Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XVII
Text in English to type
Robert Owen (4)
[2] The Village of Union is an intricate thing which P. has now seen. The first Village was an utter failure and nothing happened. He was told: we don't understand it, it isn't voluntary and how do you run it without capital? … […]
[3] We haven't … […]
[4] … […] To abandon all belief was Owen's religion to be taught to man. His real desire was to do good to the human race and he thought that religions were not only wrong but caused all the evil. … […]
[5] With Calvinism … […]
[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [1]
[13] The fact that you would have to invest
[14] whimsical
[15] [16] [17] [18]
[19] P. is not as rigid in his views of Owen in the earlier remarks above. It is less clearer than he thought what the writings of Owen really say about the relationship of these two Villages of Union. There is no doubt that in the second scheme the first remains intact as the Poor Law. … […]
In an 1813 paper … […]
In reading his first report of the Village of Union … […]
Why is this important? It gives you a handle to a much more serious treatment of Owen's outlook. We have said that he discovered the machine and its productivity but we do not say that the machine was threatening the whole of society.
He said that the condition of the working class is much worse and this is catastrophic. Here … […]
[20] We should give this precisely otherwise we haven't developed the problem. The fact that he gave wrong answers must be played down but not left out. The great misery caused by the machine is because labour has become worthless. However he linked this with a different matter, that only work on the land will help. He says it must be on the land and that means subsistence. A Village of Union does mean subsistence. In the 1920's Vienna and in the 1940's in England there was a tremendous allotment movement. … […]
Four or five things are now important. One can't leave out Christianity and he said he wasn't a Christian but in charity and morality he was a Christian (or perhaps he might have been a Hindu with the charity).
P.'s assumption is that nothing happened between the first and second report … […]
Already the first plan … […] [21] total mentality).
His answer on religion is illogical. Mankind has always had a society and people are generally impatient intolerant, irritable and wretched. One understands this but how was this error incorporated in all the religions? How is this the cause of man's misfortune? P. doesn't understand it.
We must be explicit in presenting Owens' essential contribution to the problem of the machine in society and in our paper there are only vague references but the thing is left out.
“The new era begins” is another connotation - a pessimistic one. If the machine goes on it will become even worse - there will be a cataclysmic revolution. This is very important with regard to Marx He prophesied that this is only the beginning of what we called mechanism.
The condition of the workers was quite independent of the unemployment … […]
Suddenly unemployment came up as a Poor Law question … […]
[22] The effect of mechanism is the lowering of standards all the way. He says to the manufacturers however, that we can't drop the machine.
The social catastrophe caused by the machine needs an answer. He says that it is in low wages and the worker cannot be restored except on the land. (We don't play up his economics but just understand it).
Unemployment was growing and the first type of Village had to be protected … […]
We don't know if the second plan means a great concession and a change of mind. There is nothing to go upon. He was secretive and was a very great man. He could go ten years without saying a word about the subject. This obstacle with Christianity he saw for 17 years and he knew he would have to come out with it one day.
Although the plan for sect and party was whimsical, it was essential to the generalization of the plan because one couldn't disregard an important feature of the situation. In the first plan voluntariness didn't arise and in the second plan it stood in the forefront. The Parishes … […]
[23] were basic to the whole thing. He thought that apart from the question of classes people would combine in the Villages. The function of the classes is very different from sect and party. He was diabolically clever (c.f. p. 227) because he avoided discussion of a fact. Nothing comes up in the first Village of Union plan of forcing people together. However, on he broader scheme…
We leave out the moral implication of this matter. It didn't turn on sect and party but on class. He never had any other concept.
The idea that he now had to make his peace with reality is a mistaken idea. Not even a single step can be taken and he must have seen it when he had the earlier concept. It is essential to the plan. Owen planned for production while he referred to those economists who don't. P. tends to the thought that the important matters were there, while many important matters were left undecided.
The Village of Union is used in contrast to the term “individualized” which turns out to mean the cottage. The basic feature that Owen suggested is that people should live together in communities, in Villages, not in cottages.
There is nowhere any sign that Owen noticed the ambiguity and two-sidedness of his use of the term “individualized”.
The might have abundance in the future but in the meantime at least they wouldn't starve.
The whole problem of transition is contained in his attitude to gradualism when he says that even the best measures unless gradually applied are worse than the worst conditions, e.g. The Gotha Program.
[24] The very fact these ideas go back to Owen is startling but for educated people it is interesting. They ought to know about it.
The Owen chapter will be much improved by his improved by his not being treated so much as an odd figure. His was a superb lack of vanity and wonderful good taste.
At Gotha there was the Union of the Lasallians and the Eisen-achians. It is the basic law of what the Russians regard as the program for the future.
Owen doctrines which the Trade Union movement took up included the very different forms of self-help and productive associations to produce a Village of Union.
On the machine, he said that a new age was beginning and that it cannot be dropped on account of the national interest. There was a necessity of allowing for this being an infinite development and there was the need of doing something actively. He said it would take the heavy work from all. He didn't say that the machine would produce any amount of anything but there would be an abundance of all the necessaries, which was possible. This was in terms of markets. Each of the above can be substantiated by a famous passage.
One must bring out the hard tough character of the thought. There was the certainty of a new age and a new epoch with inconceivable things happening. As to society that is our difficulty.
At the present time the Owen chapter is divided as follows: there is the introduction of two pages, then Owen the Man, four and a half pages. Here add the simplicity, modesty and selflessness of [25] his character. His mind was a health of paradoxy. Then there is the New Lanark section, seven pages, and then the Philosophy. At this point we give the machine and discovery of society. … […]
Then there is society. He discovered all the things individually that operationally make up society. Start with New Lanark and give the other things afterwards.
When Owen wrote “something would have to be done” he wrote the brief of his itinerary through life. He knew the machine had to be counteracted. There is the idea in The Great Transformation that unless something is done it will destroy society. That was the market.
Don't distinguish between the discovery of capitalism and society. Society was capitalist and capitalism and unemployment come here.
In the end society is gradually, patiently and completely transformed [26] and we don't know if we solve all of man's complaints. Only someone who deals with reality in this fashion can conceive that there are limits. He is faced with this all the time. Add as well Owen's social pacifism. At the end give his philosophy, a conscious and deliberate formulation.
Our conclusion is that his position was expressed through his life and not his writing. We needn't trouble that his philosophy isn't convincing because the known story of his life bears out our conclusion. But there is a limite to what society would permit.
A naturalistic ida was abroad at the time. In Malthus the population presses on the means of subsistence or the law of diminishing returns of the soil are both naturalistic not humanistic. An economist called Anderson pointed to this. Only Ricardo's rent theory did it become known and accepted as valid and there you have a price theory that accounts for rent.
Owen entirely and completely rejected the point of view of the religions, although he gave as his grounds something irrelevant. No church was an intolerant as he, yet, he thought he could determine right ideas. His ideas of man's duties were dogmatically Christian to the point of rejecting any kind of punishment which is as far as Christ won't and he wasn't responsible for New Lanark.
The socialist influence in legislation and the social determinism was supported by statistics. In Quetelet's work there was the idea that crime, divorce, prostitution, were determined by social changes. This was prophetic although how and why this would him [27] an exponent of the reality of society became of decisive importance for his ethical orientation (and anthropology). Owen says that what he is teaching could never have been done before (p. 111). Like Marx he wanted to unite all the separate principles which is a highly Marxist idea.
The point which wasn't in Owen was that the Gotha Program had a distinction from each according to his ability. The Gotha Program was made by the Eisenachians (Liebknecht and Lebel, and the others were Lasalle etc.) The critique by Marx makes the distinction between socialism and communism. Later on Erfurt retained this distinction. From Owen comes the idea that there will be an intermediate stage and human beings will be educated. He anticipates the Gotha Program.
This will be an authentic view. … […]
We must get some of the pedestrian starting points of the latest Marxist position into Owen. Perhaps we will bring in the trade union movement, Chartism.
I could mention Chartism … […]
It was only in 1891 that the next o the Gotha Program was [28] published because that was when the critique was published although … […]
On “the spade” it comes in in quite a diletantic way and the impression is that is isn't serious.
The economies from the house and communal arrangements should not be put together with … […]
The sentence: profits are not reduced, is curious. It is not a description of the Village of Union. This falls under grave criticism. It should be in the general section.
The reference to gradualism belongs where we develop this concept earlier. The passage on “the machine would be his backer and ally” should be put in with the machine. Here it is destructive, and loose. It should all be built as a monument.
He was regarded as the founder of the labour movement even though he became the leader against his will.
The labour time was a work of utter genius. He thought that everyone … […] In a market [29] where there is competition individuals take the losses. […]
Note rational: p. 146 abundance for all at all times.
(See also The Early Marx for points in common, and Freedom and Technology.) ↑
The Early Marx (4)
Freedom and Technology (2)
Rousseau Paradox
Shaw (3)
Camus
Interdisciplinary Project (5)
Notes
Money (2)
Sumner
Sumner nurtured the present fathers of American thought. He said that the trouble with primitive m[a]n was that he was lazy, and gave no forethought and was greedy. He had all the bad qualities of economistic premises and no good ones.
Man's original endowment is poverty - it is nature surviving in society. Therefore pauperian and the needy require no explanation. This view was valid until 25 years ago in America.
It was only Malinowski who followed up the opposite. The New Deal was head-on collision with Sumner of Yale. Therefore, the Great Transformation was banned from Penn. State (it was removed from the library) and a number of men were made to leave, including the head of department. Keyes then published a reader, and put P.'s Commentary article into it. Keyes appointed two of P.'s students. ↑
America (2)
The Great Transformation (5)
Canada (3)
Canadian Poets
Text Informations
Date: October 12, 1957
KPA: 45/12
- ↑ P. 12 is just a small sheet of paper where "Abba Lerner + liberal socialism” is written.