One of my all time favorites. I've read it repeatedly and loaned it out just as often. Sometimes it doesn't come back and I have to buy another copy. A great tale of life in world of fairness and economic sanity, based on socialism. If everyone the world over read it together, we would surely have a revolution. On another level entirely, an 1887 vision of the 20th century that is eerily prescient--radio, credit cards, Walmart--all seen in the future. I read this in the 1960s, 70 years after it was written and it seemed fascinating then, but not nearly so on the money as it does now, 50 years beyond that first reading. We've moved closer to Bellamy's dream in the intervening decades. Maybe in another 50 years we will get there.
In its own time, this would have been read as the antidote to Darwin. His 1860s survival of the fittest model, with the brutal competitive view of the world was wrenching and dissatisfying to the hearts of those who longed for a cooperative approach to life, a view of charity and caring humanity, of community, abjuring the fallacy of isolation and dominance. This debate wrenched the whole of society in the 19th century. Today we've nearly lost sight of it, in the brutal economic reality which allows us to walk past homeless on the street, believing life is hard and there can be no better way.
In its own time, this would have been read as the antidote to Darwin. His 1860s survival of the fittest model, with the brutal competitive view of the world was wrenching and dissatisfying to the hearts of those who longed for a cooperative approach to life, a view of charity and caring humanity, of community, abjuring the fallacy of isolation and dominance. This debate wrenched the whole of society in the 19th century. Today we've nearly lost sight of it, in the brutal economic reality which allows us to walk past homeless on the street, believing life is hard and there can be no better way.
