THE CONTRIBUTION OF ROBERT OWEN TO ECONOMIC THINKING OF PAUL SINGER

Connections of Utopian Socialism with Solidarity Economy

Abstract

In this article we seek to contribute with a comprehensive review of the critique of the theoretical framework of the Solidarity Economy and particularly of Singer's conceptions on the subject, in order to obtain a synthesis of his thought free of tendencies favorable to the movement. Based on a literature review, we investigate the effective presence of Robert Owen's thought in Paul Singer's work and try to identify exactly which are Owen's contributions that Singer observes in the Solidarity Economy movement. We searched for publications indexed in Oasisbr by Singer and that contained the terms “Paul Singer” and “Robert Owen”, without limiting the date of publication. We found fifteen works by Singer and fifteen works about Singer. We included in the analysis corpus five books by Singer, which are not open access works. After verifying which works brought references about Owen, we recovered the analyzes about the relations between Singer and Owen made by himself and by the authors found in the bibliographical research. We compare the statements with Owen's own work, compiled by Gregory Claeys in Selected Works of Robert Owen. We found that Singer bases his conception of Solidarity Economy on four main points of Owen's thought. In addition, we could see that Singer idealizes Owen as the main contributor to the Solidarity Economy, which for Singer is a continuation of the cooperative movement of the 19th century.