Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XIII
Text in English to type
Robert Owen (3)
[2] P. read Cole's biography of Owen. It is a poor biography and Cole was on the defensive about Owen's spiritualism when writing it. Owen's autobiography was written when he was 84 and is a lovely book, and what Cole didn't find, P. would find. The Cole biography showed that one ever thought of appreciating Owen like we do. None of the important problems are taken up and one wonders whether Cole didn't wonder about this man. Cole wrote an excellent introduction to the Everyman edition, although he wrote a bad biography. The Everyman edition came much later and Cole put together the best sentences of his biography.
P.'s opinion was confirmed that the superlative genius of the man was never even suspected. His early success was blurred and made to fade out, including his achievements (the eminent role he played at the time).
After I left, P. read the Everyman edition of Owen from cover to cover and didn't leave out a word and it's marked and annotated. P. thought he would write the Owen chapter, but now perhaps I should. (P. read Owen morning to night for a week. He also read Cole which is a bad book and did this simply to relieve his conscience that he hadn't overlooked anything.)
With Owen it's mainly the subject matter. We would have to quote Owen and he was a terrific writer on the essential points. Owen discovered and stumbled from one thing to another, from the system, to [3] unemployment, to the trade cycle, to capitalism, to the laws of capitalism etc. He had a scientific approach. In monetary reform he turned against gold.
But capitalism still had a tremendous run.
We should quote or rephrase from the Great Transformation. The Great Transformation Owen is not even continued anywhere. How often Owen said that he would devote his life and is ready to die! (P. underlined this). This is said in his biographies and he clearly considered it martyrdom.
P. had much excitement and pleasure from the Owen work.
His life experience was a terrific success as a utopian to 1815, when the trade depression set in for almost 20 years.
Notice his use of such words as hitherto and henceforth. This reminds one of Jesus and the personal revelation passed on is terrifically impressive. P. isn't trying to make Owen great and a genius. His failings, tragedies and weaknesses are as gripping and grant as anything can be. The greatest thing is the logic which pushed him on.
This was the first trade depression that England had. They were aghast and thought England's trade would recede in the next fifty years. The didn't know and foresee the 19th century.
But Owen thought that since the machine would fill the world with plenty, the workers would be clothed and nothing would be taken from the capitalist with his empty life.
[4] Owen thought that Malthus was ridiculous - man is born single, and since he produces more than double of what he needs in his life, how can Malthus be right? Malthus is in some sense right, only he was not right for the next 80 years.
The Villages of Union would have to go one to the land, because there were no markets, so that they would only undercut their own wages unless they went on the land. In this way they wouldn’t press on the labour market. The budget was based on 96,000 pounds and the interest would be paid from the Poor Land funds, but if the Villages prospered everybody would turn to them and you would have socialism. He implied that societies turned socialist through the supe-riority of their producing methods.
Owen's account of the year 1817 was true in every word, never shifting things.
His system of ideas was utterly illogical.
Why should the knowledge than man was determined by his environment convert him to tolerance? Because people weren't responsible for their views and so he could put up with anyone believing anything.
He said that he was an exception and had had these insights and this changed him. This was the way he was made.
Every person reflects his environment and this knowledge would create absolute tolerance. He never employed punishment for his education of people at Lanark where he met terrible things.
[5] (Keep his story terse and this is possible because one has much material.)
There is no logic in P.'s list of attributes which he made about Owen:
Moral statistics:
As regards moral statistics, P. thinks that Quetelet wasn't there yet. These statistics referred to vice, crime, prostitution, alcoholism, and the state of the people. By this standard New Lanark was a terrific success. These records would be regarded as the measure of the condition of the people. The terms moral statistics didn't exist yet (see the E.S.S.).
As far as factory legislation is concerned, Peel's Law of 1802 cannot be regarded as factory legislation. It referred just to the cotton industry and to the children (see the Southgate volume). Where did the Feel Law of 1802 come from? P. doesn't know and we should consult the Webbs.
Unemployment:
There was no one word for employment. These were the sturdy beggars of the Tudors. The didn’t know of a trade depression, and suddenly the war of 1815 ceased and the unemployed would have fallen on the rates.
The 1834 law is a peculiar idea and based on a completely different notion: that the unemployment were to go into the poor house which was a horror. However this isn’t 1834, it 1816. Everything happened between [6] 1816 and 1834 including Peterloo, and the agrarian revolt.
Also the Luddites existed in 1812. The modern view of the Luddites is that they were correct. P. took this from Meredith, The Economic History of England. Meredith really means the knotting frames. Only a conservative can say this. The liberals and Marxists would never agree. Owen would have terribly disapproved of the Luddites.
Business Cycle:
Behind unemployment, he discovered the business cycle. He said that there were no markets. Then there was the currency reform and this led him to labour {chlts} and he discovered the profit motive immediate pecuniary gain). He then discovered unregulated competition and the utilitarian value scale.
He despised the rich but didn't want anything taken away from them. He discovered the speculative excesses and attacked these. He discovered class, that there were two classes, the rich and the poor and he tried to show the rich how little they would lose.
He was unshakeably gradualistic and was against violence.
Trade Unions:
The first mentions of the trade union problem is to the effect that the workers only agree in “zealous systematic opposition to the employers” (p. 30). He didn’t see that was the thing moralizing them. He became the idol of the trade union movement but he had no idea that the workers should associate. He didn’t realize that the Villages of Union should be associations.
[7] Socialism:
He discovered socialism - if the whole society was fraternal and united them a new society would begin. The opening essay on a new society was 1813. The others came in 1814 and 1815.
Rehousing:
He thought of rehousing around the factory and having a settlement there. Concerning urbaniza-tion he realized that the congregation in towns was a moral and social disease. He said this much later in 1819. Only when everything failed, he took to the Villages of Union, not for people to become farmers but that the only way they would survive was on the land.
Expensive machines:
He saw that the manufacturer had to amortize it.
Localized animal: Toynbee's parochalism is close to this. Owen was the first to regard nations and nationalism as derived from fact that man was a localized animal.
He had a democratic and paternalistic approach: ton consult the people but not to follow them. By democratic he meant converse or talked about.
School reform:
The school reform movement of Vienna of the 1920's conquered the Anglo-Saxon world. This is not derived from Pestolozzi but from Robert Owen. His aim on teaching people to think all their lives was progressive [8] education.
The progressive education discussed in Cole is of immense importance because he had it all.
Sexual Life:
He allowed incompatibility (later he stood for promiscuity?)
Open Air Life:
He was most emphatic to go out and see and enjoy nature.
Dance and Gymnastics: In England in 1815 the children were spindle legged. He understood the recreational needs fully for child life. He had a kindergarten but didn’t call it that.
He discovered socialism and socialist morality. Tolerance was his answer and since it is our own answer we better look out.
He tried to obtain concessions from the higher income classes and by the time he made the Poor Relief report he had all these concessions.
He was for the pooling of resources – what we call collective resources. This was not communistic but communal, one of the variants of collective.
He said that the dividend should be distributed. He was for philanthropy and public debate.
We wrote a catechism to state his position. He wanted general and permanent reporting and his proposals were concrete. He wanted [9] absolutely to abolish war and armaments and colonies (?) He was for automation and mechanization and saw that there would be a boundless technological advance.
It is an incredible story and nobody has given it. P. thinks we should restrict ourselves. It is a new chapter of social history under the heading of a biography. We are not compelled to colour, or draw exaggerated perspectives.
Owen was convinced the populace was absolutely more degraded than before the introduction of the manufactures.
He lived till the age of 87 and died 4 days after being dragged from a platform. He stood for his ideas to the last. In 1813, he was 42 when he wrote the New View of Society (he was born in 1771.) He wasn’t young and had been at the head of New Lanark for 16 years.
What happened was the discovery of society. In German, society is for Hegel the “burgerliche gesellschaft” and is social and economic life. The contrast of state and society is typically German. In English, society is not contrasted with the state at all.
Socialism was used once before by a Frenchman. “Charity” was used for the word tolerance.
Write about Owen's discovery of society and say that the other things come up incidentally.
Distinguish three phases of Owen's development:
First there was the factory including hygiene, high wages, factory legislation, dress, school reform, etc. then he was stopped on unemployment [10] because he couldn't deal with unemployment which is not a factory matter. That branches off to the trade cycle, the currency reform and the other branch is the Village of Union. He was led on to capitalism, the business cycle, and currency reform but practically this led to the Village of Union. He discovered the unemployed, not the poor. He discovered, in the question of industry versus land, that if they lived collectively, expenditures would be lower. He said the poor should be nationalized (unemployment insurance) and the Poor Law made national. The State should take up the use of the unemployed e.g. Louis Blanc and the Atelier, and Lasalle. He said it first, that the government should finance the Village of Union. When the trade cycle lasted, the idea came up that the mode of life of the Village of Union would catch on and the country would become socialist and a new society emerge.
These are the three phases and between the Village of Union and socialism there was the American phase.
The administrative problem of the Village of Union was the Poor Law with the question of the unemployed. The word “unemployed” is not recognized. Both the poor and the unemployed fell on the rates.
In America he had a new principle that people do things together – “pooling of resources”, as a community of work and expenditure. He used the word community in the sense of a village. The county would set up the village and the poor rates would pay the interest on the loan. (We can show in our book how the interest is given, in the details supplied by Robert Owen). Later in life he started a Village but he didn’t succeed.
[11] Under P.'s presentation there is:
1) The Factory period
2) the Village of Union proposal
3) the continued depression.
It lasted 20 years and the whole chartist movement falls into the depression cf. Southgate. From 1815 onward is a long period of depression.
He became leader of the trade union movement against his will. He didn’t believe in it. With Chartism he didn’t see what political action would do, he wasn’t built that way. Cole is reliable on these phases.
Skip the long story of his career. Start on the period when he enters public life and was famous in the whole world because of New Lanark. Twenty thousand came and you can hardly get there. (It was near Glasgow and the Clyde river which flowed to the west, and the mill was located on it.)
For a time Bentham was one of the shareholders.
It was the Archbishop of Canterbury to whom he said that about Christianity. He gave a lecture in 1817 in England and declared all the religions were a fraud. Cole said that finished him. He know he was challenging everything. Can you imagine a person thinking all this up by necessity, not speculation?
He rejected class war absolutely and in the sharpest way.
People on the left wing of Chartism were all Owenites. They really meant by Owenite a socialist.
[12] P. read Owen with the care and intensity which he hasn't read for a long time. P. never read this book through since it seemed to be so repetitious.
Cole said that the secret of Owen was that he was a bit mad, but if that’s the answer – many people thought that of Cole.
Owen was mistaken on the possibilities of capitalism but think how mistaken Malthus was and Ricardo with his crazy gold standard. (Ricardo delved and Malthus span and who was then the mad man?)
My question: Did Owen see the problem of the reality of the person and the reality of society?
It wasn't our problem that he saw. He welcomed the discovery of society as the source of tolerance and freedom. The individualism of the sects was the bans of mankind. This explains why he went far wrong on a number of things.
He was a 100% autocratic dictator and he never listened to anyone at all.
Owen has the complete idea of the transition stage to socialism. This is part of the Gotha program and touches on the question of the transition of Russian socialism to communism. There is a famous Engels sentence about the jump from necessity to freedom. It could be that Marx had it from the similar Owen sentence.
Owen had infinite compassion and was a Christian like no one else. He had faith in reason and faith in gradualism which came from reason.
[13] Tolerance he regarded as the fruit of knowledge. Knowledge of what? Knowledge of society.
He was weak and all his life he must have been afraid about working in a mill.
He says that the manufacturing problem was a double one: the mill was placed badly since there was not a single person about. There were then two sources of labour, the poor house children and the nearby village of the criminals and destitute. They had no children of their own. He says that after they had learned their trade, he became dependent on them and would manage them in the democratic concepts and het along with them. There would be no punishment. He never dismissed anyone for theft and violence and this takes strong convictions.
Re punishment: We don't know why we punish and we don't know what man is for. There is some characteristic of the human mind that it is satisfactory for one thing to follow another. This is related to the principle of sufficient cause (if something has happened then something must have previously happened).
From the point of view of social technique the parallelogram was an absurdity. He thought of nothing else but housing the poor and having them cook together and work on about a half acre for subsistence. They would be allowed to produce more but this would go to the community. But whey then should they give this money to the community? He had therefore to agree to people of the same ilk in the community, e.g. Catholics. But where would these people come from? He would therefore have to nationalize it. But the Poor Law was parochial and so he started the whole scheme in [14] America. However it broke down in quarrels.
Owen said he knew that society might be formed without crime and he didn't believe in original sin. This had an international aspect in the improvement of every nation in the world.
There was a strong fear of the French Revolution and of bloodshed and violence.
Our subject is the discovery of society and he put the whole thing into two words: machine and society. He said that Luddism was barbarism and he utterly averse to the class war. We must do away with the capitalist system gradually and peacefully.
We need an explanation of New Lanark as a boob which lasted 25 years by a man who started by borrowing 100 pounds.
The chapter on Robert Owen might be written in the form of a prologue and three scenes.
The prologue might contain Robert Owen's original endowment:
- Infinite compassion (p. 35, 40, 41).
- Boundless faith in reason (the visible fact)
- Dedication unto death (pp. 94, 108, 109, 216).
- Dread of revolution (anti-violence, gradualism, anti-anti…)
- Gradualism (against prematureness)
- Miracles of reason expected (in no time).
- Tolerance - the fruit of knowledge (of what? society)
- A weakly boy (never worked in a mill).
[15] Scene 1:
Owen stepped into hell – a secluded infant’s slaughter mill in the darkest Scottish congo, (these were not the highlands and there were no roads.) His father-in-law had notice the horde (500) of derelict pauper children and tried to help them. He came face to face with the children and the machines. Owen notices the adults too. They were all criminals. Also he saw the machine (p. 158).
Scene 2:
Twenty years of preparation in the wilderness. He was his own John the Baptist (p. 95, 154). There was a shower of miracles – general health, wealth, world fame. They were innumerable reminders to his audiences of this. Owen felt entirely the part of the saviour but was the selfless.
Scene 3:
Days of continuous revelation, 1813-1821 with 8 years of rededication. (p. 108, 111, 116, 119, 150). This was a typical climax of rededication, undaunted by the recognition of growing obstacles. (p. 108, 109). (Redeemed – p. 108). 1813 was the opining essay on the New View of Society, and in 1821 the Report to New Lanark. In every one of the steps during the 8 years, he says “it begins today”. The 25 years boom was at an end. All the wealth and fame came from the boom. From the factory came the discovery of unemployment and the whole of “society” emerges from the Villages.
He had three periods, the factory: unemployment, currency, and the business cycle, and Villages of Union, (which were impossible and would break down); and socialism.
[16] At the end of the book he shows that he will have 4 groups, those with no money, some money, much money etc. and it becomes a replica of the class structure. It was a way of solving the un-employment problem and making money. He republished Balers at his own expense and he didn’t realize that he had Bellers. (Include the two details of the 96,000 pounds and the four classes from paupers to capitalists.) People would stay five to seven and be indentured. The whole plan for the 96,000 pounds is dropped. The principals was united labour, expenditure, and property and equal privileges. There would be private dwellings and the children under three would stay with the parents but all others would be housed together. Note that this would remoralize the country (p. 289).
Owen was deeply anti-revolutionary and shared the phobias of his time (the French Revolution). Owen was deeply anti-revolutionary and shared the phobias of his time (the French Revolution). He had phobias against any upset. He had a mania of opinion and against any upset of opinion and against intolerance. If he had thought of a social revolution would have gone mad. He never thought of general social change.
Up to 1813 there was no unemployment but in 1815 there was unemployment and in 1818 there were paupers. He published his first essay in 1813 and in 1815 there was the depression. It broke in on the country the same way as the 1929-30 depression broke in on America. Over-night everything stopped and by 1815 the poor were flooded with unemployment. He felt the whole thing should be nationalized. The Elizabethan was a national Poor Law although it was parish-financed. From 1536 an earlier Poor Law and from 1563, the Statute of Artificers was national and only the finance was through the parish.
He couldn't carry through the Village of Union. He said of course, [17] if the Villages of Union were so successful then the rest of the country wouldn’t remain under worse conditions. The whole country would gradually come under Villages of Union. He suggested the old and new system operate side by side and the new system would work. This idea underlies the socialist revolution and the Marxist superiority would win over the rest. He never thought of socialism but by 1821 he was a socialist.
He prepared for 16 years during which there wasn't any depression, unemployment or crisis. It was the pauper children that made him feel as he did. A principle came over him that if you understood the principle of society you would be tolerant. The light of this would be so strong that people would be blinded and it was not permitted to tell them the whole truth. Only tell them part of it. It was the truth of the discovery of society and that the individual was determined by his environment. Tolerance would come out of this and the religions would end. Peace would come over mankind.
In 1813 he was in the midst of the boom along with the rest of England and he didn’t know that the depression would go on between 1815 and 1848. During this period there would be the whole of the Chartism and the Trade Union movement (1828-32). After 25 years of boom there were 25 years of depression.
He saw at the beginning that the whole system doesn't work and this happened … […] He [18] saw that technology would be boundless with no limit, but he didn’t see that the profit system would be the system in which it would develop.
Socialism was unforeseen for him. With Villages of Union he said that if these were successful no one would want to live under worse conditions and the old system would shift into the new. The whole of the Marxist position is here, that the more successful sector would win out. It also presents the Marxist position that there wouldn’t be a world revolution. It could all start from the Poor Law reform. However, it was only in 1834 that there was a Poor Law Reform Act which came after the intolerable conditions and the very high rates.
For the personal side we should have the six things for the prologue have the six things for the prologue with no elevation or big words. Put it simply, the way it happened. One really has a story to tell that this would be the end of a religion of sectarianism and emotionalism in so far as it was the opposite of rational.
If we see his tremendous errors we can understand the depth of his tragedies. But the depth of his insights had, through Karl Marx, an influence on socialism in many ways.
Also nothing should be taken from the rich. Let them become parasites. The machine would create a thousandfold increase in wealth. He had never thought of socialism. Classes would lose nothing and the social framework need not change for all this to happen.
The Marxist idea of the possibility of evolution as a socialist method neglected the problem of freedom entirely. “Vociferous friends of freedom” is a term Marx used in the Communist Manifesto. The phrase [19] “freedom to starve” became a socialist slogan.
Owen is dominated by his anti-revolutionary and pacifist statements of sheer toleration. There is no class struggle, which is an unnecessary irritation.
Owen’s rationalism started from the individual selfish interest and it is only through the welfare of the community that he can be happy. He jumped out to the position of individualist self-interest by denying that the individual could be happy outside society as a whole. He doesn’t follow the lines of selfish action (the class struggle which develops out of the liberal economic principle) and he jumped the conditions of 1813 before unemployment set in. His intuitions were along the lines of moral and intellectual development.
He discovered society and the technological civilization and he discovered that it is the machine that does it.
Today these things are doubted. The Clapham school wants to minimize the Industrial Revolution. It is an absurdity to say that these people didn’t see what they saw. He complained of its effects on the Scottish rural society and that the coming of the machine made the employer press the worker beyond his strength. The Clapham school conquered England within idea of no industrial revolution. Beales dropped the term and so did Cole, and it is the present school in England.
The anti-capitalist school had dropped many things e.g. wages began to rise after 1832-6. Under Speenhamland there was no bottom in wages (a supplement from the Poor Law). Therefore there was no working class and Speenhamland was only abolished in 1832 after these events.
[20] The whole system could have collapsed if the workers wouldn’t have wanted it (?). Speenhamland did prevent starvation as long as it lasted. This is not accepted e.g. Sraffa. … […]
Owen didn’t understand the workings of capitalism … […]
There was a strong element of revelation. He was his own John the Baptist and had his own personal story and had to reveal it to others.
(Write with a factual tone and without elevation. The reader prefers that tone to any other.)
Note page 5 “full extent…” … […] You must know him well in [21] order not to say that he never developed. He wasn’t shaken by these things and you doubt only because you are shaken. He had a clear thought he would be killed by the mob.
The mind works from principle and works from external knowledge.
Man’s self interest … […]
The Marxists … […]
His religion of charity … […]
On this principle of the self … […]
On page 19 “hitherto” occurs three times and there other phrases for it. … […]
[22] What really moved him was that the position of the poor didn’t … […]
That is why a Village of Union seemed a possible thing.
(Find Lanark on the map.) Owen said that it was in the wrong … […]
People refused to hand over children … […]
Distinguish between his pedantry … […]
[23] But he didn’t see that it involved the economic system and he didn’t know that it was capitalistic, so how could he arrive at socialism?
He did focus on the machine and that was making society had and would go on and on. He said he must remoralize them.
He made Christianity responsible somehow for the machine. (P. would look for the passages to confirm this.)
We should now check for any sign in his autobiography that he was starting on something entirely different. Cole didn’t have the imagination to see that he wasn’t talking about socialism and capitalism. All he said was that a new principle of immediate gain was a disaster and the machine had done it. ↑
"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments (3)
[24] It occurred to P. that the book has two questions worth raising:
1) Why is there a weakening in the insistence on freedom
and
2) How could it overcome it.
We are answering both questions and put in this way it gets you off an anti-totalitarian book, which is meaningless and goes in the old political ruts. Our objectivity consists in pointing out that we are unfaithful to freedom, and in pointing out to the Russians that they are in the same boat as e are. These are the foundations for such a position and the reader begins to see that the superiority we claim, is on good ground.
[…]
[25] The chapter on social discontent would be a further chapter about the discovery of society. We should take note of the comments in "Weekend XII” and relate this to the discovery of society and the early Marx. We should also add Fourier and Saint-Simon and see whether they were or were not further discoverers of society. See also the Mantoux book.
[26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] ↑
Comments on my "Introduction", Draft #1
[37] The book begins in a subject matter way: one subject and one interest, and in an argumentative way. Out of these elements and our own growing clarity we can build up simple and forceful arguments in one direction.
There is no problem of writing, just clarity and comprehensiveness.
The Introduction is on the lines not of answers but of questions, P. doesn't think that we are much advanced beyond this and it is as much as we start with. P. thinks
[38] [39] [40]
The Great Transformation (4)
[41] [42] ↑
Interdisciplinary Project (2)
[43] [44] [45] ↑
The Early Marx (3)
[46] ↑
Sartre and Camus
[47] ↑
Modern Politics (4)
[48] ↑
America
[49] [50] [51] ↑
China (2)
[52] ↑
Notes
Russia
[53] ↑
Canada
Adler
[54] Adler[1] was utterly and had much more influence on education children than Freud. His name get lost. His was more an injunction than Freud's, which was a discovery.