Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XXIV

Weekend Notes (Overview)

Text in English to type

Comments on my "Robert Owen", Draft #5

It does translate to accepted interested forms. It is the kind of approach that could be applied to a dozen figures or scenes. It is the first this set of ideas is applied to the accepted subject. The problem is already there. The life and work of Owen is not something which we invented.

My comment: I think that the chapter does not entirely fulfill the promises made at the beginning of it.

I wouldn’t lose by adding or changing anything which I feel does not fulfill the promise. There is however a book and therefore it is the book as a whole which fulfills the promises. I write for an audience which has heard about Owen. There might be an additional paragraph where it shows that he didn’t understand the economy. He hadn’t realized that a hundred years of the market was to come. The market would show its power in the future.

I would say that ultimately he did find himself a socialist and was out for a new world a changed ethics. P. doesn’t say that this is actually lacking in the draft.

Perhaps there could be an increase in the coherence of the material and P. marked a few things in the draft but none of them essential. But to bring out the fact of the importance of Robert Ow-en and his person I have done, and this is not easy to raise to a higher level. Perhaps there would be only adding at certain points and patches but the main task which the paper sets itself has been done.

[3] The greatness of the man, rare, noble and prophetic I have done by heaping these ecstatic characteristics of the man and keeping his concrete activities peripheric. P. thinks I have solved the artistic problem and P. thinks it’s very good and would not essentially gain by a stroke here and there.

This is a soul picture and not a portrait of his life. The English can be ashamed not to have wit-ten anything that comes near this, e.g. that he was crazy and utopian. But how many such people does English produce who are men of action?

P. marked certain places where I should check the figures and if in doubt to understate them. They must be absolutely right. Some repetitions will have to go and that is done in about 2 hours of minor editing. P. also thinks the introduction to the chapter is very good. It makes it clear that the machine and society are the two things.

That he was a deeply religious person is a trite phrase and we would have to show is meant here. He was what is understood by a mystic. This only came out later when he started a rationalist religion.

The peculiar unity of his personality made him practical, but this is characteristic of mystics. He didn’t produce mystic literature nor was it the way he related to action or the external world. He linked himself to internal sources.

It was utterly illogical how his basic doctrines related to his conclusions. There isn’t the slightest bridge there. The reader [4] wants to know what we think of his theories and logic. His theory was elliptic and there was no logic there. These are facts of recognition and help the reader but this doesn’t help what we have to say.

The chapter is amazingly brief and has pulled together so much.

P. doesn’t know where he took this picture, but Owen [n]eglected his wife completely as if she hardly existed. There was an absence of years from his wife but that is what every person with a mission must do. Jesus went further in this regard with all his family training behind him.

There is not much more to say. It is a very big piece of work.

Ilona: The draft is highly readable after page 6 and 7. Till then it is too brilliant and as brilliant spurts that start over and over again. When it starts putting the stuff it moves. The quotations are put in beautifully and it is well written overall.

Ilona disliked some superficial formulations of sentences. There is one howler with German social democracy. The end, (ziel) was dropped and didn’t hold the attention of the movement – the superiority of communist society.

Ilona thinks that one point doesn’t come out and remains mysterious, what is meant by individualism and why was Owen against religion?

Ilona cannot judge the validity of the picture, not having read any other. It cats on here however, as a beautiful description and she would go far to read it and it is extremely moving. Something like the first paragraph is actually needed but written with an avoidance of adjectives. The finest technique is bringing in the quotations. It juste heaves me along.

[5] At some points it would be nice if I pull the strings together: e.g. peaceful revolution and things to remain as they are essentially, socialism only in communal living and the advantages would be so great that the rest of society would follow the example. There is no contradiction on his assumptions.

It would be an achievement to pull together the threads which run in different directions. In the place after the Unions – while his economics were poor (he didn’t understand what could be understood) he drew the conclusions rightly and time has borne him out on currency and on Malthus. Time has also borne him out on the development of the socialist movement and on the long-term contracts – that stability of labour may be more important than exploitation. The weakness of Marxism hinged on exploitation. Owen said let the rich go, but Marx preferred to explain the whole movement on exploitation. Today the socialist movement doesn’t say to abolish exploitation. They want to abolish unemployment and the strong point is the different way of life. That is where Owen was right from the start. Owen allowed exploitation to go on although he thought it made people coarse and cruel and childish. He didn’t idealize the working class. He said to be any good it would be changed. I should show the logic of some of his proposals. His points have survived.

Freedom didn’t come in here at all. He was wary for freedom. The employers were against legislation arguing freedom. He didn’t believe in the workers doing things on their own like the Marxist idea. The workers themselves would be changed.

However including all the above things might make the chapter lose its simple outlines and might lead to confusion. P. thinks this might be done later if we wish to.

[6] P. regards the Owen chapter as worth while, good reading and an introduction to the world of thought reflected in our reading of Owen, Marx and Shaw.

Abstract ratiocinations are not interesting. The thing must live. It will therefore be a thought-stimulating book. (It amounts to the last part of The Great Transformation (?)).

My characterization is what Edmund Wilson would do. He read and thought about it and writes with a definite idea in mind.

Most of the writings in English present Owen as a puzzle. He wasn’t a puzzle at all.

Nobody moved on unemployment. He said therefore that he will reorganize society. He didn’t level classes. He accepted them.

An intelligent breaking up of the article would increase the effectiveness.

I have corrupt elements in my character. I assume a low-type reader. Edmund Wilson doesn’t do this on Michelet. I know about Owen what Wilson knows about Michelet. I do not believe that the reader is interested in the same things as I.

Owen moved from the support of the poor relief to unemployment to prevent unemployment.

He never insisted on collective production but emphasized collective consumption. He was the first to point out that communal form of consumption would cheapen life.

On the idea of the transition one might say that socialism and [7] the communist party was born out of this idea. Also Marx’ distinction between socialism and communism. Marx said that as long as man hasn’t got over the capitalist traits you can’t go on to communism. I brought in the tradition of example but I didn’t say that this is the line that the Bolsheviks took and to this day China is run on this thought. It would need only a few lines but very interesting lines.

The importance to the Communist movement is the movement by the idea. Stalin when he re-versed the kolkhoz, thought that the people would accept it by success of it. Also in Hungarian agriculture the kolkhoz hinges on example. Owen said he wouldn’t touch the poor law but would take up the Village of Union on a non-compulsory basis. Those who joined would be indentured. This was a logic for the capitalist and for the worker. The Poor Law Unions however wouldn’t agree the Village. They would risk the right to the rates if they used this as a fund for buying land. They wouldn’t take this risk. The rates were an Elizabethan law (the first poor law in 1536 and not elaborate. The last consolidated poor law in 1563). The parishes wouldn’t give up that right. He meant make your people earners and make them more hopeful.

I didn’t mention that there sprouted out innumerable self-help organizations of workers who all wanted start Villages of Union. Artisans started subscribing and the purpose of the co-operative shops was to start Owenite communities.

The consequences came from a commercial society. The machine will change society and there-fore society must be deliberately organized so that the machine shouldn’t destroy it.

[8] Owen’s theories by some illogical twist made him a free thinker turning against the church and all constituted religion. Anything which would do that would be very essential for mental and moral development. In German there is the term “revealed religion” which is used for doctrinal religion. That is what he would reject, the revelations.

Evangelical Christianity was very much on the line that he deprecates. An important thing which I didn’t put was that he thought his discovery of society rules out Christianity because Christianity is preaching the opposite. The Church of England says the opposite – that the church is the institute of salvation. It isn’t evangelical putting the individual in direct contact with God. It says that Christianity is institutionalist. It is really the evangelical ecstatic Protestant who doesn’t believe in the church e.g. the Quakers.

Not everyone would agree with Owen, e.g. Catholic church. It is occupied not with creating consciousness of sin, but removing it. That is the difference. In the two parts of Montreal, for example, one part is a bad Catholic and the other is a hypocrite (Protestant). They are Protestant in believing in original sin and personal sinfulness and doing nothing about it. They have a bad conscience, while with the Catholics it is not original sin but they are told to go to the confessional.

Owen’s understanding of Christianity was Welsh and local. Wesley had turned Protestantism into an intense emotional movement of evangelical character and the poor people accept the Christian answer [9] to their sinfulness. This could be seen in the mines, and that was also Han-nah Moore: half a loaf is better than none. Most Protestants would not agree with this kind of interpretation.

No one would understand how his follows from the effects of society’s reality an is it true, the complete release of the individual from all responsibility and common sense? On the other hand what he saw was the degradation of humanity around him and the church preaching that it was their own sins. It would never improve and the gentry were doing that just to keep their peace with religion. One should express in one sentence where one stands with this peculiar philosophy. He put it in one sentence, that as long as individualization continues, Christianity I separated from mankind. No one answered that the church should turn to society for helpful leadership and reform. He didn’t suggest that the church should support social legislation.

He was deeply convinced that all these revealed religions were untrue if the are not a direct fraud.

The reality of society was the denial and rejection of individualization i.e. that there was only individuals – Hobbes and Locke and Hume and the nascent logic of self interest. Not only the churches were the problem but the atomistic concept of society became general. It existed in Hobbes in one sentence and in Smith it was the self-interest of the butcher and the baker.

Owen was moved by glimpses of a deeper insight – the machine and go together. He saw that man at the machine is doing something stronger and dangerous. He has to fall in with the machine.

[10] He only took up two points the relatedness of which he could not analyze, but it is the subject of our disquisition. He said that as long as individualization is upheld then nothing can be done, i.e. as long as the reality of society is denied. Individualization is the process of the concept of atomized society. If you assert that society consists of individuals you get the picture which supports that.

My question: How do we explain the growth of this idea with Hobbes?

The disintegration was far advanced of medieval corporate society. Also the religious wars al-most destroyed mankind. In 1540 there was Protestantism and Catholicism, also in Germany and in 1640 in Holland. Eight years from the end of the Thirsty Years War Hobbes had had enough of it and was for a dictatorship. In order to have a strong secular government to stop religious wars he started with mankind as wolves who eat one another unless prevented from doing so. Nothing could be sillier. A better picture than wolves is sheep.

Yet there was hardly a sign of the market or the market economy, but just the growth of commercial practices on a large scale, international trade and other trade.

It was these markets that Adam Smith discovered 140 years after Hobbes. They were foreign markets, trade posts. The primacy of trade over market is startlingly true in history.

One would like as much explanation as can be easily provided. This is the first draft I have which I can now complete.

[11] Myself: The paper shows in general, why the utopias which were proposed couldn’t start working at all.

Yes, this is an important subject which was never taken up quietly.

The thought that nobody should be punished had a tremendous impact on European courts. No one quite knows what the connection is. The foundation of our penal system is mysterious. (Also the idea that bad childhood is the responsibility of parents etc.)

We could improve the Owen chapter. It must be thought and written in one style. There is not much room here for more than what he did. In the first part is not clear what the reader is following. ↑

The New West (3)

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Shaw (7)

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Freedom and Technology (8)

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University of Chicago Paper

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My Thesis

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Politics (3)

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Economic Motives (2)

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Notes

Reciprocity

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Rousseau (3)

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George Woodard

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Fighting Words (2)

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Text Informations

Date: August 23, 1958 (Interview)
KPA: 45/20