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I am currently reading through The Origins of Socialism by George Lichtheim, and his section on Robert Owen had an interesting little titbit.

During the late 1810s and early 1820s Robert Owen became increasingly worried about the rising problem of pauperism that was plaguing the country, and sought to offer a solution. According to Lichtheim pp117-118:

Owen in his Report to the County of Lanark (1821) proposed a form of unemployment relief which was also a project for what a century later would have been called collective farming. Instead of being maintained in idleness, the unemployed were to be settled on the land and made to grow their own food. Later versions of the plan allowed for industrial production as well, but at first the emphasis was on farming, specifically on spade cultivation. (Owen disapproved of the plow.) In addition to raising crops, the settlers would also improve their physiques and acquire an education. Their bodily and mental powers would thus be developed and placed in the service of the community. All these advantages could be secured by establishing Villages of Unity and Cooperation, which consisted of 500 to 1,500 persons settled on 1,000 to 1,500 acres of land, with blocks of houses built around large squares. Within the squares, public buildings would be erected so as to divide the squares into quadrangles: hence the derisive label "Mr. Owen's parallelograms of paupers," which attached itself to the project after Cobbett had denounced it in his usual robust fashion. Parliament and government did not respond, although Owen was invited to London to lay his scheme before them.

In a later footnote he also notes that pp263-264:

That Owen's concern with pauperism was shared in high places is evident from the fact that in 1819 a committee was formed by the Duke of Kent, Sir Robert Peel, David Ricardo, and others, to inquire into the practicability of Owen's schemes for combating unemployment, and to raise funds for an experimental "parallelogram." Subscriptions failed to come in, and the committee dissolved after a few months. Southey blamed this upon Owen's tactless remarks about religion, holding that if he "had not alarmed the better part of the nation by proclaiming, upon the most momentous of all subjects, opinions which are alike fatal to individual happiness and the general good," he hight have obtained more support...In short, since Owen was an atheist, the Church could not be expected to take an interest in the plight of the workless.

What would have been the effect of these proposals going through and received sufficient support? Would it be possible that Britain develops a system of unemployment relief based on agrarian communism? Furthermore, with such agrarian reforms now set as a precedent, might similar measured be brought to bear in Ireland in the aftermath of the famine?

Of course, there are also many ways that such a system could go horribly wrong, with landed interests using the recipients of such relief as a cheap labour force of pseudo-serfs.
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