There was all the more reason, then, why all religious influences, especially that of Christianity, should be excluded. This contempt for religion explains why Owen found so little support in English society, which revolted against what appeared like cynical atheism, although Owen himself was really a deist.[518] Economically, the doctrine of payment according to work rather than capacity was to result in absolute equality. For why should higher intelligence, greater vigour or capacity for taking pains entitle a man to a greater reward if it is all a question of environment? Hence Owen’s associations were to be communal. We need not here detail the history of his experiments in colonisation. It is the usual story of failure and disappointed hopes. At last Owen himself was driven to the conclusion that his attempt to mould the environment which was to recreate society had proved unsuccessful. He renounced all his ambitions for building up a new social order, and contented himself with an attempt to rid society as at present constituted of some of the more potent evils that were sapping its strength. And this brings us to his second essential idea, the abolition of profit. 2. THE ABOLITION OF PROFIT The first necessity, if the environment was ever to be changed, was to get rid of profit. There was _the_ essential evil, the original sin. Profit was the forbidden fruit which had compassed the downfall of man and caused his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Its very definition conveyed an implication of injustice, for it was always defined as whatever was over and above cost of production. Products ought to be sold for what they cost; the net price is the only just price. But profit is not merely an injustice, it is a perpetual menace. Economic crises resulting from over-production, or rather from under-consumption,[519] may always be traced back to an unhealthy desire for profit. The existence of profit makes it impossible for the worker to repurchase the product of his toil, and consequently to consume the equivalent of what he produced. Immediately it is completed the product is snatched up by a superior body which makes it inaccessible either to the maker or to the men who could furnish an equivalent amount of labour or who could offer as the price of acquiring it a value equal to that labour. The problem is to abolish this parasitism, and the first question that suggests itself is whether the ordinary operation of competition, assuming it were altogether free and perfect, would be sufficient to get rid of it. The economists declare that it would, and the Hedonistic school makes bold to affirm that under a _régime_ of perfect competition the rate of profit would fall to zero. But Owen believed nothing of the kind.[520] He regarded competition and profit as inseparable, and if one was war the other was simply the spoils of conflict.