The word "utopia" was coined by More for his book from Greek for "no" and "place." There's some controversy as to whether this work is meant as serious or satire. Given not just the name of no place but things like the explanation of why the island is not reachable (someone coughed when the location was announced) I suspect the later. Moreover, this ideal state seems notably radical for a man who was famously a very orthodox Catholic. There's equality between the sexes (sorta), divorce, married and women priests, sanctioned euthanasia and religious tolerance (sorta). And it's a state without lawyers imagined by a man for whom that was his profession. I can't imagine from all I know of the man that what he presents is his ideal. I think it's more satire, more fanfic of Plato's Republic, than serious prescription. I mean c'mon, the slaves' chains are made of gold, children use jewels as playthings? Even the surname of the narrator, Raphael Hythloday, means "spreader of nonsense." Anyone really think More meant this all seriously?
It's certainly not my ideal. Utopia is a republic that elects it's leaders. But like Plato's ideal republic it's one where lives are very tightly controlled. Where people live and their work is chosen by the state; there's no private ownership, no privacy, internal passports, sexual mores are legally enforced. There's even slavery--prisoners of war and people who have violated any of the republic's tyrannical laws. It sounds closer to China during Mao's cultural revolution than anyplace I'd want to live in. About the only aspects I can see as positive are the (relatively) egalitarian relationships between the sexes, the (relative) religious tolerance, the idea of keeping laws few and simple so that all could understand, and elected leadership. Which goes to show, one person's utopia is another's dystopia. Part of why I'm skeptical of utopias left and right--they often seem to crush too many individuals along the way to perfection, and I don't know what I'd find more horrifying, what you'd have to do to reach this utopia, or what it would be like to live under it--although goodness knows, we came close enough during the 20th century and it wasn't pretty.
But what I'm reviewing and rating is not this imagined society, but this book about imagined societies. And I do love the idea of this kind of thought experiment, even if often I find attempts to create them (or at least impose them) wholesale the source of much evil. More might even agree with me. Given the satiric elements, I do think this is more about how utopias are unworkable than admirable. And you know, I think More gets it. There's this passage, said by the the character representing More himself:
I don't believe you'd ever have a reasonable standard of living under a communist system. There'd always tend to be shortages, because nobody would work hard enough. In the absence of a profit motive, everyone would become lazy, and rely on everyone else to do work for him. Then, when things really got short, the inevitable result would be a series of murders and riots, since nobody would have any legal method of protecting the products of his own labour.
That. Or they just starve to death. So I suspect those criticizing More as a commie are missing the mark. Some also complain this is a slog. Yet there is wit and humor here, and though some parts were tedious, well, it is short--only 134 paperback pages, not including notes, in my edition. Also More might have been an Englishman, but he wrote the book in Latin, so that means if you're reading it in English it's a translation. The first such translations didn't appear until after More's death. So if you're suffering from one with Middle English affectations, that's not More's fault--it's the translation you picked. I definitely think whatever you think of More's imaginary land, encountering these ideas are worth the read.
