Robert Owen: The Socialist

Robert Owen was the founder of Utopian Socialism, yet he proved that capitalism could work. He saw the same evils caused by "capitalism" as did Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, but he was more interested in making the system work than in destroying it. Although he became the undisputed leader of the socialist movement in England, his actions were more tangible than mere theorizing. As the manager of a large capitalist enterprise at New Lanark, he proved that capitalism could work, but only within limits.

Owen was unable to expand his principles throughout the kingdom, and it is only gradually that the human race has caught up to the thinking of this remarkable man. He considered his success at New Lanark to be based on universal truths. Unfortunately, it was the power of his magnetic leadership and boundless good will that achieved results, which he claimed as proof of his ideas.

Owen's success was based on a unique personality that could never be generalized for society as a whole because the world was not then, nor is it now, made up of people like Robert Owen. Owen proved that capitalism with a human face could work, and the world only learned much later that socialism without a human face can never work.