Capitalism as the pathway to glory

Strikes, boycotts, “wild threats from anarchists” – the workers’ struggle was in full swing in late nineteenth-century America.[1] It had by this time become apparent to many of the country’s elite and oppressed alike that the rapid industrialisation of the preceding decades and the socio-economic system that resulted from it was far from perfect. Enabling a select group of individuals to live in tremendous wealth, it forced the overwhelming majority of the population into poverty. By the end of the nineteenth-century, this awareness had led numerous intellectuals to criticise the economic relations and social structures of the time, some convinced that they could not be changed, others presenting a way out of them. “Workers of the world, unite!” exclaimed Marx and Engels in their eloquently formulated attack on capitalism, The Communist Manifesto. Elsewhere, too, the socialist movement began to take flight – throughout the world the workers’ struggle expressed itself in strikes and boycotts, inspiring a sense of disdain and fear in the minds of the targeted bourgeois and a sense of hope and power in the minds of the proletariat. In Looking Backward (1888), the American novelist Edward Bellamy reveals what he perceives to be most pressing problems of the nineteenth-century – and how they are solved completely in an imaginary alternative society set a century into the future. Tellingly, this ‘perfect society’ is not the result of a violent class struggle or bloody revolution, but the result of capitalism itself – an end of the industrial evolution.

In this ideal society, the United States is prosperous because the old economy of private capital does no longer exist. Rather, it has evolved into an economy of publicly owned capital, a natural outcome of the “industrial evolution.”[2] Seeking to expand their businesses, merchants united into corporations and aggregated their capital and as such a smaller and smaller group of individuals and businesses controlled an increasingly large amount of capital. This process continued until eventually certain syndicates controlled larger flows of money than states. At this point, all business was nationalised in a final act of monopolisation: the nation became the greatest corporation of all, and its inhabitants became its employees – it is the year 2000 (though we are led to believe that the reign of selfish capitalism had ended decades before the time in which Bellamy sets this story). As the sole employer, the state owns all capital and rewards every employee. It divides the national product equally among its citizens, and is in charge of both the distribution and production of goods. Money has no use anymore, as private transactions have been abolished: everyone buys standardised products from great malls stocked by the nation with credit, an abstraction of money (which does not exist in material form). As such, no one is driven by greed for money; instead the population is driven by greed for honour – motivating every individual to work to the best of his ability.

From this brief description might have become clear that Bellamy’s utopian society shows many characteristics of a socialist society – private capital does not exist, and the entire society is organised in line with the maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Yet Bellamy repeatedly bashes the “followers of the red flag” in his novel, accusing them of hindering (social) change rather than promoting it. [3] As a representative of the American bourgeois, and writing to a bourgeois audience, he could not afford (nor did he probably want to afford) to make the parallels with socialism all too clear, as the many strikes, threats of violence and boycotts did not particularly inspire solidarity in the upper classes of society – those who could force change top-down. This distrust of socialism might also explain why Bellamy chose to set his novel in the future, rather than in an elusive, contemporary, terra incognita like his literary colleague Thomas More. Would he have presented it as an already existing society, his fellow countrymen might easily associate it with ‘the socialist threat’, a concern that may have been reinforced by the fear that the socialist revolutions in Europe could be exported to the American continent.

Yet there may be another reason (and numerous other reasons, for that matter) that Bellamy chose to set his novel in a future America. It showed his contemporaries that an alternative society, a society in which labour problems are impossible, is conceivable even without giving in to socialism, as a result of capitalism – and even in America (instead of an elusive country in another part of the world). Presenting an alternative to communism and the path to glory defined by Marx and Engels, Bellamy demonstrated to his readers that even if some of Marx’ assumptions were correct a class struggle would not be the only conceivable way out of the labour problems. As such, Looking Backward might be called a counter-narrative to The Communist Manifesto – a vision of the future that was probably reassuring to the workers and propertied classes alike (‘capitalism may not be all that bad’).

At any rate, Bellamy’s utopian novel has been a huge literary success, selling millions of copies even in the nineteenth-century. Inspiring countless political movements back in its day, Looking Backward is a perfect example of how utopian literature can both reflect and shape (political) reality. It is an extraordinarily detailed book, and I have not done it justice in this brief essay which focuses merely on the socio-economic aspects Bellamy highlights in the novel. I can recommend it to everyone – it is an easy, enjoyable read which offers an intriguing insight in the problems and (perceived) solutions in late nineteenth-century America. Just don’t expect to find a blueprint for a perfect society – you’ll find that you probably would not want to live in the society outlined by Bellamy (but then, this is not where the novel derives its power from in the first place).

Barend de Rooij (1st year student, LUC)

[1] Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, rev. ed. (1888; repr.,Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2011), 163.
[2] Bellamy, Looking Backward, 36.
[3] Bellamy, Looking Backward, 163

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