“

If we don’t begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one?

~ Isabel Allende, Chilean-American author.

Humans have long dreamed of creating the perfect society. To people disappointed with the system in which they live, the route to such a utopia always seems obvious: “Let’s just do X. Then Y will happen, and everyone will be happy!”

However, as you have learned in this unit, the route to this utopian ideal is not so easily travelled. We have examined various political ideologies that all profess to having that special ‘X’ that will automatically make ‘Y’ happen, yet, not one has led us to its promised utopia.

This leads us to ask, “Is a utopian society even possible?”

Thomas More’s Utopia

While Plato’s Republic is an example of how to organize a utopian society (at least by Plato’s standards), when we speak about utopias, the person most commonly mentioned is Thomas More.

Utopia is written as a fictional story, recounted by a traveller called Raphael Hythloday. He describes to More an island paradise located on the far side of the world. In this novel, More imagined a complex, self-contained world set on an island, in which people live under a democratic political system.

Utopia is a nation based on rational thought. There is no such thing as private property - people live communally. There is no rapacious love of gold, no real class distinctions, no poverty, little crime or immoral behavior, there is religious tolerance, and little inclination to war. The work day is only six hours long, with people encouraged to educate themselves during their leisure time.

Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? And certainly scholars have drawn parallels between More’s sixteenth century London and how Utopia represents the antithesis of much of his real world.

However, the seeming perfection of Utopia begins to tarnish once More goes into further details. For instance, this utopia contains people who are enslaved, and on certain festive days wives fall down at their husbands’ feet, confessing that they have performed some domestic duty negligently. Everyone is dressed the same to limit any unnecessary display of pride. Adultery is punishable by slavery. And, while all religions are tolerated, atheists are despised as they cannot be trusted to share the communal life of Utopia since they have no belief in any punishment or reward in an afterlife.

While Utopia could be considered something of a prototype for what we might term as Communism, More’s vision of Utopia was heavily influenced by his faith. He was a passionate defender of Catholic orthodoxy during the Reformation of the Catholic church. His arguments with King Henry VIII, who was known for his stubbornness and his dismissive response to counsel that was contrary to his wishes, may be  reflected in the book, for example, when Hythloday praises democracy by pointing out that it is useless to counsel kings who only listen to those who curry favour.

Indeed, in real life, More eventually resigned his position as Chancellor of England and was eventually executed for treason.

Utopias - Failed Experiments in Social Engineering

Moore wasn’t the only philosopher to imagine a more perfect society. Most of the philosophers we studied in the unit have imagined the same thing - some have even gone further and attempted make their theories a reality. From Plato to Rousseau, from Fascism to Totalitarianism, most of these attempts at social engineering have failed. 

FailedExperimentsinSocialEngineering

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