ABSTRACT
90
91 The point has been made that the main strands of Owenism, such as philanthropy, community and Ricardian socialism, were not peculiar to the Ow enites. It was the particular mixture, not the individual elements, which gave Owenism its unique characteristics. But the familiarity of these separate elements was essential for the successful propaganda of Owenite views. Every social reformer is faced with a problem of communication, how to ensure that his new views can be presented in a way that makes them acceptable to people who are still thinking along old lines. In order to communicate the reformer has to employ the language of his age. He cannot be too far in advance of it, for he will not be understood; yet at the same time he has to give a new twist of meaning to familiar concepts and phrases. This is not entirely a deliberate or even conscious process, so deeply is his thinking embedded in the mould of the age. The social reformer is therefore alike and also different from the general run of men. His problem is how to determine and establish the kind of relationship to his society necessary for him to be effective in promoting social change. Frequently he will be found using the rhetoric of the age, for only thus will he be able to gain a hearing. But within the conventional intellectual and social terminology he will seek to express new interpretations.
It is in relation to this problem that two of the most distinctive features of Owenism are to be explained. The millenarian overtones and the passion for education which characterise all except the very earliest of Owen’s writings are explicable by the need to find media for the transmission of Owenism. The sect and the school were the models for effecting the new moral world.
