Owen as read by Marc-Auguste Pictet (1752–1825) and J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how Owen’s ideas and their application in his factory in New-Lanark were understood and judged by the two leading members of Geneva’s liberal élite, J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi and Marc-Auguste Pictet, who wrote extensively on questions pertaining to the development of industry. While Pictet and Sismondi shared Owen’s concerns over the deleterious consequences of industrialisation, and examined with interest his proposals to resolve these problems, they were quick to distance themselves from his solutions, and rejected his ideas on co-operation and shared ownership. The article concludes with an analysis of Sismondi’s work and his reflections on the two courses open to industrial civilisation: it could be either liberal, with all that entailed – competition, antagonism, conflict, but also liberty, imaginative and creative development – or ‘planned’, with the consequences that flowed from that: collective ownership, peace, security, but also an extinguishing of creative impulses, of inventiveness, and of the human spirit.