Robert Owen's Theory on the Nature of Man and Society as a Base for British Socialism (1813-1816)

This article analyzes the theory that Robert Owen developed regarding the nature of man and society in his first massively distributed work: A New View of Society, Or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice, which was composed of four essays published between 1813 and 1816. The article aims to demonstrate that this theory is evidence for a movement toward cooperative values, instead of individualism, as the base to face human problems. In that sense, the "social philosophy" that underlies his socialist proposal would have been clearly developed in his first widely distributed intellectual work.