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.
[2] 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.
[4] 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.
Mudie played down Owen's interest in the formation of human character, concentrating on the practical advantages of communal living.
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.
[7] On 17 November 1821 Mudie announced that the Co-operative and Economical Society had rented several houses in Guildford Street East and Bagnigge Wells Road, Spa Fields, London,[8] and he would later write that twenty-two families, including his own, had lived together "in perfect harmony" for two years.
[16] On his arrival Mudie presented himself at Owen's headquarters in Gray's Inn Road to offer his services, but did not feel that he was made welcome.
This was written in response to the notorious "Marcus" pamphlets, which had proposed (possibly satirically) that population should be controlled by gassing the new-born children of the poor.
By 1848 he had moved to 23 Parr Street, Hoxton, London, from where he again offered his services to Owen, admitting that he had spent the last few years in poverty.
The following year, in response to the French Revolution of 1848, Mudie produced A Solution of the Portentous Enigma of Modern Civilization (London, 1849).