On "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy ***

Bellamy's Looking Backward is a futurist novel. Written in 1888, it aims to tell what the future will be like in 2000. Or so that was what I thought I would be reading from passages I'd read in other works, which focused on a few technological gains. One of those gains was a canopy that rolls across streets in the rain so that people no longer need umbrellas. Another was a type of music box, not unlike a radio.

But Bellamy's book is not terribly focused on technology. Rather, it is focused on institutions and social change. Written at a time when industrialization had resulted in vast amounts of inequitable wealth, Bellamy aims to tell of a time when all humans will be equal, to show how nineteenth-century culture fails to value people, and is thus un-Christian.

Bellamy's solution to this dilemma may sound somewhat familiar. Today, we might call much of what he is proposing communism--or, perhaps more accurately, national socialism. The basic idea is that industry works best (most efficiently) when it is larger, and the larger it is, the better. Hence, rather than have, say, three car manufacturers, let the government own and control the one car manufacturer. In this way, competition is removed and all can work toward making the best product at the best price at the exact number needed. Sounds great. Planned economies, in theory, should be much better than our mess of capitalism.

Take away money, as Bellamy does, and replace it with a credit card (in his nineteenth-century ideas, this seems more like a punch card with items on it), wherein everyone is limited to purchasing a certain number of goods. Each person gets the same amount on the card, no matter the amount of labor expended. In this way, no one has too much or too little. But why work hard if one will make the same either way? In Bellamy's world, one works for glory--for the good of the common man. There is honor in this, and that is its own reward.

Beyond that, everyone has the job he or she wants and, thus, enjoys. To avoid having an excess of, say, literature professors and a derth of, say, coalminers, work is divvied up so that those with the more desirable careers have to work more hours, while those with less desirable careers work fewer hours. Hence, a coalminer might only have to work four hours a week, while a professor works sixty; some professors might be tempted, therefore, to become coalminers so as to have free time. An interesting theory--but in practice, impossible. More hours can only be granted if there is more work; a shortage of workers would in fact guarantee an excess of work and necessitate more hours not fewer.

But this is fantasy, after all, which is unfortunately where well-working planned economies tend to dwell. Much as I would love to see Bellamy's type of world come to be, people do not have the character to create such a society, and the structure society--contrary to what Bellamy hypothesizes--does not wholly create a people's character, given that people themselves make up the society.

Nevertheless, as a study in late nineteenth-century criticism, Bellamy's book is very interesting--especially given that it was a best-seller in its day. Happily, it's available online here at Project Gutenberg.