ABSTRACT
The first communes whose inceptors were motivated by secular socialism rather than religious sectarianism began to appear in the United States in the 1820s as a result of European ideas and socialist doctrines that reached the New World at the time. The settlement resumed its organization, and through a coincidence they adopted their constitution in the very year of Robert Owen's arrival in the United States. Robert Owen left New Harmony at a time when the settlement was experiencing its first difficulties in order to impress public opinion and to inspire through his ideas a large settlement movement. The Owenist ideology never went very deep and as soon as other spiritual or religious ideas emerged in the 1830s the promised Owenist gospel petered out. Robert Owen returned to New Harmony in April 1828 to be confronted with the fact that his belief in the communal future of his socialist settlement had been unrealistic.
