ABSTRACT
The first communes whose inceptors were motivated by secular socialism rather than religious sectarianism began to appear in the United States in the 1820s as a result of European ideas and socialist doctrines that reached the New World at the time. Among them, Robert Owen’s socialist theory was cardinal to those who aspired to a better world. A milestone was the publication of some chapters from Owen’s book A New Outlook on Society in the Jeffersonian periodical, Aurora in Philadelphia in 1817. At the same time and without any apparent connection, a Quaker pharmacist, Cornelius Blatchley, published his own theory in the United States. There were many similarities and parallels in their outlook concerning the advantages of collectivism; the main difference was in the importance Cornelius Blatchley ascribed to the experience and contribution of the religious communes of the Shakers, Harmony, and The Moravian Brotherhood.
