A radical thinker and humanitarian employer, Owen made a major contribution to nineteenth-century social movements including co-operatives, trade unions and workers' education. He was a pioneer of enlightened approaches to the education of children and an advocate of birth control.

This book provides an account of how, in the years 1800-1825, enlightened entrepreneur and budding reformer Robert Owen used his cotton mill village of New Lanark, Scotland, as a test-bed for a set of political intuitions which would later form the bedrock of early socialism in Britain. Drawing from previously unpublished archival sources, this study shows that New Lanark was not merely on the receiving end of Owen’s innovative brand of industrial paternalism, but also acted as a major source of inspiration for many aspects of his social system, including his desire to remodel society along communitarian lines. This book therefore reaffirms the centrality of New Lanark as the cradle of socialism in Britain, and provides a contextualised, social history of Owen’s ideas, tracing direct continuities between his early years as a paternalistic businessman, and his later career as a radical political leader. In doing so, it eschews the myth of New Lanark as a unidimensional ‘model’ village and addresses the ambiguities of Owen’s journey from paternalism to socialism.

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Robert Owen was one of the most important and controversial figures of his generation. Born in 1771, he lived through the Age of Revolutions and was personally touched the ideas and dramatic changes that characterised that era. Profiting enormously through the first half of his lifetime from the rise of industry, he devoted much of his time thereafter to espousing social and economic philosophy which could serve as a corrective to what he saw as the;excesses' of progress. Much of this derived from his own experience in managing cotton mills and strongly emphasised the importance of environment, education and, ultimately, co-operation. He gained fame - even notoriety - as a social reformer, applying radical ideas in the mills at New Lanark, and subsequently at the experimental community of New Harmony, Indiana, USA. Long after his death in 1858 his ideas continued to inspire others. The hagiography generated by his disciples did neither his name nor reputation much good, since they transformed the 'Social Father' of their movement into the 'Father of Socialism' a sobriquet that ill fits him, yet it sticks to this day.Ian Donnachie's engaging yet judicious study is the first biography of Owen for fifty years. This book was originally published by Tuckwell Press in 2000.

In the early 1800s, Robert Owen was a mill owner, political figure, and an advocate for social reform, and his publications attained considerable circulation. He believed that people need good working conditions in order to be encouraged to work and motivated to learn. Despite the higher costs associated with this kind of operation, compared to the traditional ones, Owen’s management resulted in increased productivity and profit. His results caught the attention of men of wealth who were interested in social reform. In particular, at a similar time, Jeremy Bentham was developing his own theories. Owen and Bentham seemed to be based on some similar ideas that the greatest happiness creates the greatest results. Their ideas developed against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, and growing social and economic problems in England. Owen and Bentham were forerunners of highly relevant current theories of economics – marginalism, entrepreneurship, personnel management, and constructivism. They were acquainted with such important authors as James Mill, Malthus, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. However, their economic theories were ruled out by classical economists, who actively tried to silence perspectives different from the orthodoxy. This book presents an innovative study of these two social thinkers and reformers, who have rarely, if ever, been studied together. This comparative study provides new context both on the social debate taking place during the Industrial Revolution, and on the development of modern social thought, in particular, the relationship between socialism and utilitarianism. Economics, Entrepreneurship and Utopia will be of great relevance to scholars with an interest in the history of economic ideas, the history of entrepreneurship, and social reform in both historical and contemporary contexts.