Robert Owen and the New Harmony Village

Capitalism is an economic system that raises many disputes between people. Presumably, the most popular opposing system to capitalism is a centrally-planned economy, most widely known to be employed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). However, many people were opposed to capitalism long before the creation of the USSR. One of these individuals included Welch entrepreneur, philosopher, and philanthropist Robert Owen–the founder of a form of utopian socialism known as Owenism.

Born in 1771 in Newton, Wales, Owen became a well-known industrialist and member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and Manchester Board of Health. His work on economic theory began in his book, The Book of the Moral World, where he states that "society has emanated from fundamental errors of the imagination, and all the institutions and social arrangements of man over the world have been based on these errors. Society is, therefore, through all its ramifications, artificial and corrupt, and, in consequence, ignorance, falsehood, and grave folly, alone govern all the affairs of mankind.” ("The Book of the Moral World" VI) According to his theory, society is corrupted because of the hostile environment it lives in. Norms in society allow people to adopt inadequate behavior. In his work, The Book of the Moral World, the Welsch thinker states that. Owen identifies capitalism as a belligerent environment, so he proposed to form a new, utopian society. His other works include an essay titled"Observations on the effect of the manufacturing system," where Owen argues that "The general diffusion of manufactures throughout a country generates a new character in its inhabitants; and as this character is formed upon a principle quite unfavorable to individual or general happiness, it will produce the most lamentable and permanent evils, unless its tendency be counteracted by legislative interference and direction" (A New View of Society 121). His solution for the 'evils' was to develop a society based on a new, money-less, and pro-intellectual system. Communities would be based on fair, moral values rather than on profit maximization. He proposed that each member of the society contributes by performing an activity they are trained in. Members of the Society would utilize goods they altogether produced without needing to pay for them. Thus, the community would be functioning properly without the necessity of being competitive and hostile to each other. For instance, loggers would focus on delivering an adequate amount of wood to the village without worrying about acquiring food for themselves - harvesting would be farmers' duty. Hence, society would not be characterized by profit-maximization, so all the evils and unfairness would be eliminated. Moreover, the ideological system would be distinct from the barter system as people don't have to exchange one product for the other–everyone gets a share of the goods produced within the society.

Owen was so convinced about the prosperity and success of his utopian socialism that he built two villages where he established model societies - an environment where the community could become good: one in New Lanark, Scotland, and the other in New Harmony, Indiana. Out of the two, the project of New Harmony was more advanced, as the village contained schools, workshops, and farms. Its main objective was to form an environment where people's education and intellectual development, especially from low-income backgrounds, would be enriched. Owen bought the village in 1825, which had an area of approximately 20,000 acres.