Improper production and distribution of wealth are the causes of the prevalence of disorder and anarchy. The means of production, the raw materials and the productive forces, are sufficient to provide [[22]]amply for the needs of all. But competition by devouring wealth prevents this, and brings it about that while some have a superfluity, the majority have not even the necessaries of life (a fact which is one great cause of criminality). The process of distribution adds enormously to the waste because of the great number of intermediaries.
Education and instruction are neglected to the last degree. The children of the lower classes are almost entirely deprived of instruction, not to say education; their parents, never having been taught themselves, are incapable of imparting instruction, nor have they the leisure for it. However, the children of all classes are made egotistical and anti-social; they have impressed upon them the maxim “Each one for himself”, in place of being taught that the love of one’s neighbor is the principle upon which society ought to be based.
Owen finds the cause of crime, then, in the organization of society upon the basis of private property. The following is a characteristic passage from Volume VI, “General Constitution of Government and Universal Code of Law”:
“Private property has been, and is at this day, the cause of endless crime and misery to man, and he should hail the period when the progress of science, and the knowledge of the means to form a superior character for all the individuals of the human race, render its continuance not only unnecessary, but most injurious to all; injurious to an incalculable extent to the lower, middle, and upper classes. The possession of private property tends to make the possessor ignorantly selfish; and selfish, very generally, in proportion to the extent of the property held by its claimant.…
“Private property also deteriorates the character of its possessor in various ways; it is calculated to produce in him pride, vanity, injustice, and oppression, with a total disregard of the natural and inalienable rights of his fellow men. It limits his ideas within the little narrow circle of self, prevents the mind from expanding to receive the extended views beneficial for the human race, and understand great general interests that could be made most essentially to improve the character and condition of all.…
“Private property alienates mind from mind, is a perpetual cause of repulsive action throughout society, a never-failing source of deception and fraud between man and man, and a strong stimulus to prostitution among women. It has caused war throughout all the past ages of the world’s known history, and has been a stimulant to innumerable private murders.
“It is now the sole cause of poverty and its endless crimes and [[23]]miseries over the world, and in principle it is as unjust as it is unwise in practice.
“In a rational-made society it will never exist. Whatever may have been its necessity or utility, before the introduction of the supremacy of machinery and chemistry, it is now most unnecessary and an unmixed evil; for every one, from the highest to the lowest, may be ensured through life much more of all that is really beneficial for humanity, and the permanent happiness of the individual, through public scientific arrangements, than it is possible to obtain through the scramble and contest for procuring and maintaining private property.
“Private property also continually interferes with or obstructs public measures which would greatly benefit all, and frequently to merely please the whim or caprice of an ill-trained individual.…
“With a well arranged scientific system of public property, equal education and condition, there will be no mercenary or unequal marriages; no spoiled children; and none of the evils which proceed from these errors in the present system, if crudities which pervade all the departments of life, and are thoroughly inconsistent, can be called a system of society.