Abram Combe

Abram Combe (15 January 1785 – 11 August 1827) was a British utopian socialist and Christian social reformer, an associate of Robert Owen and a major figure in the early co-operative movement.

Abram Combe was born in Edinburgh on 15 January 1785. His father was a brewer and a strict Calvinist. He had two brothers, George and Andrew, of whom George achieved a certain fame as an advocate of phrenology. Abram received a high school education but could not see the use of Latin After his education he was apprenticed in one of the tanneries near his parents' home. After working for a while as a tanner he went to London and then to Glasgow, where he worked as a currier. In 1807 he returned to Edinburgh and resumed work as a tanner, a trade he pursued for the rest of his life. In his spare time he worked at various mechanical inventions. He also wrote poems, plays and satirical pieces. His own poverty and the condition of the working class around him convinced him of the iniquity of the existing social system. Combe married Agnes Dawson in 1812, and they had several children. In 1820, Combe met the social reformer and entrepreneur Robert Owen and visited his co-operative community at New Lanark. Combe was quickly converted to the cause of co-operation and became an advocate of Owen's principles back in Edinburgh, where he set up a co-operative society. Among his writings was Metaphorical Sketches of the Old and New Systems (1823), a popular critique of competition and exposition of co-operation. He also wrote a number of works on religion and on the religious aspects of the co-operative system, such as The Religious Creed of the New System (1824). From his Calvinist upbringing, Combe inherited a belief in strict determinism, combined with a strong emphasis on individual moral responsibility. In 1825, together with A.J. Hamilton and others, Combe set up an Owenite co-operative community at Orbiston, near Glasgow. He influenced the Ricardian socialist economist John Gray, who paid tribute to him in an appendix of his book The Social System (1831), though remarking that Combe was "too little of a theorist... his mind was very prematurely devoted to practical measures." Gray published an address of advice and criticism of Combe's experiment, entitled: A Word of Advice to the Orbistonians, on the Principles Which Ought to Regulate their Present Proceedings (1826). Combe also set up a religious association connected with his co-operative, the Society of the Adherents to the Divine Revelation. On its behalf he published and edited a journal called The Register. In addition to his organisational, propagandistic and journalistic work, Combe also took on a heavy workload of physical labour. In 1826, Combe's health began to fail; he suffered from a serious lung disease, which killed him on 11 August 1827. His death spelled the end of the Orbiston co-operative.