and their only solution to problems of production was to write another constitution or make another speech. The industrious soon tired of supporting the idle. From the Nashoba, Tennessee Owenite settlement, leader Frances Wright informed Owen that 'cooperation has nigh killed us all,' and departed. Within two years every Owenite venture, fourteen in all, disintegrated."

Historic Failures of Applied Socialism in Ohio by Daniel J Ryan 1920

Early American Communism, 1910 Article

The Early Failures of Socialism


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