3. Wild Seeds

CHAPTER 3 WILD SEEDS The time is the reign of Henry VIII of England. The author is Sir Thomas More, a learned and respected member of the king's court. At the moment, he is the king's ambassa dor to Flanders. While there, in 1515, he was to write a visionary and fictional treatise which would go down in history as a socialist classic. Later, he would be present with King Henry at the Field of the Cloth of God. He would become speaker of. the House of Commons in 1523. He would finally 48 - THIS BREAD IS MINE WILD SEEDS - 49 and sage philC'sopher Plato." By this we are left to judge that More's hero, the mariner Raphael, had the seamanship of a· Palinure, the adventures of a Ulysses and the philosophy of Plato. Perhaps the use of the name Raphael is also in tended to remind us of the angels. Social Background of "Utopia" Whether or not these allegories are intentional, the story of "Utopia" is Plato's "Republic" set to music. The mariner Raphael has journeyed to far-away places, taking first as his guide the great Amerigo Vespucci. But this intrepid explorer leaves Raphael at his own behest in a far strange land. Not content with that, Raphael journeys ever farther west, crosses deserts, comes at last again to civilized people. And there, taking ship, he makes his way to the Island of Utopia, wherein a .socialist paradise is in full bloom.

The burden of More's argument, put in the mouth of Raphael, is that civilization as it exists in the 16th century is full of wars and thieves. Further, it appears that the one breeds 50 - THIS BREAD IS MINE the other. Soldiers come back from conflict and cannot find work. They turn to robbery. There isn't enough work for everyone anyway. This is because the governments of the civilized nations are pre-occupied with war, rather than with enterprise. Thus, armies disbanded result in thievery. But, it seems, the reverse is true. Where does the king go to recruit his army? True, there are knights and nobles. But the vanguard is made up of men who are not gainfully employed. And no king can fight a war until he has sufficient of this type of man to call upon. Hence, the number of thieves in a nation determines to a degree the size of the armies soon to be mobilized. It is a vicious circle. . 'Obvi~usly, says Sir Thomas, one must expect the govem..

ment to solve the problem. And in far Utopia,an island of about 500'nUles circtuiuerence, there' ate 54 cities. Th~ 'enti~e area is organized and ali work superVIsed and rUn by a powerful and' "Godly gov'ermrient. .. . . . . (with) all the good laws and 'orders of the 'same Island." Everything is gove~ed. There is neither room' nor time for freedom.

WILD SEEDS - 51 There is no need to discourse further on the details of the Utopian paradise. It is all that Plato could have wished. There are no thieves. There is no idleness. There is no private property.· There is only -beautiful, symmetrical, total govern ment organization. Whether More intended to be taken seriously ,or not, is open to: question. At the end of his fantasy he appends a purported testimonial from one Peter Giles, citizen of Antwerp, who is part of the· story and, who attests that with his own ears ,he also heard the story from that peer of mariners, Raphael HythIoday. The first part· of the testimonial is sig:tlificant: "Thomas More, the singular ornament of this our age; as you yourself can witness, to whom .he .is perfectly well kI).oW11,.sent·unto me this other day the ·'Island of Utopia,' to very few. as-yet known, but ,most 'worthy; which, 'as far excelling Plato'scommonwealth~ all, people should' be willing to know .... " etc., etc.

Plato's·influence was, indeed; profound and lasting, and More's impingement on the public mind only slightly less.

52 - THIS BREAD IS MINE The word "utopia," coined by' More, finds Webster including it as meaning: "any place of ideal perfection; also an impracti cal scheme of social regeneration." And it is entirely possible that Samuel Coleridge, in writing "The Ancient Mariner," had the intrepid mariner Raphael in mind. Arthur E. Morgan has done a study ("How Inca Social ism Came to North America," published in 1946) in which he conjectures that socialism flowered first in Peru, and that Raphael Hythloday, the leading figure of More's "Utopia," was actually.' a realpe:rson and not a fictional character. Ac cording to Morgan, Raphael's Utopia was in fact Peru and the. story related to More an honest recitation of fact. Morgan suggests that the Incas discovered 'socialism, transmitted it to Raphael, who' transmitted it to More,who' transmitted it to many, including Edward Bellamy, whose romance is our next point of reference. That there issimiIarity between the Inca civilization, More's "Utopia" and other collectivist ideas to follow is unquestioned. It is also true that the Incas' WILD SEEDS - 53 Peruvian political format, which developed between the years 1100and 1540in South America, is similar to Plato's conception.

We do not know from where the Inca rulers came. We only know that a system of absolute socialism was established which has been listed by· Louis Baudin and Lewis Spence as being a socialist masterpiece. Baudin gives us "L'Empire Socialiste des Inka," and Spence in his "Myths of Mexico and Peru" shows us the connection between the Platonic master plan and the Peruvian reality. "The Inca was the direct representative of the sun upon earth" (man of gold?), "the head of a socio-religious edifice intricate and highly organized. This colossal bureaucracy had ramifications into the very homes of the people. The Inca was represented in the provinces by governors of the blood royal. Officials were placed abQve ten thousand families, a thousand families, and even ten families, upon the principle that the rays of ·the sun enter everywhere, and therefore the light of the Inca must penetrate to every comer of the empire."

(Could these blood-royal princes be men of silver?) 54 - THIS BREAD IS MINE "There was no such thing as personal freedom. Every man, woman and child was numbered, branded, and under surveillance as much· as were. the llamas in the royal herds. Individual effort or enterprise was unheard of. Some writers have stated that a system of state socialism obtained in Peru. H so, then state surveillance in Central Russia might also be branded as socialism." (II) "A man's life was planned for him by the authorities from the age of five years and even the woman whom he was to marry was selected for him by the government officials. The age at ,which the people should marry was fixed at not earlier than twenty-four years for a man and eighteen for a woman. Colored ribbons worn around the head indicated the place of a person's birth or the province to which he belonged." There are parallels between the Incas' savagely main tained equality and Plato's "Republic," but who wishes to attest that the Inca people are ancient Greeks or Egyptians who, knowing Platonic theory, threaded their way across the misty fastness of a possible Atlantis to Peru, there to act out WILD SEEDS - 55 the theory? It is possible, of course. But .it is at least as pos sible and surely more believable that socialism is one of these -persistent myth forms such -as creation myths, .hero myths, rain and thunder myths, etc., which seem to bear such close re semblance to each other, and yet spring from totally dis similar soils to blossom and flourish amid people entirely unrelated and disassociated.

In any case, Morgan's effort was to trace the similarity of Incan socialism to modern times, an effort which is valuable. Our only problem here is that socialism has extensive origins which predate the Peruvian "golden" age by at least two thousand if not four or five thousand years. Consequently, we cannot agree that socialism originated in South America. Nor can we accept without question the Morgan point of view that More was so honest and forthright a man that he hesitated setting down the adventures of Raphael as fact and therefore colored ."Utopia" and turned it into a fictional ac count. On the contrary,there is no evidence in "Utopia" that it was intended to be taken as fiction, although More must have 56 - THIS BREAD IS MINE known that the fantasy was unbelievable and would be so classed. Still, he takes what precautions he can and recites the story as a first-hand, historical treatise, appending to it an affidavit as to its authenticity.

The point is that socialism is not some recently evolved scheme of Karl Marx. It is a well-established doctrine that has had advocates in every tongue for at least fifty centuries. Problem of Implementation A secondary point is the natural dilemma of these planners of human life. How can one bring about a utopian paradise? The dream is a common one. But how does one implement the dream? Plato imagined that the parents of children might cooperate, if only the parents were sufficiently philosophical. But More makes no such protestation. Quite frankly, he doesn't even approach the problem. He gives us a science-fiction background and. provides an island so far a way that no one knows where it is. The island is discovered in full bloom. There is no transition -necessary from More's WILD SEEDS - 57 England to Raphael's Utopia. Like most of socialism, it makes a pleasant fiction, and the more fictional it remains, the greater the pleasure.

Let us provide one more illustration. Edward Bellamy is the author, the title of his book, "Looking Backward." It was published in 1888, only forty years after the print of the Communist Manifesto had dried. And again a debt is paid to the immortal Plato, whose dream of perfection via govern ment control of the means of production and distribution is made manifest this time in a flowery romance. Julian West is the hero, a scion of an old Boston family of stability and minor prominence. He has difficulty in falling asleep. A doctor named Pillsbury is called in on occasion to: lull Julian into the arms of Morpheus by means of hypnosis. And to take full advantage of this trance, Julian has had built a special sound-proof room in which to enjoy his hypnotic slumber. Unfortunately, one night after he has been mesmerized in his bed, the house burns down. Everything burns except 58 - THIS BREAD IS MINE the sound ..proofed vault in which the hero ·lies. Someway, the room is overlooked in the debris, and time passes. The next thing Julian knows, he awakens with people in the room with him. It is the year 2000. He has slept from 1887, a period of one hundred and thirteen years, three months and eleven days.

While he slept~ the world has changed. He awakens in a socialist utopia, reminiscent in all details of More's extrava ganza and Plato's sophism. The bulk of the novel contains the breath-taking experiences of Julian, who finds to his sur prise that life has been perfected by government decree while he slept. There is no competition and, of course, no important property is owned privately. All jobs are provided by the state. There is only a single store, to which all persons go when they wish to purchase anything. Apparently it is all right to own smaller items of property. But all means of production and distribution are owned by the state. This store is a wonder. ~ it has on its shelves are samples. You pick WILD SEEDS - 59 out the item you wish to buy; a sales person telephones a factory; by the time you get home the item has been delivered. There are no brand names, of course. A can of tomatoes is a can of tomatoes, isn't it?

Best of all, there is no money. All persons receive script, not as a result of their efforts but simply because they are alive. If they appear incapable of spending their script wisely, a government overseer is appointed to prevent any foolish choice. A reviewer of "Looking Backward" as late as 1949 had this to say: "The main value of 'Looking Backward,' 2000-1887, lies in its credible presentation ofa socialist Utopia, and the book has served to introduce many famous people to the theory of socialism. Bellamy was not merely a follower of Marx and other economists; he rationalized for himself the case for economic revolution. The prophecies he makes for the world of A.D. 2000 are sometimes strikingly shrewd, and his judgments made of modem society are pointed and witty. Bellamy's idea was to present the ideas of socialism, as he 60 - THIS BREAD IS MINE saw them, in a way which would appeal to a wide reading public, both of yesterday and today."

This is almost modern science fiction. It is time travel which precedes the great H. G. Wells and which parallels Jules Verne. Again we see the More characteristic. The dream of socialism is inaccessible. It is approached through a Rip Van Winkle slumber rather than by boat. But, because so many people harbor the suspicion that profits are an evil, this bOok found a welcoming audience which was both large and impressionable. One president of the United States (F.D. Roosevelt) considered this one of his favorite novels. The book is catalogued as a novel rather than as science-fiction, where it properly belongs. So important did the book seem to the four-time president of the U.S.A. that he wrote his own book predicting the advance of socialism in which he acknowledged his debt to Bellamy by entitling it, "Looking Forward." As we look at socialism, we are amazed at the· size and scope of the belief, the length of its endurance, the number and greatness of the men and women who have applauded and championed it as a sacred cause.

WILD SEEDS - 61 We see the seeds of socialist thought in the greatest of our philosophers and the greatest of our religions. It is planted in great and enduring literature. Let us see how governments have fared with this perennial dream of sharing. It is too early· to discuss the socialist program of govern ment. Instead, let us begin by viewing the emergence of the political syllogism. Then we may discover how the ineffective dream of thousands of socialists was marshalled into a pro gram which set about creating a socialist society.