Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

— 17 —

proposed communist colonies, and attached complete calculations for installation costs, annual expenditures, and expected returns. Thus, in his definitive future plan, the technical elaboration of the details—including floor plans, elevations, and a bird's-eye view—is carried out with such expertise that, once one accepts the Owenite method of social reform, little can be said against the detailed arrangements even from a professional standpoint.

The progress toward communism was the turning point in Owen's life. As long as he acted merely as a philanthropist, he harvested nothing but wealth, applause, honor, and fame. He was the most popular man in Europe. Not only his peers, but also statesmen and princes listened to him approvingly. But when he came forward with his communist theories, the tide turned. Three great obstacles seemed, above all, to block his path to social reform: private property, religion, and the current form of marriage. He knew what awaited him if he attacked them: total ostracism by official society and the loss of his entire social position. But he did not let himself be deterred from attacking them ruthlessly, and it happened as he had foreseen. Banished from official society, silenced by the press, impoverished by failed communist experiments in America in which he sacrificed his entire fortune, he turned directly to the working class and remained active in their midst for another thirty years. All social movements, all real progress that has been achieved in England in the interest of the workers, are linked to the name of Owen. Thus, in 1819, after five years of effort, he forced through the first law restricting the labor of women and children in factories. Thus, he presided over the first congress at which the Trades Unions trade unions of all England united into a single, great trade organization. Thus, as transitional measures toward the fully communist organization of society, he introduced, on the one hand, cooperative societies (consumer and producer cooperatives), which have since at least provided the practical proof that both the merchant and the manufacturer are very dispensable persons; and on the other hand, labor bazaars—institutions for the exchange of labor products by means of a labor paper currency, the unit of which was the labor hour. These institutions necessarily had to fail, but they fully anticipated the much later Proudhonian exchange bank, though they differed from it precisely in that they were not the universal remedy for all social evils, but only a first step toward a far more radical transformation of society.

Engels, Development of Socialism. 2