Robert Owen

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Robert Owen after an oil painting by William Henry Brooke in 1834
Robert Owen

Robert Owen (born May 14, 1771 in Newtown , Montgomeryshire , Wales , † November 17, 1858 ibid) was a British entrepreneur and early socialist . He is considered to be the founder of the cooperative system .

Live and act

Owen was born in the trading town of Newtown , the youngest son of seven children of a saddler . Although his family was relatively well off, Owen could only go to school until he was ten. He worked as an apprentice in a textile shop and later settled in Manchester.

Owen worked his way up to being a factory manager in the cotton industry . Early on he was concerned with the social conditions of industrial work and in 1799 carried out an experiment for more humane working conditions in his cotton mill in New Lanark ( Scotland ). He tried to show that wage slavery and oppression of workers were not a prerequisite for effective production. That is why he shortened working hours to 10.5 hours, compared to the 13 to 14 hours customary at the time in other factories. He set up health and old-age pension insurance, had affordable housing built and granted rental discounts. Everyday goods were traded at low but profitable prices. Alcohol trade was restricted on the factory premises. Owen did a lot for the children, for example he called for child labor to be banned or limited to six hours a day for children under the age of 12 in three parliamentary bills and that entry into any production facility should only be allowed with a basic school education (reading, writing and arithmetic) should and the girls can at least sew.

Robert Owen's House in New Lanark

The measure was also very successful for him: productivity in the factory increased drastically, the number of thefts fell, and punishments within the factory were no longer necessary. The successes were also due to Owen's technical skill: In New Lanark, new production techniques were introduced that the competition could not yet implement.

The factory became a model company that princes and politicians also visited. For example, Tsar Nicholas I and the Austrian princes Johann and Maximilian were among the visitors. Between 1815 and 1825 alone, 20,000 people signed the guest book. The Saxon royal family was also informed about Owen's concepts through its English embassy. Jeremy Bentham became a partner in the company. Many of the ideas that Owen had and implemented in New Lanark are taken for granted in industrialized countries today. These include: Abolition of child labor, schooling for children, working time restrictions, efficient organization of operational processes, motivation of employees, clean workplaces, trade union formation, cooperative systems, etc.

In 1825, Owen sold the factory and went to the United States to found his utopian, cooperative New Harmony colony . The settlement had been sold to him by Johann Georg Rapp . The experiment quickly failed. Owen returned to England in 1829. The unions, which had become stronger in the meantime, took up his ideas of the cooperative.

In England, Owen continued his work to fight poverty among the population. He saw the solution in a trading system that was based on the production factor work - and should therefore ensure adequate wages for the workers. In 1832 he and his followers founded a commodity exchange that exchanged goods for a specially issued labor allowance. But the system could not coexist with the conventional monetary system. The London stock exchange was closed again in 1833, a second stock exchange in Birmingham could only survive a few months.

His son David Dale Owen became a geologist, as did his son Richard Owen , the first president of Purdue University .

Works

Owen's vision of New Harmony that never materialized.
  • 1813 A New View Of Society. Essays on the Formation of Human Character.
  • 1817 Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System: With Hints for the Improvement of Those Parts of which are Most Injurious to Health and Morals
  • 1841 Lectures on the Rational System of Society.
  • 1844 The Book of the New Moral Society.
  • 1849 The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race.
  • 1857 The Life of Robert Owen written by himself. The life of Robert Owen. Reprinted from the original edition 1857-1858. Publisher: G. Bell and sons, London 1920

German editions:

  • Paths to Socialism. Robert Owen and Socialism. Selected and introduced by Helena Simon. Paul Cassirer, Berlin 1919.
  • The social system . Edited by Liane Jauch and Marie-Luise Römer. Translated by Michael Henselmann. Reclam, Leipzig 1988. ISBN 3-379-00265-8
  • A new conception of society: selected texts . Edited and introduced by Lola Zahn . Translated by Regine Thiele and Lola Zahn. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989.
Helene Simon : Robert Owen and Socialism (1919)

literature

philately

The UK Post recognized Robert Owen with a 10 pence postage stamp on April 28, 1976 (Michel Catalog No. 707).

Web links

Wikisource: Robert Owen  - Sources and full texts
Commons : New Harmony, Indiana, United States  - Album containing pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Robert Owen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Owen: Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System: With Hints for the Improvement of Those Parts of it which are Most Injurious to Health and Morals . Ed .: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown. 2nd Edition. London 1817, p. 20 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Ludwig: Robert Owens contacts to Saxony from 1820 to 1837. In: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume II / 2013.
  3. ^ Robert Owen: Observations on the effect of the manufacturing system: with hints for the improvement of those parts of it which are most injurious to health and morals .. London, Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown [etc. ], January 1, 1817 ( archive.org [accessed April 6, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Owen, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur, early socialist, author, is considered to be the founder of the cooperative system
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH Newtown , Montgomeryshire , Wales
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1858
PLACE OF DEATH Newtown , Montgomeryshire , Wales