Looking Backward begins in 1887 with the fairly typical aristocrat, Julian West. The story begins with West waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the construction of his new house, a house which, once complete, will serve as a house for both his fiancée and himself. Unfortunately, the construction of Mr. West’s house is stalled by the striking of workers amid growing labor/government tensions in the United States. Waiting for his house to be completed, Mr. West suffers from severe insomnia and, hoping to cure it, he orders the construction of a sleeping chamber beneath his apartment. Additionally, Mr. West hires a hypnotist to lull him to sleep after particularly long bouts of insomnia. One night, after being lulled to sleep in his chamber, the house above catches fire. Since only the hypnotist and Mr. West knew about the chamber below the house, Julian West is presumed dead. Remaining in a state of suspended animation, Mr. West’s body remains in the chamber for quite some time. As the city advances and time passes, Julian sleeps. It is only in the year 2000 that Julian West, former aristocrat of the 19th century, is discovered.
After beginning construction on a new laboratory Dr. Leete and his construction team discover Julian’s underground chamber. Dr. Leete, a perfect representation of 20th century ideals (as Bellamy envisions them), revives Julian and explains the situation. Understandably confused, Julian takes several days to acclimate to his new time period. Interestingly enough, this turnaround happens extraordinarily quickly considering the vast amount of time that has passed and all that Mr. West has lost in his sleep (including his fiancée). For the benefit of the reader, Mr. West is insatiably curious about the society in which he finds himself. It is Mr. West’s great awakening that begins the protracted lecture by Edward Bellamy.
Writing Looking Backward from his seat in the nineteenth century, Bellamy saw the excesses of capitalism, class-ism, government regulation, and, in general, the unequal distribution of wealth as barriers to a greater, more peaceful, and (perhaps ironically) more free world state. A famous socialist himself, Edward Bellamy integrates a great deal of communist and socialist theory into his utopian United States. While obviously an advocate for socialism, Bellamy realized that his audience (in general) was, and perhaps still is, significantly more sympathetic to a capitalist system. It therefore fell on Bellamy to construct a nearly unarguable proposition. To a large degree, Bellamy does capture all that is “good” about a purely socialist system. After all, what could be better than a society that does away with ideas like the “analogy of the coach” “Society…was a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along…The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow.”?
Bellamy’s utopian ideas are explained in great detail to the reader throughout the course of the book. Perhaps the first and most important example of social change in Bellamy’s book is described shortly after Julian wakes up. In a brief conversation, Mr. West asks Dr. Leete “what solution, if any, have you found for the labor question?” Dr. Leete quickly claims that the problem seemed to solve itself through a kind of recognition of “industrial evolution”. To some degree this is true of our own history. With the development of the assembly line, replaceable parts, and mass production, society was able to rely more upon machines and less upon the labor force. Dr. Leete states that this “industrial evolution” in conjunction with a change in social construction, led to an ultimate solution of the “labor question”. It is here, with social reconstruction, that Dr. Leete’s past differs from ours. Dr. Leete describes his past’s social reconstruction thusly, “The industry and commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations…were entrusted to a single syndicate representing the people to be conducted in the common interest for the common profit.” From what Dr. Leete has told the audience one can’t help but think of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. By dividing industry into a people controlled “Great Trust” there can be little manipulation of the system by an individual. Corruption is, in effect, completely done away with in the business sector.
At face value this idea seems marvelous and one is left wondering why it hasn’t been done in our own time. The answer is rather simple. Socialism violates human nature. Socialism, in effect, asks the people to be something that, according to many philosophers, they are not. Ayn Rand made this very clear when she stated that “man [is] a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” To Rand and even (farther back) Jean Jacques Rousseau, socialism would face defeat, ultimately, by the heavy hand of human selfishness. Edward Bellamy references this idea through Julian, “Human nature itself must have changed very much…” Unfortunately, rather than confront this problem head on, Bellamy dodges the question claiming that “human conditions changed” and therefore, socialism was made possible. Although the statementmay be, in many ways, absurd, Bellamy is not necessarily at fault for his promotion of what many believe to be a fundamentally illogical system. Bellamy has simply fallen into the great, and arguably, unsolvable question of innate human nature.
The second great change in society that the audience perceives is the widespread equality in Bellamy’s utopian United States. From education to gender, from the distribution of wealth to the purchase and sale of goods, Bellamy has designed his utopia on fundamentally equal terms. We are first introduced to this equality in the form of the distribution of goods. Each person, we are informed, receives an equal share of the annual national product. This idea comes from a pure socialist government. Ideally, once the initial government, in a socialist system, was deemed unnecessary, this kind of equal share of wealth would be established and humanity would have no need to change it. Marx reinforces this quite adamantly in the Communist Manifesto. And yet, as easy as Marx and Bellamy purport this idea to be, it has never been implemented in a government.
As the book progresses, we see further examples of the pervasive equality in Bellamy’s utopian U.S. We are introduced to the idea of equal job opportunities, “you had in the poorer classes a boundless supply of serfs on whom you could impose all sorts of painful and disagreeable tasks…but now that we all have to do in turn whatever work is done for society, every individual in the nation has the same interest in…lightening the burden.” This idea is similar to that of equal purchasing power in that they are both fundamental points of socialism. Bellamy has designed his ideal society around equality within the job market which essentially does away with unemployment and what he claims to be inefficiency in the capitalist system. In Bellamy’s perfect world everyone works for a designated time in their life and then, at age 45, is able to retire. This sounds like a tremendous proposition, and it is.
In addition to this job equality, Bellamy’s society asks its people to work for very little reward. How can a meritocracy such as capitalism suddenly achieve such levels of selflessness? It seems we are left to ponder this question as Bellamy provides us with little real answer other than, perhaps, his former explanation that since “human condition” changed and thus society’s construction.
Perhaps the most ‘real’ and historically accurate equality that Bellamy references, however briefly, is the freedoms which women have achieved in Bellamy’s year 2000. As in our own history, equal rights for women were pursued and, eventually, were attained. Writing from the nineteenth century Bellamy witnessed the great inequality between the sexes with revulsion. Regardless of social structure or governmental plan the capitalist United States was able to make one of Bellamy’s great propositions a reality. Julian West expresses his surprise at this revolution which appears to Dr. Leete as an afterthought “’Are credit cards issues to the women just as to the men?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘The credits of women, I suppose, are for smaller sums…’ ‘Smaller!’ exclaimed Doctor Leete. ‘Oh, no!’ ‘The maintenance of our people is the same.’”
While the United States may not be able to claim that it has advanced much since Bellamy’s time, certainly not along the path that he would have liked, we have managed to put forward some fantastic accomplishments. While we may not have discarded capitalism we have fundamentally altered it (arguably) for the better from its former days of trusts and excesses. Additionally, the United States, more than any other country has advanced the ideas of natural human rights and freedoms, even achieving universal suffrage in 1964 (though the exact year may be disputed). Since the nineteenth century the United States has risen to the top of international politics, dictating world policy, and determining the economic success or failure of the world at large. While we may not be purveyors of peace or prosperity we have achieved a level of greatness that was, perhaps, only fantasy in Bellamy’s time.
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