Malthus and Owen 21 7all the unions of England under one umbrella. The Grand
National was not simply a union seeking higher wages and better
working conditions, but a movement based in the laboring
classes with an eye to radical social change. The program of the
Grand National was a program of radical reform that went far
beyond the traditional goals of labor unions. England was not
ready for Owen’s new assault on the social fabric of the nation
and the union failed.
The rest of Owen’s life was spent in continued writing and
pleading the case for his Utopian ideas. He was not really an
economist, nor was he a political philosopher. He was a moral
philosopher only to the extent that he sought reforms to improve
the human condition. He was rather, a zealot, who thought that
the nature of man was such, that through the application of his
ideas, men could work cooperatively, and would reshape the
world. His life was filled with monumental failures and some
significant successes.
His failures seemed to revolve around three ideas. First, the
view of the perfection of man requires the rejection of God and
most people accept God and reject the idea of the perfection of
man. Second, his insistence on the abolition of the family as the
first step towards the education of men to perfection engendered
hostility towards his entire program. Also, most people rejected
the idea that school teachers would be better prepared to mold
their young children’s character than parents were. Finally,
Owen’s continual attempt to abolish money antagonized some
and frightened many. Most people accept money as a medium of
exchange, a measure and a store of value and understand the
economic significance of money as such. The misuse and abuse
of money, by people, is consistent with many problems faced in
the world. But to confuse the existence of money with the abuses
that some perpetrate with it is another matter.
How is it then, with so much working against him, that he got
so many things right? He was directly responsible for the laws
which protected children in the labor force. Restriction on the
number of hours children could work and the conditions of their
work were two of his most important contributions. Working
conditions for all workers were improved by virtue of his efforts.
Consumer cooperatives are still a viable means by which people