Lectures on an Entire New State of Society: Comprehending an Analysis of British Society, Relative to the Production and Distribution of Wealth, the Formation of Character, and Government, Domestic and Foreign (London: J. Brooks, 1830) III, 42–45

This chapter focuses on six lectures given by Robert Owen in the 1830. Owen originally gave six lectures in 1830 at the London’s Burton Street Chapel. Delivered one year after his disastrous departure from America, these addresses publicly marked the start of his new-found interest in co-operation as a major agent of political change. This was another step in his personal radicalisation, thanks in no small part to the strand of working-class Owenism that had emerged in Britain from the early 1820s onwards. Though Owen’s approach still viewed community and education as beacons of change, his new co-operative outlook reinforced his critique of private property and general economic inequalities. Private property produced inequality of condition, exclusive privileges, and arrangements intended to benefit a few at the expense of many:—hence vanity, pride, luxury, and tyranny, on the one hand; and, on the other, poverty and degradation.