Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
At 250 the Paradox of Robert Owen Continues
NICK MATTHEWS reflects on the enduring legacy of one of our most influential early socialists
PRECURSOR: Robert Owen Memorial Museum, Newtown; (left) Owen’s portrait by William Henry Brooke, 1834

“THE paradox of Robert Owen has continuing fascination. Why has he remained a central figure of the English socialist tradition even though Owenite socialist institutions failed, and his version of socialism was already outmoded before his death? 

How was it that Friedrich Engels could condemn Owen’s socialism as utopian and yet concede that “‘every social movement, every real advance on behalf of workers links itself to the name of Robert Owen’?”

John Harrison contributed this to a collection of essays celebrating the 200th anniversary of Owens birth in 1971. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
FORERUNNER: A stamp of Thomas Muntzer, issued by the GDR in 1989 Pic: Public domain
History / 10 November 2025
10 November 2025

NICK MATTHEWS recalls how the ideals of socialism and the holding of goods in common have an older provenance than you might think

Locomotion
Features / 27 September 2025
27 September 2025

Two-hundred years ago, on September 27 1825, the world’s first passenger railway line was opened between Stockton and Darlington. MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, reflects on the history – and the future – of Britain’s railway industry

fanon
Opinion / 24 June 2025
24 June 2025

On the centenary of the birth of the anti-colonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, JENNY FARRELL assesses his enduring influence

Sports centre with the image of Che Guevara in Marinaleda, S
Books / 6 March 2025
6 March 2025
PHIL KATZ applauds the biography of a man of principle that is a vibrant excavation of the radical tradition itself