Robert Owen's cooperative experiment challenged which idea of capitalism?

Correct answer: The private owner is the natural centre of production

Robert Owen’s cooperative experiment challenged the assumption that production must be organised around a private owner seeking individual profit. In a cooperative model, workers and members could work together, share responsibilities, and receive benefits from their common effort. The important contrast is between private control for personal profit and collective organisation for shared welfare. Therefore, option A is correct because it identifies the capitalist idea being questioned. Option B is not correct: Owen’s experiment depended on the belief that workers could cooperate. Options C and D concern religion and tradition, not the organisation of production. The example belongs to the nineteenth-century debate about socialism and alternatives to competitive capitalism.