ce to _The Communist Manifesto_, by F. Engels, Kerr edition,
page 7.

[9] _Quarterly Journal of Economics._

CHAPTER II

ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT

I

As a background to modern, or scientific, Socialism there is the
Socialism of the Utopians, which the authors of the _Manifesto_ so
severely criticised. It is impossible to understand the modern Socialist
movement, the Socialism which is rapidly becoming the dominant issue in
the thought and politics of the world, without distinguishing sharply
between it and the Utopian visions which preceded it. Failure to make
this distinction is responsible for the complete misunderstanding of the
Socialism of to-day by many earnest and intelligent persons.

It is not necessary that we study the Utopian movements which flourished
and declined prior to the rise of scientific Socialism in detail. It
will be sufficient if we consider the Utopian Socialism of Owen, which
is Utopian Socialism at its best and nearest approach to the modern
movement. Thus we shall get a clear view of the point of departure which
marked the rise of the later scientific movement with its revolutionary
political programmes. Incidentally, also, we shall get a view of the
great and good Robert Owen, whom Liebknecht, greatest political leader
of the movement, has called, "By far the most embracing, penetrating,
and practical of all the harbingers of scientific Socialism."[10]

Friederich Engels, a man not given to praising overmuch, has spoken of
Owen with an enthusiasm which he rarely showed in his descriptions of
men. He calls him, "A man of almost sublime and childlike simplicity of
character," and declares, "Every social movement, every real advance in
England on behalf of the workers, links itself on to the name of Robert
Owen."[11] And even this high praise from the part-author of _The
Communist Manifesto_ who for so many years was called the "Nestor of the
Socialist movement," falls short, because it does not recognize the
great influence of the man in the United States at a most important
period of our history.

Robert Owen was born of humble parentage, in a little town in North
Wales, on the fourteenth day of May, 1771. A most precocious child, at
seven years of age, so he tells us in his "Autobiography," he had
familiarized himself with Milton's "Paradise Lost," and by the time he
was ten years old he had grappled with the ages-old problems of Whence
and Whither and become a sk