Chapter X More and Utopian Social Thought
Shortly after the close of Middle Ages with its modicum of social thinking, the idealism of Plato appeared in a new form, namely, in descriptive utopias. Of these, the chief and subtlest was the work of England’s sane, shrewd, tolerant student of society, Sir Thomas More (1478–1535). More’s Utopia deserves a degree of attention which is not customarily accorded it.
More mediated Plato to modern social philosophy; he moved in the field of Platonic ideas and ideals. He was also indebted to Plutarch’s account of Spartan life. At the dawn of the Renaissance he presented the concept of a perfect commonwealth.
If one would understand the social thought of More, a contemporary of Columbus, he must put himself under the spell of fifteenth and sixteenth century conditions in England. He must remind himself of Henry VII and Henry VIII, two autocratic rulers whom it was difficult for any individually-minded person to please. The living conditions of the peasants were almost intolerable. Unemployment was common. Punishments were severe and brutalizing. Even thieves were subject to capital punishment. If an individual stole a loaf of bread, he might as well kill the person who saw him steal the bread. In fact, by so doing, he might be better off—the only witness to his theft would thus be unable to testify against him.
Sir Thomas More could not have openly criticised the unjust social conditions of his day, and long escaped death. It was necessary for him to put his radical ideas into the mouth of a fictitious traveler, Raphael Hythloday, and thereby disown them. At is was, More became a martyr to his religious faith and to the cause of social freedom.
More wrote the Utopia in two parts. Part one was written as an explanation, or introduction, to part two. In part one a conversation involving three persons is reported. A conservative Dutch citizen of Antwerp converses with Raphael Hythloday, an experienced traveler, and with More. Hythloday, however, is the chief speaker. He is well versed in Latin and especially in Greek culture. Moreover, he has traveled extensively, even with Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator. In this way he is given prestige in the mind of the reader. It is not impossible in part one of Utopia to recognize a distinct resemblance to the dialogue form of Plato.
Part one describes certain factors in the political situation in England. The untoward phases of poverty and the vicious forms of punishment that prevailed are painted in gloomy colors. The reader is glad to turn from this unpleasant social picture to the description in part two of Utopia, where the people are living under well-ordered conditions.
The ideal commonwealth is located on the mystical island of Amaurote, where Raphael Hythloday lived for five years. On this island the economic and social life is communistic, somewhat after the manner of Plato’s Republic. It is a fundamental communism which More postulates. Complete communism of goods exists on Amaurote.X-1 All possess equal portions of wealth. The Utopian communistic state implies a radical change in human nature. More justifies communism on the grounds that it roots out that serious social evil, covetousness.X-2 Likewise, the incentive for stealing and plundering is removed. If there is a scarcity of economic commodities in any part of Utopia, the surplus in any other part is immediately drawn upon to meet the need. Thus the whole land conducts itself as if it were one family or household.X-3 The guiding principle in regard to economic goods is that of human needs.
In Utopia everyone finds his greatest pleasure in giving to others. The strongest league of peoples or of nations is not that which is united chiefly by covenants or treaties, but one which is knit together by love and a benevolent attitude.X-4 The strongest league in the world is that which is based on the fellowship of kindred natures—a genuine Christian brotherhood of nations.
In Utopia, agriculture is the most highly respected occupation. Agriculture is a science in which all Utopian men and women are expert. In the harvest days the urban people, both men and women (farmerettes) go out into the country and help gather in the crops.X-5 Urban and rural co-operation at harvest time solves the farmer’s employment problems to the pleasure, good feeling, and advantage of all concerned. The food question is considered of paramount national importance. The agriculturist is equipped with the best tools and follows intensive methods.X-6
In addition to agricultural science, every citizen of Utopia learns at least one trade or craft.X-7 Even every woman learns a skilled trade. The advantages of learning a trade by every citizen are obvious—they include a great increase in the potential industrial resources of a people. The question may be raised here, if it would not be a worth-while asset for every citizen in our modern days to learn a trade. Such an accomplishment would give a sense of economic independence to every individual; it would afford to everyone the point of view of the skilled workman; it would add a gigantic potential force to production.
In Utopia, there is one leader, or syphogrant, to every thirty families. Although there are other officers, including a prince for each city and a king for the island, the syphogrants are in reality the leading officials. It is noteworthy that no public matters are to be decided until they have been considered and debated for at least three days. By this scientific procedure the necessity of rescinding hasty legislative action is reduced to a minimum.
An important duty of the syphogrants is to regulate employment. Not only is everyone in Utopia to have a trade, but all are to work. There are no idle poor or idle rich. All rich men, commonly called “gentlemen,” all women, priests, monks, and friars (except a few) engage in productive labor. Even the syphogrants, or officials, work spontaneously. All useless occupations are prohibited. In countries where the dollar rules, there are many vain occupations which serve only to augment riotous superfluities.X-8 Thus, since all persons work and since only needed occupations are permitted in Utopia, the working day is shortened to six hours.
In the case of a season of unemployment, the simple device is adopted of shortening temporarily the labor day. By cutting down the hours of labor to four a day during an unemployment period, work is provided for all. When an individual, it may be added, visits his friends, he works the same as if he were at home. He sets himself to the task in which his friends are engaged. No one in Utopia is encumbered with visitors who sit about doing nothing and at the same time hinder their hosts from productive activities.
The syphogrants prevent idleness; they also prevent overwork. They permit no one to work at a task like a laboring and toiling beast; they allow no one to become a slave to his labor.
Laws in Utopia are few in number. Inasmuch as all the people are well instructed and socially minded, many laws are needless.X-9 Each citizen is above the law in the same way that an honest person is above the law against stealing. In the case of those disputes which must necessarily arise, the plaintiff and defendant go before the judge and plead for themselves. Utopia is noted for its scarcity of laws and the absence of attorneys. No crafty and subtle interpretation of laws by attorneys is permitted. Every man is his own attorney and simply states the facts in the given dispute; the judge knows the law and decides the case.
The organization of the cities is interesting. In the middle of each quarter of each city there is a market place for the exchange of all manner of goods. Public abattoirs are in operation. Splendidly appointed hospitals are located outside the cities in a quiet environment. Contagious wards are provided. So excellent is the care which is afforded the patients in the public hospitals that any person who falls sick prefers to go to a hospital than to be cared for by the kindly ministrations of relatives at home. It may be noted that every city is provided with a hall of fame.
Every urban community is a garden city; every house has a garden plot. Furthermore, the people take much pride in their gardens; they compete with one another, endeavoring to excel in the fruitage and in the beauty of the gardens.X-10
City planning rules in Utopia.X-11 Overcrowding is not permitted; whenever a city exceeds the norm, a new city is established. New urban communities are established by public action.
Social centers are common on the island of Amaurote. In the winter when the people cannot work in their gardens after the supper hour, they gather in their community halls, where they engage in music, wholesome conversation, and games. Dice-play and similar foolish and pernicious games are unknown.X-12 Wine taverns, alehouses, “stewes,” lurking corners, and places of wicked counsels are prohibited.X-13
Good health is a virtue in Amaurote; great pleasure is derived from possessing a well-ordered state of public health. Health is considered a sovereign pleasure in itself.X-14 Preventive measures are substituted for remedial medicines.
Fashions are regulated rigidly. Fashion imitation is prevented. The garments for men are all of one mode; and for women, of another mode.X-15 The married are distinguished from the unmarried by the style of wearing apparel. Thus, there are simply four sets of styles in Amaurote. Coats of uniform colors—the natural color of wool—are worn. It is argued that coats of many colors are no warmer and hence no more practical than coats of the one natural color; they are more expensive and hence more wasteful.
In Utopia, gold and silver are held in reproach. They are not considered to be as useful as iron. Consequently, the Utopians load down their slaves with gold and silver ornaments and pearls.X-16 In this connection the description of the visit of a group of ambassadors to Amaurote is amusing. The ambassadors from an adjoining country were dressed in gorgeous apparel like the very gods. They came to Amaurote wearing chains of gold and displaying peacock feathers. The citizens of Amaurote, coming out to meet the guests, rushed past the ambassadors and saluted the plainly dressed slaves of the ambassadors. They mistook the ambassadors for fools and knaves. Even the little children of Amaurote, when they saw the jewelry of the ambassadors, looked at their mothers and said: “See, how great a lubber doth wear pearls and precious stones, as if he were still a little child.”X-17 After being in Amaurote a short time, the ambassadors perceived how foolish it was to set emphasis on the doubtful glistenings of trifling stones. They recognized that it is foolish to consider oneself nobler than other selves because one can wear clothes that are spun from finer wool than the clothes of other persons. After all, whether the wool is coarse or fine, it may have come from the self-same sheep.
An individual does not become a god by wearing precious stones. The more the individual burdens himself with heavy stones and gorgeous apparel, the more insignificant he is.
Although in Utopia no man is wealthy, yet in a sense, all men are wealthy. All live joyfully, without worrying, and without fearing that they or their children will fall into poverty. Amaurote is a gigantic household, wherein the more able take a personal interest in the less able and in the unfortunate. No one lives in idleness and no one lives by virtue of any form of unnecessary economic enterprise. Rich men are not permitted by either private fraud or common law to snatch away from the poor man some portion, great or small, of his daily earnings. There are no idle rich, conniving how they may keep their unearned wealth or how they may grind down the poor in order to get more wealth. Since the love of money is unknown in Amaurote, other passions are also absent. Since the people do not love money, they have lost the desire to perpetrate the money crimes, such as fraud, theft, murder, treason. Likewise, pride which measures its satisfaction, not in terms of its own merits, per se, but by comparison with the poverty of human beings, is destroyed. The Utopians have conquered materialism. They are not subject to the death grapples which are caused by the love of money. Luxuries have been suppressed and the leisure class has been eliminated. Social extremes are unknown.
People are honored, not for their wealth but for their serviceableness to the community.X-18 In the halls of fame, to which allusion has already been made, benefactors of the commonwealth are rewarded by having images of themselves set up in perpetual memory of their good deeds to their fellows.
The family is the fundamental social unit, but it is of the patriarchal type. Pure monogamic love is idealized. Especial care is taken that neither of the parties of a marriage vow possesses any hidden vices. Adultery is the chief justification for breaking the marriage bond. A single standard of morals for both husband and wife is set. Love may be won by beauty, but it can be kept and preserved only by virtue and obedience.
Because of freedom from long hours of monotonous labor, nearly every one in Utopia is able to maintain his intellectual interests and to experience intellectual growth throughout life. It is the solemn custom to have daily lectures early every morning and it is the habit of multitudes of people of all types to attend.X-19 All of the time that it is possible to spare from the necessary occupations is devoted to the development and garnishing of the mind.X-20 Nearly all the citizens devote their extra-occupational hours throughout their lives to the arts and sciences. The chief felicity of life is said to be found in learning. In training the mind, the Utopians never weary. As a matter of course, a common school education is provided for every individual. Classes for adults and adult education are made the outstanding features of the public school system in Amaurote. One must learn to live and must go on learning throughout life. Hence, the provisions of public education should be adequate for the adult as well as for the adolescent.
Religious education and practice are considered essential. More’s tolerant attitude in an age of brutal intolerance is shown by the fact that the Utopians are permitted whatever religion they prefer. Superstitious beliefs are taboo. More makes a subtle thrust when he observes that the priests of Amaurote are possessed of great holiness and hence are few in number.X-21 It is no esoteric or monastic religion which More endorses. Future happiness may be secured best by busy labors and social efforts in this life.X-22 Public service, including the care of the sick, is religiously emphasized.
War is beastly. Contrary to the attitudes of the people in all other countries, the people of Amaurote count nothing so inglorious as the glory that is obtained in fighting and killing.X-23 No imagination is necessary in order to understand the courage which More displayed in making a vigorous attack in the sixteenth century upon war.
Under limited conditions, however, war is justifiable. More gives three worthy reasons for declaring war: (1) the defense of one’s own country; (2) the defense of the country of one’s friendly neighbors; and (3) delivering oppressed peoples anywhere from the yoke and bondage of tyranny.X-24 From the twentieth century point of view, these justifications of war are sound.
These reasons are all “defense” factors,—which is remarkable in view of the fact that they were enunciated in an age when “offensive” wars were common. The only reason for assuming the offensive in matters of war is the social one of taking land away from people who deliberately withhold land from cultivation and fail to produce food for the nourishment of mankind.X-25 By this plan, More severely indicts the holders of large landed estates which are held chiefly for the selfish gratification of the owners.
Hired or mercenary soldiers are employed in war. The people of Amaurote employ hideous, savage fighters from the wild woods and the high mountains to do their fighting for them. The larger the number of these impetuous barbarians who are killed in battle, the better off is the world.
More opposed conscription. Ordinarily, no one is forced to fight, because under such circumstances he will not fight well. In the case, however, of defending Amaurote, the cowards are distributed among the bold-hearted. In warfare, the people of Amaurote do not allow their warriors to lay waste or destroy the land of their enemies. Neither foraging nor the burning of food supplies is permitted. No one who is unarmed is to be hurt.
More’s penological ideas are modern. He points out the folly of making theft a capital offense the same as murder. The temptation will be to steal, or rob, and to kill also, whereas under a more reasonable law the temptation in many cases would be to steal only. A law which makes theft a capital offense is harsher than even the harsh Mosaic law of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, because the former justifies the government in taking the life of an individual who is guilty of stealing money. In Utopia the thief is compelled to restore the stolen goods to the person from whom he stole, and not to the king, as in many lands in More’s time. The thief is put at common labor, not thrown into a city or county jail and left in idleness. Compulsory labor is the common method of punishment.X-26
The fundamental penological principle which More developed was that crime should be prevented by taking away the occasion of offense.X-27 He condemned the prevailing method in England of allowing wickedness to increase, and then of punishing the sinners after they had been permitted to grow up in an environment of sin. He objected to taking men from the trades for war service and then later irresponsibly discharging them, leaving many of them industrially stranded, unemployed, and subject to the temptation of stealing. More’s dictum was: Show people how to live; do not let them steal and then take their lives away. Life in Utopia is more or less equally divided between five factors: industry, study, music, travel, and domesticity.
In the Utopia, Sir Thomas More made a direct criticism of conditions in England; he showed himself an able student of social problems; and his ideas are noted for their “modernness.” Altogether, the Utopia has made a remarkable impression, not simply upon social idealists but also upon practical thinkers. As a literary invention for shrewdly suggesting criticisms of vicious but entrenched social wrongs it has been followed by imitations, but remains unparalleled in quality.
In the New Atlantis, Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1628), wrote an unfinished description of a utopian island where there is a high degree of social welfare and where “social salvation by scientific education” obtains. An Order or Society of “Solomon’s House” is established which sends out every twelve years merchants of light (intellectual) who travel for the following period of twelve years, gathering facts in all branches of science and art.X-28 Upon being relieved by the next group of traveler scholars, they return home and contribute their knowledge to the acquired store, which in the meantime has been added unto by many trained experimenters and research scholars. Airplanes, horseless wagons, and submarines are not unknown in the New Atlantis. Superstition is banished. Social knowledge will lead to a nation of socialized persons,—this is the Baconian implication.
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), a monk, a philosopher, and an Italian contemporary of Francis Bacon, urged that human nature should be studied rather than books. Because of so-called heretical ideas, he was imprisoned for twenty-seven years. Shortly after his release he fled to Paris, where he died. In prison he wrote The City of the Sun, a crude but significant psychological analysis of society. It is a social order based on the balanced relations of the three principles of Power, Intelligence, and Love. These forces are equally expressed in the social process and produce a perfect society.
Oceana, “a Midsummer Night’s Dream of politics,” is the title of a romance which was written by James Harrington (1611–1677). His social order rests on economic factors, chiefly landed estates. However, the author advocates the election of rulers by ballot every three years and the choosing of the rulers from the intellectually élite.
In this chapter it is impossible to note all the “utopias” that have been written. The utopian and communistic systems of socialists, such as Fourier, Saint Simon, and Owen will be referred to in Chapter XIV. There are other important utopian contributions, such as those by William Morris and Edward Bellamy. In News from Nowhere, William Morris (1834–1896), an English artist and socialist, describes his native England as a perfected society under a régime of socialism. Because of its American setting, Bellamy’s Looking Backward will be presented in some detail in the following paragraphs.
In recent decades the utopian postulates of Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), in Looking Backward and Equality have had a wide reading. The author was the first American to command attention in the field of utopian thought. Bellamy presents a plan of industrial organization on a national scale with individuals sharing equally in the products of labor, or in public income, in the same way that “men share equally in the free gifts of nature.” Bellamy protests against an economic order whose chief evil is summed up in the following question: How can men be free who must ask the right to labor and to live from their fellows, and seek their bread from the hand of others?
Society is likened to a gigantic coach to which the masses of humanity are harnessed, toiling along a very hilly and sandy road. The best seats are on top of the coach. The occupants of the elegant seats are constantly in fear of falling from their cushions of ease, splendor, and power,—and hence their interest in the toilers.
In Looking Backward the entire social process is made an expression of service. Service is a matter of course, not of compulsion. No business is so fundamentally the public’s business as the industry and trade on which the livelihood of the public depends.X-29 Therefore, to intrust industry and commerce to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly “similar to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles for their personal glorification.”
Buying and selling are pronounced anti-social. They are an education in self-seeking at the expense of others.X-30 Citizens who are so trained are unable to rise above a very low grade of civilization.X-31 They are sensible chiefly to such motives as fear of want and love of luxury. For buying and selling, credit books are substituted which are good at any public warehouse. In place of higher wages, the chief motives to activity are honor, men’s gratitude, the inspiration of duty, patriotism, the satisfaction of doing one’s work well—in other words, the same motives that now influence, for example, the members of the teaching profession.
The arduousness of the trades are equalized, so that all shall be equally attractive, by making the hours of labor in different trades to differ inversely according to arduousness.X-32 Everyone works as a common laborer for three years and then chooses an occupation—agriculture, mechanics, the professions, art. The working life is twenty-four years long, from the ages of twenty-one to forty-five, after which all may devote themselves to self-improvement and enjoyment, but subject to emergency calls along industrial and other social service lines.
Bellamy challenges an individualism which incapacitates people for co-operation. He builds his society upon solidarity of race and brotherhood of man. He does not fear corruption in a society “where there is neither poverty to be bribed nor wealth to bribe.”X-33
All cases of criminal atavism are treated in hospitals. There are no jails. Under capitalism nineteen-twentieths of misdemeanors are due to economic inequality. The remainder are the outcropping of ancestral traits. In Bellamy’s ideal society there are no private property disputes and no lawyers.
The educational system in Looking Backward does not educate some individuals highly and leave others untrained.X-34 It gives everyone “the completest education that the nation can give,” in order that individuals may enjoy themselves, in order that they may enjoy one another, and in order that the unborn may be guaranteed an intelligent and refined parentage.
Bellamy holds that human nature in its essential quality is good, not bad, and that men are naturally generous, not selfish; pitiful, not cruel; godlike in aspirations, moved by divine impulses of goodness, images of God and not the travesties upon Him which they have seemed.X-35 It is our economic order which has fostered shameless self-assertion, mutual depreciation, a stunning clamor of conflicting boasts, and a stupendous system of brazen beggary.
In three utopias, H. G. Wells portrays societary conditions that are kinetic rather than static and world-wide rather than local in scope.X-36 While the author provides a changed economic system, socialistic in nature, he urges that changed social attitudes are also needed.
In the utopian social thought that has been presented in this chapter and in similar works which are not mentioned here there is generally displayed (1) a common weakness of impracticability under current circumstances, (2) an over-emphasis upon simply changing the economic order, and (3) static rather than dynamic principles. The strength of utopian social thought is found (1) in its drastic criticism of current social evils, (2) in its relative harmlessness at the given time, (3) in the force of its indirect suggestion, (4) in the widespread hearing which it secures, and (5) in its social idealism.
