Utopia; A. Winston

UTOPIA drBaminton ALEXANDER WINSTON PLATO FATHERED the first blue print of a planned society, and his descendants still clasp us in a sticky embrace while they rifle our freedoms. His Republic mapped out a spartan state run by benevolent philosophers, de fended by a secondary caste of warriors, and supplied with the necessities of life by a mass of farmer-artisans whose only polit ical role was to obey. He did away with two obstacles to the ordered sta te : pri vate property and the family. In the Republic each citi zen performs that task for which he is fitted; the lowly toiler's ignorance is his bliss; and all parts of the body politic function together in well-oiled harmony. Thomas More's Utopia (Greek for "no-place") in 1516 gave the A former lecturer in philosophy at Tufts Col lege, Dr. Winston has written extensively in the field of history. His most recent book is No Man Knows My Grave: Privateers and Pirates, 1665-1715.

name to this whole type of litera ture. A spate of others followed: Andreae's Christianopolis (1619), Campanella's City of the Sun (1623); Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), to cite a few; then a growing flood rising from the French Revolution and spreading amidst the industrial turmoil of the nineteenth century (Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 1888, being the most popular); and on to our own day in such projections of the future as H.G. Wells' Modern Utopia (1905) and B.F. Skinner's Walden Two (1948). They number by the score, and their variety in detail is as great. The majority rely on rule by an aristocracy of merit, a few try to preserve a modicum of democracy; most are communistic, but one at least (Hertzka's Freelands, 1890) recognizes self-interest as basic and aims to save capitalism by restraint on overproduction. They 131 132 THE FREEMAN March may be secular or religious, agri cultural or industrial, favorable to education or distrustful of it, resolutely egalitarian or frankly hierarchical.

Common Assumptions However, certain elements of these multiform visions emerge with such frequency that they de serve our attention. The utopian pictures a static society in which careful planning solves every ma jor problem of human life .. Faith is placed in a collectivity that owns or controls all property. Competi tion for markets or jobs vanishes. Family ties diminish, and the rearing of children by the state is taken for granted. Everything is· rationally ordered by those most capable of doing so: Plato's guardians, More's king and his advisers, Bacon's Solomon's House scientists, Bellamy's indus trial council, Wells' austere samu rai, Saint-Simon's Council of Newton, Campanella's quartet of superior men, Skinner's panel of psychologists. In utopia everyone works, the women on equal terms with the men. Hours are short - four to six daily-and retirement as early as age fifty, but the wants of the people have a stoic simplicity, and all enjoy a decent living. There is little to quarrel over, the atmos phere is uniformly brotherly, crime is almost unknown and disease rare - a perfect whole of perfect parts, all supremely con tent. "U-topia," the no-place, is plainly "eu-topia" the happy place.

But how to get there? Utopians had no answer to that, and avoid ed the question. They sprang their flawless states full-armed from the ink-pot, always somewhere else - a distant island, an obscure wilderness, another planet - or· at a dim future time. The transition from a callous, exploitive society, its people already deformed by prevalent evil, to one of affection and universal sharing, struck the utopians dumb. Their residue' of hope rested in a double view of human nature. They mixed these two elements at will, for each one favored a regeneration of man's sorry existence. In one they saw man fundamentally good (but per verted by a debasing environ ment) ; in the other they saw man quite plastic, molded. to the' last detail by his surroundings. Either way, the right society would very quickly set men right. A combination of circumstances after 1800 convinced social ideal ists that the time was ripe for bringing heaven to earth. The French Revolution had produced a new crop of theorists, the long hours and short pay of .the early factory system .promised to grind down the poor, and overseas the 1972 UTOPIA: DREAM INTO NIGHTMARE 133 American republic offered a haven for all who wanted to try some thing better than mankind had ever known. "Our fathers have not seen it," said Saint-Simon; u our children will arrive there one day, and it is for us to clear the way for them."

American Experiments The result was more than 130 attempts to establish utopian so cieties in the United States during the nineteenth· century. A ferment of change filled the air, even in staid New England. "Weare an a little wild here with numerous projects, of social reform," Emer son wrote to Carlyle. "Not a read ing man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket." Many of the settlements were European in origin as well as theory; some seeking . escape from -religious persecution, others imbued with recent secular plans for utopia; but all drawn by the cheap land of the American fron tier and the easy tolerance of the young republic that had thrown off the shackles of old Europe and considered itself the vehicle of the new age. At last the utopians had before them something very like the fabulous island of the old dreamers. In America they could found minuscule states, as self sufficient as possible, based on common ownership of property, filled with the brotherly spirit, and isolated from contamination by the outside world. "Our ulte rior aim," said young Charles Dana of Brook Farm, "is nothing less than heaven on earth."

As might be expected, some of these starry-eyed experiments were simply preposterous. At Fruitlands that "tedius archan gel" Bronson Alcott would not harness work-horses to the plow (unnatural), nor allow sugar (reaped by slaves), nor wear woolen cloth (robbed from sheep), nor spread manure on the fields (filthy stuff) ,nor burn whale-oil lamps (from slaughtered whales). Shakers led by an illiterate fac tory girI hailed as "Ann the Word" were strictly celibate, and regulated the lives of the faithful down to such details as what shoe to put on first in dressing, and which trouser-leg to step into. An irresistible little fellow in Michi gan got himself proclaimed James I of Zion by 2,000 adherents and five wives; "King Benjamin" of the House of David announced that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ; the· final verdict in the early days of the Amana settlement rested with an oracular Werkzeug whose utterances came straight from God ; the ruler of a Florida colony taught that we all live inside the earth, our feet on its inner surface. The Lake Erie 134 THE FREEMAN March Brotherhood of the New Life gave major attention to the sisterhood, in the belief that: "Soul-life and sex-life are at one, In the Divine their pulses run."

Robert Owen and Charles Fourier Founders of other perfectionist settlements were more sincere and a bit less silly. Robert Owen, a successful English textile manu facturer, believed community of property essential to the good life, and was sure that the indi vidual is totally shaped by his environment. In 1825 he bought up the extensive holdings of a religious community that was moving from Harmony, Indiana. The 900 who flocked in at his open invitation seemed to Owen's son a "heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic devotees to principle, honest latitudinarians and lazy theorists, with a sprin kling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Owen's communal system gave full vent to their shabby ways. They couldn't run anything properly-flour mill, saw mill, tannery or smithy -and their only solution to problems of pro duction was to write another con stitution or make another speech.

The industrious soon tired· of sup porting the idle. From the Na shoba, Tennessee Owenite settle ment, leader Frances Wright in formed Owen that "cooperation has nigh killed us all," and de parted. Within two years every Owenite venture, fourteen in all, disintegrated. Disciples of the unsmiling Frenchman Charles Fourier set up no less than twenty-seven American experiments. Fourier based his utopian ideal less on man's malleability than on his fundamental goodness. The twelve passions, which he carefully listed and classified, would act in perfect harmony with each other and with society as a whole if given a chance. Let people gather into "phalanxes" of some 2,000 mem bers, housed communally in one huge "phalanstery" lying in a spread of 1,600 acres owned in common. Let each choose the work he wished to do. Pay the highest wage for disagreeable butneces sary labor, less for the' more: at tractive, and least for work that was downright pleasurable. Bring all goods produced to a single warehouse, where they could be purchased with work-tickets. In Fourier's ample vision all man kind would finally be gathered into three million phalanxes, coordi nated by an Omniarch in Con stantinople.

Fourier-inspired communes quickly died of dissension, inepti tude, and sheer tomfoolery. An attempt to use some Fourier prin ciples dealt the final blow to the 1972 UTOPIA: DREAM INTO NIGHTMARE 135 most charming and humane of all the utopi~n experiments, Brook Farm. The Farm was owned in shares; it intended to support it self by voluntary labor at an equal wage for all (ten cents an hour), and have plenty of time leftover for culture. Some choice souls sought refuge there: The Rev. George Ripley, founder; Nathaniel Hawthorne, who soon discovered that forking manure ten hours a day was not conducive to litera ture; George Curtis, later to edit Harper's; and Isaac Hecker, a humble German who became a priest and instituted the Paulist Fathers. Good families sent their· boys down to be prepared for Har vard at the Farm school. Into this idyllic but financially precarious community of like minds swept a voluble enthusiast for Fourier, Albert Brisbane. He convinced them that their happy anarchy wouldn't work. They must organize. Tasks were spe cialized on Fourier principles; a Sacred Legion took on the dirtier jobs; unequal wages replaced equal pay; work became compul sory; uned ucated artisans came in with their ignorant and sharp tongued wives; and before long the genial spirit that had held Brook Farm together evaporated.

Six years after its beginning in 1841 the Farm was sold to West Roxbury (Mass.) for an almshouse, thus passing, in the words of one observer, from "the highest ideal" to "the lowest actual." Two That Remain Two utopian communes have the distinction of remaining, though much altered, to the pres ent day. In 1848 John Humphrey Noyes settled fifty-one Perfection ists along Oneida Creek near Utica, New York, an area so filled with fiery religious fanatics that wits called it "the burned over district." A slab-chinned fel low with a scraggly beard and bleating voice, Noyes was never theless personally impressive, and a canny manager of people.· He quipped that too many agricul tural communes had "run aground," and set out to make Oneida industrial. The growing membership (an average of 250) canned farm produce for the mar ket, made traveling bags and a special type of steel trap, spun silk, silver-plated dinnerware, and prospered.

Noyes' word was law. He rested it on divine inspiration, and ex erted pressure so gently that no one thought him despotic. The in dividual at Oneida had no life apart from the community - prop erty in common, personal acts un der common·scrutiny, sexual shar ing on the theory that monogamy was unChristian "claiming." The 136 THE FREEMAN March women said that they belonged to God first and Noyes next, an order of precedence tha t they in fact reversed. A system of selective breeding called "stirpiculture" admitted only the most fit to parenthood. Children lived apart, rarely seen by their parents. For thirty years Oneida ad hered to the original plan. By 1880 Noyes had aged; the reli giousspirit that he had evoked flickered; the young revolted at the idea of sharing spouses and surrendering their children. The commune converted to a joint stock company in an effort to avoid collapse, but its old habits were too ingrained. In 1890 P.B.

Noyes, one of the founder's "stir piculture" sons (he sired ten) saved the community by trans forming it into a typical well-run American business. He concen trated on silverware, cut costs, emphasized teamwork, hustled, advertised, and competed. Today Oneida differs in no essential from any other enlightened man ufacturing firm. Where Oneida, chose industry, the Amana community of Iowa re mained rural, and even more per vasively religious. Eight hundred Germans of the "True Inspira tion" sect established it in 1854 on 26,000 choice acres, seven vil lages spread in a circle around the central one. Every member surrendered all his capital to the common fund (if he left, he got it back with interest) and in re turn was guaranteed his necessi ties for life. Under the rule of church elders the maxim, "obey, without reasoning, God, and through God your superiors," kept members in line. Amana supplied its own needs - weavers, cobblers, tailors, watchmakers, pharmacies, printshop - and exported only high-grade woolen cloth. As much as possible the members ignored the world around them, even hir ing outsiders to serve in the hotel lest their own girls be corrupted.

By 1900 Amana's piety had waned. Without the invigorating spur of competition the economy lagged badly. In 1932 it became' a joint-stock company intent on profit. A business manager brought in from the outside trimmed the labor force of its hired hands, closed shops that had run at a loss for years, eliminated fifty-two inefficient dining halls, sold businesses into private hands and houses to their occupants. Still quaint and quiet today, Amana is a producing and marketing co operative, without a vestige of its former communism. American experiments that went under in two years, as many did, had too large a proportion of misfits whose record outside was one of .steady failure. Intimacy 1972 UTOPIA: DREAM INTO NIGHTMARE 137 bred discord, as people living ·too close together bumped each other at every turn. The absence of competition resulted in lethargy. None of these eccentrics had any business sense; the purchase of a 300-acre tract in Pennsylvania, for example, was made in mid winter snows by an artist, a doc tor and· a cooper, and turned out to be rock-and-sand that had to be abandoned in a year. The Ruskin colony in Tennessee (1894) was ruined by an agent who took such pleasure in making a sale that he sold regularly at a loss. Occasion ally plain chicanery was too much for the innocent: the Rev. Adin Ballou lost his "miniature Chris tian republic" at Hopedale-when one of his Christians bought up enough shares to force everyone else out. Worse, the· utopians mis read human nature. "If men were angels," remark the Federalist Papers, "no government would be necessary." The utopians discov ered to their sorrow that men are not angels now, nor can be so shaped.

Displaced by the Welfare State While these sad little failures gathered dust, Americans awoke to the fact that in the welfare state of the western democracies, and more explicitly in communist Russia, utopia had already arrived on a massive scale. The results in this country stirred up a general unease. Every. step that added to the individual's security detracted from his liberty; every move toward the better life exacted its toll. The United States govern ment assumed vast new powers to tax, spend - and regulate the af fairs of its citizens. Mass produc tion and the communications media created a bland uniformity, with the flesh-and-blood bread winner converted into a Social Security number. Welfare pro grams that averted gross poverty also robbed the -individual of his initiative. Women's equality did much to skyrocket divorce. The same technological advance that increased abundance polluted the landscape. Nuclear energy was more bomb than blessing. Parents did all they could to make a heaven on earth, and their children kicked them in the stomach for the effort.

The West edged piecemeal toward the planned· society; Rus sia made it in a leap. Marx had revived the utopian dream and promised its fulfillment: abun dance of consumer goods, uni versal happiness, absolute equal ity, peace at home and abroad, government that would .hardly need to .govern - a perfect whole of perfect parts. Liberals who had been beguiled by this splendid vision shuddered at the actuality. In Russia the·government clamped 138 THE FREEMAN March an iron grip on the people and showed no inclination to let go. Everything was in short supply except armaments. The mildest critic of the regime was branded a traitor, and shipped off to Si beria. Art and science became tools of the Party; news media spewed nothing but the official line; and the calculated lie became a. habit. The planned society, dreamed of through the a.ges, turned out to be the police state. Americans who had believed in a steady march to the promised land now quailed at the prospect.

Once they had yearned for utopia.; now they asked themselves, "What can we do to prevent it?" Anti-utopian novels clanged like warning bells in the night. Eugene Zamiatin's We (1920) was among the first, and dozens followed (if we include science fiction) , no tably Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), Vladimir Na bokov's Bend Sinister (1947) and George Orwell's 198J" in 1949. They draw a frightening picture of the planned society: its ruth less manipulation by the rulers of the ruled, its grey-faced homoge neity, its stifling of creative change, its reduction of man to a producing and consuming animal, its hideous distortion of truth. Once the masters of this. night mare society are in the saddle, few can escape or even want to. Human nature, in these anti utopias, is infinitely malleable; men can be taught to kiss their chains. Are we all doomed to this? There is reason to doubt it. The anti-utopian sounds a needed alarm, but he badly overplays his hand. He regards the individual as an empty sack into which any rubbish can be poured. Even the lonely rebels of anti-utopian nov els are spineless, stupid, or both.

D-503 of We can build a cosmic machine, but is otherwise a bum bling idiot; Bernard in Brave New World is a sni veling coward; Smith in 198J" is a perverter of truth by vocation and a. love':sick ninny on the side; the renowned philosopher Kruger inB end Sin ister has a backbone of rope. In anti-utopia western man has thrown away every vestige of his hard-won rights, to gain a bovine placidity. All the world is content to chew its cud. Common Sense .May Prevail Such a view undoes history. Western man has shown himself far too stubborn, restless and plain cussed for any such fate. Once the common man has had a full taste of speaking his mind, no one can shut him up for long. Once he is used to the ballot, and the exhilarating experience of throwing the rascals out, he can 1972 UTOPIA: DREAM INTO NIGHTMARE 139 be deprived of it only under the most extraordinary conditions. Once real power is firmly estab lished at the base of the political pyramid (as it never was in Rus sia or China), tyranny from the top becomes an outside chance.

This may be faith, but it is a faith worth having. A man's es sence is his hazardous freedom. It is built-in, inexpungeable. For it he has fought wars, rioted, hid den in catacombs, gone to the stake, killed kings, languished in prison, and he does not forget. Freedom disrupts old orders, and sometimes gives the impression that everything nailed down is coming loose, but as long as Americans demand it as their right, the horrors of the police state will stay beyond our borders. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY Umpire IN GENERAL, nothing happens except a change in the weather, unless somebody makes it happen. Under a free economic system, the man who makes things happen is called an enterpriser. With his own savings ·or savings. borrowed from others, he goes into farming, manufacturing, mining, or banking, and begins pro ducing goods or moving them around. That much is basic. Thomas Nixon Carver, the economist, said the reason many countries are backward is that there was nobody who cared to invest in them. Either the government itself was predatory, or thieves and robbers roamed unmolested. In such countries the rich keep their wealth in the form of unproductive goods - gold and jewels - which they can hide and easily transport when things get too tough.

If a nation wants production and prosperity,the persons to encourage are the enterprisers. Not only· should they be encour aged to build and produce, but they should be assured that their property and a decent part of their gains are protected against confiscation. If they lose part or all of their savings in the com petitive game, they must take the loss and shut up. Government's main job is to see that the rules are fair and are enforced. FROM The William Feather Magazine, November, 1971 DIGGING ROBERT W. DEMERS I FIRST MET Joe when I was about ten. My dad was foreman on a sewer job in our town and they were digging a long ditch for the pipe ·on the street where we lived. I was watching the men dig - no machines in those days. About mid-morning a horse-drawn vege table wagon pulled up where sev eral of the men were on the bank taking a "break." I noticed Joe because he bought a large cab. bage, cut it in half with his jack knife, and proceeded to munch on it, raw. I was watching him, wide eyed, when he smiled, cut off a slice of the cabbage, and offered it to me. I bit into it,hesitantly, and soon found that I liked it' very much. That was the first good thing I learned from Joe, the first of many things I would learn from him over a period of several years.