Robert Owen, one of the cooperative movement founders, proposed many pro-socialist ideas during his life. The list of them includes the establishment of villages of industries. The purpose of this paper is to describe Owen’s plan of creating such villages, as well as their main elements and actions to be taken to implement his plan.
The main idea of Owen’s proposal is that self-supporting communities are to be found to allow unemployed to work on the land. Those communities should consist of about 1,200 people that are settled on land from 1,000 to 1,500 acres (Morton 132). Owen believes that unity enables people to get every aid they need and suggests that people live in one large building with all accommodations necessary to comfortable cooking and eating. Every family lives in a private apartment, raising their children until they are three years old, and after that, children should be brought up by the people of the community.
Owen suggests that such villages can be established by individuals, by parishes, by districts, and by the nations through their governments (Morton 134). Regardless of who found the village, there should be proper supervision by people of suitable competences. As the number of villages increases, they should be united by the government in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands until they embraced the whole world in common interest (Morton 138). According to Owen, the system of these communities should be universal as he believes that it offers the most natural and speedy mode of achieving the results desired by the world-wide community.
To sum up, Owen’s plan implies that villages of industries are to be established to enable unemployed to work on the land in big communities. As these villages grow in number, they should be connected to provide the opportunity to fulfill the needs of people all around the world.
Work Cited
Morton, Arthur Leslie. The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. Monthly Review, 1962.