George Mudie (Owenite)

George Mudie (1788 – unknown) was a Scottish social reformer, Owenite, co-operator, journalist and publisher. He founded one of the first co-operative communities in the United Kingdom and edited several publications in which he attacked the established theories of political economy.

Mudie was born in Edinburgh in 1788. In 1812 he was a member of a discussion group that met in St Andrew's Chapel, Edinburgh, and he tried to persuade that group to form a newsroom. When the group refused to take up this idea, he left Scotland and spent the next few years working as the editor of a succession of English provincial newspapers: The Nottingham Gazette, The Leeds Intelligencer, The Leeds Independent and The Leeds Gazette. In 1816, while living in Leeds, Mudie met Robert Owen and quickly became a supporter of the latter's co-operative principles and ideas for social reform.

Mudie moved to London in 1820, where he became editor of The Sun newspaper. In August that year he addressed a meeting of printers at Mitchell's Assembly Rooms, where he outlined a plan, based on Owen's ideas, to form a community. The printers set up a committee, which included Henry Hetherington, to evaluate the scheme and its favourable report, produced in January 1821, led to the formation of the Co-operative and Economical Society and the launch of its weekly journal, The Economist (January 1821-March 1822), which Mudie edited.

Although Mudie was fulsome in his praise for Owen, their respective conceptions of co-operation differed. Mudie played down Owen's interest in the formation of human character, concentrating on the practical advantages of communal living. He stressed the importance of communal self-help, rather than Owen's philanthropic approach. Above all, Mudie believed that the co-operative movement had to be based on sound economic principles, which, he argued, could not be found in the theories of established political economists, such as David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Mudie's articles in The Economist include critiques of laissez-faire capitalism and he was one of the earliest writers to suggest that the economy should be planned and regulated, instead of being left to the vagaries of market forces. In this respect, he held similar views to Ricardian socialists such as John Gray.

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