ABSTRACT
Owen taught (see above, p. 27) that working men did not receive the value of their labour because they were forced to sell it for a money wage, and that competition, or the working of the market, ensured that the money wage was an artificially low wage. His followers explored three methods of bypassing the market economy—the co-operative store, the labour exchange and the co-operative community. All of these sought to eradicate competition and the middle man who stood between working men as producers and working men as consumers.
