"Here are some excerpts from an article by Edward Bellamy that may not be as well known. "Christmas in the Year 2000" was published at Christmastime 1894 in the popular magazine Ladies Home Journal [Jan. 1895, Vol. 12, No. 2]:"
Description of Looking Backward
Edward Bellamy's Looking backward: 2000-1887 [1945/1888] helped to fill the void felt by Americans who desired the utopian sense of community in the absence of Associationism. While not particularly noteworthy as a piece of fiction, Looking Backward addressed the yearnings of a society stricken by economic panics and social collapse by proposing an Eden-like community in which war, hunger, and malice were engineered out of society. While the story followed the wonderment of Julian West as he awoke in a Boston of 2000 A.D. after 113 years of sleep, the text focused on Bellamy's description [through the kindly and unusually all-knowing character, Dr. Leete] of a "post-revolutionary" society which emancipated the individual from the horrors of capitalism. In this utopian future, people and nations had forsaken the individual parties and desires of the earlier chaotic age to create a communitarian utopia epitomized by a National Party.Looking Backward portrayed a seemingly contradictory balance between individualism and community. Certainly, the proliferation of centralized warehouses, communal kitchens, and public laundries provided physical reminders of the socialistic nature of Bellamy's utopia which was said to allow individuals the freedom to enjoy personal empowerment. However, individuals were isolated and watched by a subtle and hidden machinery of government. For example privately held currency was replaced by a governmental "credit card." That each purchase was counted against a publicly allotted allowance resulted in a constant awareness of the individual's relation to the state. Bellamy provides another example of isolation in community with his depiction of the communal dining house, "Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along a broad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, which bore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegant dining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyard where a fountain played to a great height, and music made the air electric [1945, p. 151]."Each room represents a space, prepared and organized by the state, in which individual families are ordered and numbered -- their actions and habits known and remembered by the Party with the constant gaze similar to that afforded by the panopticon. Abrash [1991] provides thoughtful analysis on Looking Backward by noting that a lack of collectivism in Bellamy's collectivist society. Noting that Julian is told about society but shown little of its workings, Abrash suggests that this utopia rests upon a foundation of isolated individuals. This is illustrated by Bellamy's telephone transmission system which serves to undermine social interaction: "apparently no one goes to concerts and few to church [the hugely popular Mr. Barton, be it noted, preaches only by telephone]" [Abrash, 1991, p. 7].To build this utopia required a government without politics -- a garden which hides the machine. Bellamy noted that technocracy had replaced political strife. Legislation was largely unnecessary after the structural problems were resolved. Rhodes [1967] explains that "government in Bellamy's socialist utopia is neither tyrannical nor permissive, neither totalitarian nor democratic. All that remains by way of governmental services is the administration of decisions which are arrived at technically" [p. 40]. Bellamy demonstrated the power of controlled gaze offered by this machine to survey the movements of people when he wrote, "it is easier for a general up in a balloon, with perfect survey of the field, to maneuver a million men to victory than for a sergeant to manage a platoon in a thicket" [1945, p. 181].Bellamy epitomizes the subsumption of individuals to the machine when he wrote that the National Party "sought to justify patriotism and raise it from an instinct to a rational devotion, by making the native land truly a fatherland, a father who kept the people alive" [p. 244]. Spann [1989] notes Bellamy's reaction to those who feared for the totalitarian implications of this vision. The author asked, "aren't we parts of a great industrial machine now? The only difference is that the present machine is a bungling and misconstructed one, which grinds up the bodies and souls of those who work in it" [p. 197]. Although Looking Backward was condemned by some as communistic, anarchistic and worse, Bellamy claimed to have never studied Marxism. Rather, he merely proposed a way by which the utopian ideal could be realized through scientific method.Works Cited
Impact of Looking Backward
Despite Bellamy's lack of political sophistication, his book had a tremendous impact. In the decade after Looking Backward was published, scores of utopian novels emerged in quick succession in praise or condemnation of Bellamy's nationalistic utopia [for example, see Michaelis, 1971; Roberts, 1971; Vinton, 1971]. Inspired by Bellamy's vision, Hundreds of Nationalist Clubs, filled with mostly well-to-do dabblers in progressive thought, soon dotted cities on both coasts. Nationalist advocates also asserted themselves in electoral politics. Bellamy, himself, argued that his utopian fiction must be implemented quickly by the nationalization of railroads, telegraphs, and similar means of movement and control. Soon, the political focus of Bellamy and his nationalist clubs was rejected by admirers of Looking Backward and the proliferation of counter-utopias caused the vision to lose focus.Works Cited
Influences on Looking Backward
In a recent trip to the Library of Congress, I found R.L. Shurter's The Utopian Novel in America: 1865-1900. In that text, he suggests that Bellamy was inspired by at least three books which appeared before the publishing of Looking Backward. This is intriguing because Bellamy claimed that he wrote his novel after exploring issues of social reform with his own "common sense" and rejected any literary or political inspiration. Shurter makes use of side-by-side text comparison to emphasize similarities with these three books: Ismar Thiusen's The Diothas, or A Look Far Ahead which appeared five years before Looking Backward; Laurence Gronlund's [1884] The Cooperative Commonwealth; and August Bebel's earlier publishing of Woman in the Past, Present, and Future. Shurter draws the strongest comparison to Gronlund's text and argues: "As a matter of fact, Looking Backward is actually a fictionalized version of the Cooperative Commonwealth and little more" [p. 177].
Were the most successful of the religious utopian communities?
The Shakers were the most successful of the religious "utopian" communities. In addition to their progressive beliefs on the traditional roles of women and men, they found commercial success through furniture manufacturing and the sale of seeds.
How many utopian communities were established in the previous decades before the Civil War?
More than 100 Utopian communities sprang up all over the country. Some of these, such as the Shakers, were religious communities. Others, like Brook Farm, considered themselves to be social experiments. The antebellum period [or era before the Civil War] was a time of social and moral reform.
How does Grimké explain that the discussion of wrongs of slavery opened the way for the discussion of other rights quizlet?
How does Grimké explain that the discussion of wrongs of slavery opened the way for the discussion of other rights? By studying slavery, she realized women lacked basic freedoms as well.
How have religious reformers made a difference in American society?
How have religious reformers made a difference in American society? They amplified the debate for abolition, using Christian principles to attack slavery. They created the Social Gospel that south to improve the lives of working people and immigrants. They spearheaded the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.