Looking Backwards 2000 to 1887

In Bellamy’s Boston in the year 2000, many things have changed from how they were in 1887, and the consensus among the book’s characters is that they have changed for the better. I do not imagine many people would argue the merits of the eradication of poverty and war. But when one looks more closely at gender roles, “utopia” becomes a bit more blurry.<br /><br />The fact that women have jobs outside the home is exciting and progressive. However, they are still treated as quite secondary to men. Being “inferior of strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in special ways” women work within an entirely separate labor structure (257). The men discuss it as if the women are playing at work. “Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex” (257). Further discourse shows that rather than seeing women as deserving of work just as they are, men “let them” work as long as it does not interact with their “serious” industry. Dr. Leete says that “they permit them to work at all only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind” (257). In other words, they <i>permit</i> them to work because it makes them prettier. One sees the condescension even more clearly when Dr. Leete explains, “We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it” (259). And finally, to see how little society’s respect for women has “progressed,” we learn that their main role and value is still as producers of children. In fact “the higher positions in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex” (261).<br /><br />Perhaps this is a challenge that no utopian writer has yet conquered: creating a society that <i>everyone</i> thinks is utopian. In Bellamy’s future society, Dr. Leete explains that “we have nothing to make laws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is founded settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your day called for legislation” (208). Even if we concede that the elimination of money and personal property would obviate many laws, how can we be convinced that there are <i>no</i> legal or moral issues on which people disagree?<br /><br />The yearning to create a perfect society has captured many artists, and will no doubt continue to do so. But who decides what is perfect, much less what is better? Who defines progress?

As a novel, this book isn't much. That isn't a mark against it, though - the story serves as a light frame to build an explanation of socialism around, and it does that very well.<br /><br />Looking Backward is the best and clearest way I have ever seen socialism presented (although that is not hard, since I have never seen socialism presented in any light other than a negative one), and in almost every way it seems better than capitalism. <br /><br />It raises questions in me that I have never had occasion to consider. Why, indeed, should we not all work together? Why should one have so much more than another, when all people are created equal? Why waste so much manpower and economic power with endless duplication of enterprise? Why should many of us live under constant threat of poverty and hunger, when the good earth is rich, and can support us all equally? <br /><br />Five hundred million people live in poverty in Africa, one of the poorest regions on Earth. Two hundred million in China. Fifteen million in the United Kingdom. Forty million people live in poverty even in America, the richest nation on Earth. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/19/news/companies/forbes-richest/index.html" rel="nofollow noopener">This past year the people on the Forbes 400 list have accumulated an additional two hundred billion dollars ($200,000,000,000)</a>, while at the same time median family income in America dropped by 4 percent.<br /><br />After reading this book, perhaps I might call myself a socialist.<br /><br /><br />----<br />For thirty years I had lived among them, and yet I seemed to have never noted before how drawn and anxious were their faces, of the rich as of the poor, the refined, acute faces of the educated as well as the dull masks of the ignorant. And well it might be so, for I saw now, as never before I had seen so plainly, that each as he walked constantly turned to catch the whispers of a spectre at his ear, the spectre of Uncertainty. "Do your work never so well," the spectre was whispering, - "rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or serve faithfully, you shall never know security. Rich you may be now and still come to poverty at last. Leave never so much wealth to your children, you cannot buy the assurance that your son may not be the servant of your servant, or that your daughter will not have to sell herself for bread."

<b>2000th Book Read on Goodreads!</b>*<br /><br />For my 2000th book ‘read’ on GR, I present Bellamy’s vision of a socialist utopia, published in 1888. Nowhere near as narratively cushy as William Morris’s <i>News from Nowhere</i>, although far superior to HG Wells’s weirdly fascist and crushingly boring <i>A Modern Utopia</i>, Bellamy’s vision errs on the side of Christian kindness, crediting humans with the basic decency to work together to fulfil everyone’s interests, presenting a heartbreakingly plausible vision of a future that never happened. In an era where 9% of the population are in extreme poverty and jobbernowls like Jeff Bezos stalk the earth in their tumorous pomp, where millions and millions of unnecessary bodies are piling up as I write this through avoidable stupidity and venality, where simple facts are shat upon by the most powerful people, reading this socialist vision is akin to smacking myself with birch rods to the music of Vanessa Paradis. But as an eager pupil of the sort of worlds we ought to have built for ourselves, I find Bellamy’s is the most credible implementation of the socialist ideas later thinkers would mangle. Drop the audio sermons, introduce sexual freedom and equality, and I will move to Bellamy’s Boston tout suite.<br /><br />*By the way, my 1887th book ‘read’ on GR was JG Ballard’s middling novel <i>Rushing to Paradise</i>, providing a pleasing utopian symmetry to this otherwise morose celebration.

As a historic work, this isn't without interest. As a piece of art, it reads more like a lecture from someone who can't stop pontificating. Edward Bellamy was trying to craft ideas for the perfect society, but it is hard to stomach in a post-Freud, post World War-I and -II and post-Soviet Union world. I'll take an anti-utopian novel like 1984 any day.

A book that has been stranded on the "island of forgotten classics" for far too long. Foreshadowing many of the technological advancements we take for granted this is a look back that will also provide a vantage point for looking forward as we are all caught in the ebb and flow of technoethics and technoetics.

This was another Literary Birthday challenge title, and the last one I will be able to complete for March. Edward Bellamy was born on March 26, 1850. This book was published in 1888 and according to the GR author bio was third in popularity behind Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ. <br /><br />Bellamy takes the Rip Van Winkle idea and cranks it up a few notches. Our hero Julian goes to sleep in Boston one night in 1887 and wakes up in a most unusual place: Boston in the year 2000. The main body of the story revolves around his host (a doctor who brought him safely to a waking state) sharing all the new and glorious details with Julian in the first week of being a citizen of this brave but strange new world.<br /><br />Apparently back in its day, this book was seen as THE blueprint for a utopian society. I was more than a little disturbed by the way the year 2000 was managed, though. Julian asked my questions (most of them) pretty much right after I thought of them myself but he accepted the answers without digging much deeper. I kept saying "Yeah, but what about....?" And of course I got no answers at all.<br /><br />In his talks with the doctor, Julian learns that the nation itself is now the provider of everything a man needs, that there is compulsory education to the age of 21, and compulsory service in the 'industrial army' from then till age 45 (with the first three years of that being in the unskilled sector, then you get to decide where you want to work for the rest of your productive time). After age 45 a man gets to have his time <br />for himself. No money, no taxes, no debt, no servant crisis, no crime, no this no that. On one hand it sounds wonderful. But then there's that other hand....<br /><br />For one thing it took until Chapter 25 of 28 before Julian asked about the role of women in the year 2000. And then part of the answer was this: "We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it." I wanted to smack that doctor upside the head more during Chapter 25 than at any other time in the book.<br /><br />This was a vehicle for Bellamy's vision of society more than anything else. I would like to read some other title of his, just to see what his plain old everyday novels are like. I was torn about the rating here. It was interesting to see the ideas he proposed and to debate with him, but I kept expecting more story and less soapbox. And he very nearly lost all of his stars with his final chapter, but luckily he switched gears again right at the end and did not finish his book 'Dallas' style after all. (You know....it was all just a dream).<br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

Proto-scifi utopian snoozefest Looking Backward was a blockbuster hit in 1887 - according to Wikipedia "the third-largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur." This is mystifying because it's basically a boring socialist tract. (For context: I am a socialist. It is frustrating to me that most socialist books suck.)<blockquote>Does it then really seem to you that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you should expect security and equality of livelihood to leave them without possible incentives to effort? (63) </blockquote>Unfortunately, it turns out that the answer to this question is yes.<br /><br />Falling into the standard trap of utopianists, merrily pretending that people are terrific because that's the only way utopias work, Bellamy mentions that all prisons have disappeared, those few "criminal" elements left consigned to asylums...but then, "A man able to duty, and persistently refusing, is sentenced to solitary imprisonment on bread and water till he consents" (83) - one of the book's very few hints at the dangers of an essentially totalitarian society. (While elections happen, the elected officials are allowed to do very little.)<br /><br />There's little plot and no characterization, and also almost zero accurate forecasting of the future. It's credited (har!) with inventing credit cards, but they bear zero resemblance to actual credit cards so I'm not buying that (haw!). <br /><br />Bellamy imagines the future economy with great, mind-numbing detail, but it doesn't occur to him that music or art might have changed in the slightest. He's prescient on one front, though. He imagines a future where publishing is entirely egalitarian: anyone who wants to can write a book, and if enough people like it then it gets published. We're totally doing that now, and <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/10818853.Fifty_Shades_of_Grey__Fifty_Shades___1_" title="Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1) by E.L. James" rel="noopener">it's working out great!</a><br /><br />This is not a very good book.

This is a great book about a man from 1887 who finds himself in the year 2000. It was actually written in 1887 and the author, Edward Bellamy actually predicts some things such as radio and credit cards. In the year 2000 he finds that all social class differences have been erased and there is a Utopian society. I thought his view of what the year 2000 would be like was fascinating and some of his ideas of how to implement a Utopian society were thought provoking. This is one of my favorite books.

2017-05 I listened to the LibriVox recording of this book, narrated by Anna Simon: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://librivox.org/looking-backward-2000-1887-by-edward-bellamy/">https://librivox.org/looking-backward...</a><br /><br />I had originally heard of this book in my High School American history class since the book was a bestseller when it came out in 1888 ("the third-largest bestseller of its time" according to Wikipedia) and touted as quite influential. The Wikipedia listing goes on to explain some things that are quite important for the prospective reader to know: <br /><br />"It influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement".[2]<br /><br />In the United States alone, over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas.[3] Owing to its commitment to the nationalization of private property and the desire to avoid use of the term socialism, this political movement came to be known as Nationalism — not to be confused with the political concept of nationalism.[4] The novel also inspired several utopian communities."<br /><br />The Wikipedia article also notes the extensive number of books that came out afterwards in reaction and in sympathy of Bellamy’s work. And the precursor books, in particular: August Bebel's Woman in the Past, Present, and Future (1886).[15] were noted.<br /><br />Before I offer some points of critique, I want to say that the ostensible sympathies of the author’s desire to improve the lot of the common man and woman are admirable: To increase the wealth, health conditions, social standing and respect for all men and women is a noble goal I wholeheartedly share. The comments I make below all share the goal stated, but simply point out the flaws of his thinking that do not coincide with the reality of HOW to actually achieve those goals.<br /><br />1. Bellamy demonstrated little realization of the progress that late 19th century American civilization had actually made toward alleviating mass poverty. Bellamy repeated over and over how horrible conditions were in 1887 Boston for the common man. But if one looks at history at all objectively one would see that the conditions of the common man in Boston of 1887 were vastly improved from the conditions in Boston a century before, despite there being vastly more people populating the city. (18k in 1790 -&gt;448K in 1890 a more than 20 fold increase!!!). Though far from perfect, or as wealthy as we are today, the Boston of 1887 was a vastly bigger, wealthier and more full of opportunities area than ever previously. The reason that Boston (and the US as a whole) attracted so much growth, for so many people, was the success of the relative free market capitalism (far from perfect) that was it’s foundation.<br /><br />2. The constant misinformed diatribes in the book against individualism, competition and private property vs. the totally out of touch with reality fictions promoting his ideas of cooperation, communal control producing vast wealth for all could possibly be forgiven, considering the best critiques of his ideas would only come later via theory and actual practice. My favorite primarily theoretical critique was the book "Socialism" by Ludwig von Mises, written 34 years later (1922) which thoroughly dispatched all the ideas I heard in Bellamy’s book and more. Though Bellamy was not listed in the Index, his ideas are all covered therein, and his precursor mentioned above, August Bebel, was given much attention. The other damning critique is simply history. <br />- The countries and their lowest level citizens, which following the most free market (capitalist) path, with private property being key, all prospered greatly over the next century +. <br />- The countries which tried to implement his ideas of communal/socialized property and control most closely exhibited the most hellish mass starvations, purges, enslavements and carnage that the world has ever seen. <br />Over the years, the apologists for socialism have tried to excuse the failings of the system (the socialist idea) via scorning one ruler or another for being a madman or implementing the idea foolishly. But the facts remain, that the closer any society tried to implement socialization of the means of production, the poorer and more tyrannical the society became. Here is a list of just some of the historical markers: <br />- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR), <br />- National Socialist (Nazi) Germany, <br />- People’s Republic of China, <br />- Democratic People’s Republic (North) of Korea, <br />- Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge in Cambodia), <br />but there were and are many more, including the terrible starvation and breakdown of civil society occurring right now in socialist Venezuela!<br /><br />3. The many misunderstandings and misrepresentations of how the free market actually provides more and better quality goods for all are legion in the book. The conflation of short-term and foolish or worse self-interest vs. enlightened self-interest and how, as Adam Smith put it: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” And how the proof of the pudding is the actual provision of more and better goods and services in places where private property is honored and protected.<br /><br />4. “The labor question” as Bellamy belabored, was indeed serious in his day. Major strikes and organized labor violence and other actions even continued through the 1980s. But the causes of those problems were often the very “social” system (government controls) that Bellamy mistakenly thought the solution. Depressions, inflations, financial panics, mass unemployment, etc. were mostly due to government policies that undermined the beneficial workings of the market. For the reader who is truly interested in knowing more about this controversial statement, I recommend the following authors: Ludwig von Mises, Robert Higgs, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard and others.<br /><br />5. Bellamy often used terms of war to describe capitalist free market interactions and nothing but sweet harmony to describe his socialist society. This is totally disingenuous and misleading to the nth degree. As I mentioned before, the actual results of socialist planning and controls result in starvation and ruthless bloodshed. He rarely admitted the outright coercion involved in implementing his plans, though the premise is a must, that if someone in his dream society does not agree with the one overall plan, they will be coerced to “cooperate.” That is, people who have different, independent, unusual, creative, minority, or downright opposite ideas about what is the best way forward, will be forced to comply with what “society” wants. To put it bluntly, there will be NO freedom of action in his society. Conversely, his “war” terms to describe free markets are simply caricatures of what is really happening in a capitalist society. If a clerk lies to you about a product, do you ever believe or do business with him/her/the company again? If a company does not treat you well in almost every way, do you not simply go to their competitor? Do private companies have the product or service guarantees, the quality service the new and amazing products you can trust, or does the Post Office, the DMV, the Army, Congress, the President or the IRS?<br /><br />6. In Chapter 6 Bellamy actually levels, to some extent, with the reader by laying out his plan of “Universal Military Service” which solved “the labor problem.” So, the strife for various unions trying to get a better deal from their employers for the workers is replaced with one giant draft of all workers into the military. Right. We know how that worked out during WWII, Korea and the VietNam wars.<br /><br />7. In chapter 7 Bellamy made this statement: “The government won’t maim and slaughter workmen by the thousand like the corporations did in your day (1880s).” There were indeed some vicious strikes that resulted in deaths and much property damage in the late 1800s. The causes of the violence are complex and not at all only due to corporate management and certainly not “thousands” maimed or killed. (See works by W.H. Hutt, Sylvester Petro, Charles Baird and others). But in contrast, the systems of socialization/nationalization advocated by Bellamy did not result in thousands maimed or slaughtered, but rather tens of millions, in the 20th century. (See the works of R.J. Rummel, Frank Dekötter, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest and the authors of The Black Book of Communism.)<br /><br />8. In chapter 8 Bellamy also gives a hint at the real nature of his system, when he focuses on the punishments for lack of performance &amp; other anti-social behavior. No mention at all is given, of course, to the vast rewards that entrepreneurs receive when they figure out and provide goods and services that consumers really want. Think Steve Jobs and his incredible creations of Apple products and services, or the amazing new services provided free or vastly better/cheaper by Google, Uber, Lyft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora, Spotify, etc. etc.<br /><br />9. The absence of Bellamy's understanding of the threat of centralized power is almost astounding. Some of his proposals that demonstrate this: a. doing away with juries and defense attorneys and giving all power to judges in criminal (and civil?) trials b. eliminating state (and local?) governments, with no discussion of federalism and division of government, and their important intermediary and balancing effects, let alone considering the concept of individual sovereignty.<br /><br />10. Bellamy's lack of understanding of the vital role of money - the medium of exchange, was similar to Lenin's. Lenin and the Russian people later learned pretty fast that, even in a modified socialist economy, money still provides the crucial functions of making trade, information transmission and rational calculation of economic plans possible.<br /><br />11. I have mentioned above in various ways, but not straight on: Bellamy claims, over and over again that his society (socialist) is based on the superior ethical values of harmony, equality, public/communal property and cooperation and that it is therefore vastly superior to the existing (capitalist) society (in the late 1800s) that is based on greed, self-interest, competition, (virtual) war, etc. As I have tried to point out above, he has it virtually backward: it is the free market that is based on self-ownership, mutual respect, voluntary cooperation, contract and abhorrence of the initiation of force. For more on the ethical differences and actual outcomes (vs. dreams) between the two, I recommend Mises, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and other libertarian thinkers.<br /><br />12. I have listed just some of the ideas of Bellamy and authors who have given me insights about just how error filled or even deadly those ideas play out when attempted to be implemented in the real world. But I would like to recommend at least one additional organization that has a vast amount of resources for clear thinking on these issues: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://www.fee.org">www.fee.org</a>. I highly recommend them to the reader interested in the truth of these matters of solving problems of poverty, inequality, injustice, war and more, our continuing mutual goal.<br /><br />The LibriVox narrator did a very good job. She has a nice European (German, Dutch, French?) accent, that is usually very easy to listen to. Some of her English pronunciations are curious. The one I remember most was how she pronounced the oft used word in the book "clerk" (as in a store clerk or salesperson) - "clark." She seemed quite sympathetic to the ideas in the book and put good emotion into the character's lines, despite some parts of the book being fairly dry explanations of the supposed mechanics of how the national socialist fantasies "were actually working" in the 20th century. I invite readers to compare what actually happened in the societies in the 20th century that tried to implement those socialist ideas of Bellamy and others, and compare them objectively to the societies that went on a more capitalistic/free market path. Even though no country really came as close as they claimed to their goals, the different directions were clear and significant enough.<br /><br />2022-06-28 - significant modifications made to the above review.

One reads this clunky, sci-fi novel about the socialist paradise that America would supposedly become by the year 2000 so as to retain one important idea. Socialism had many forms before the creation of the 2nd and then the 3rd international.<br /><br />Americans were open to the Socialism up until the 1950s when the Russians made it quite clear that they considered America to be their number one enemy. In the late nineteenth century, there was no visceral hatred towards socialists who were considered be to be at worst fools but not dangerous enemies. In the first half of of the nineteenth century Americans had experimented with agricultural, industrial and even sexual communes with no harm coming to mainstream American society. Consequently Bellamy was granted a fair hearing when he published this socialist utopian work in 1888. It sold extremely well but changed absolutely nothing.<br /><br />Currently dystopian novels are the rage but do not be surprised if the pendulum swings and a new generation of Utopian writers appears. They will never be gone permanently in a free society.