Thomas More is a classic Utopian, that is, a wishful thinker. Describing the capital of his imaginary island Amaurote, he unabashedly lays down the plan of London, but what a difference these two make! Amaurote is not just some non-existent place in the Southern Hemisphere. It is what More wishes his London to be. More is also a very forceful wishful thinker, and he makes sure that his Utopia would not be dismissed as an idiosyncratic product of Sir Thomas’s personal fancy, by directly appealing to the unimpeachable authority of Jesus Christ! Having introduced Utopia to the reader, More’s alter ego Raphael (perhaps, as in Archangel Raphael, the healer of the blind?) Hythloday says this, near the conclusion of his story:
“…And I doubt not that either respect for every man’s private comfort, or else the authority of our saviour Christ (which for his great wisdom could not but know what was best, and for his inestimable goodness could not but counsel that which he knew to be the best) would have brought all the world long ago unto the laws of this commonwealth, if it were not that one single beast, the princess and mother of all mischief Pride resists and hinders it…”
So, what exactly is Thomas More’s Utopia, which dares to employ such heavy artillery, and apparently gets away with the arrogance of secular fiction turning to God for its validation?
In Utopia, private property does not exist, and there is complete religious tolerance, except for the atheists, who are not, however persecuted, but deprived of the full rights of citizenship. More sees a social need for order and discipline, prizing them much greater than freedom and liberty. Everybody is obligated to work, but the work is limited to six hours a day, and it is not exhausting. While the island stores reserves of gold and silver, money is used to contract mercenaries (mostly to fight just wars for the Utopians), whereas the citizens have no need for money for themselves, as luxuries are non-existent. And so on, and so forth…
...Law and order rigidly enforced. The kind of enforcement More has in mind requires a powerful State. This amounts to More’s advocacy of State-imposed communism, or extreme socialism, if you like, which, at least to me, becomes indistinguishable from a totalitarian State built along religious lines. Although some freedom of religion is sort of allowed in his Utopia, which makes it different from a monoreligious theocracy, it is still based on the practice of Christian communism, which in turn is based on the Biblical communism of the Acts of the Apostles (see, for instance Acts 4:31-35).
…My original idea of the present book, then titled Capitalism and Christianity, was to represent the clash of these two as a “contradiction in terms,” and to show their moral incompatibility, while upholding what is known as Christian communism in protest against the very fashionable trend of moralization of capitalism. While I abhor the efforts of capitalist apologists to represent capitalism as the ethical apotheosis of all social systems imaginable, I am far from advocating the Christian commune as the way of an idealistic future either. The world is too imperfect for it, to begin with. Besides, I am a fierce opponent of uniformity in all of its aspects and, I am afraid, such communes even in a dream world have drab homogeny as one of their least rewarding side effects. Yet, although rejecting the idea of such communes, both in principle and in general practicality, I am convinced that there are certain advantages to be gained from borrowing some of their socialist ways. It is therefore most profitable to read Thomas More’s Utopia with a perfectly open mind: without becoming a captive audience for its Christian homiletics but neither rejecting it wholesale as merely a very naïve piece of Christian propaganda.
In the meantime, let us marvel at the effort of yet another wishful thinking totalitarian. Apparently, Christian communism, once we take a long hard look at it, becomes indistinguishable from the totalitarian ideal. The commune looks more and more like a totalitarian State, and the State looks more and more like a Christian commune.
“…And I doubt not that either respect for every man’s private comfort, or else the authority of our saviour Christ (which for his great wisdom could not but know what was best, and for his inestimable goodness could not but counsel that which he knew to be the best) would have brought all the world long ago unto the laws of this commonwealth, if it were not that one single beast, the princess and mother of all mischief Pride resists and hinders it…”
So, what exactly is Thomas More’s Utopia, which dares to employ such heavy artillery, and apparently gets away with the arrogance of secular fiction turning to God for its validation?
In Utopia, private property does not exist, and there is complete religious tolerance, except for the atheists, who are not, however persecuted, but deprived of the full rights of citizenship. More sees a social need for order and discipline, prizing them much greater than freedom and liberty. Everybody is obligated to work, but the work is limited to six hours a day, and it is not exhausting. While the island stores reserves of gold and silver, money is used to contract mercenaries (mostly to fight just wars for the Utopians), whereas the citizens have no need for money for themselves, as luxuries are non-existent. And so on, and so forth…
...Law and order rigidly enforced. The kind of enforcement More has in mind requires a powerful State. This amounts to More’s advocacy of State-imposed communism, or extreme socialism, if you like, which, at least to me, becomes indistinguishable from a totalitarian State built along religious lines. Although some freedom of religion is sort of allowed in his Utopia, which makes it different from a monoreligious theocracy, it is still based on the practice of Christian communism, which in turn is based on the Biblical communism of the Acts of the Apostles (see, for instance Acts 4:31-35).
…My original idea of the present book, then titled Capitalism and Christianity, was to represent the clash of these two as a “contradiction in terms,” and to show their moral incompatibility, while upholding what is known as Christian communism in protest against the very fashionable trend of moralization of capitalism. While I abhor the efforts of capitalist apologists to represent capitalism as the ethical apotheosis of all social systems imaginable, I am far from advocating the Christian commune as the way of an idealistic future either. The world is too imperfect for it, to begin with. Besides, I am a fierce opponent of uniformity in all of its aspects and, I am afraid, such communes even in a dream world have drab homogeny as one of their least rewarding side effects. Yet, although rejecting the idea of such communes, both in principle and in general practicality, I am convinced that there are certain advantages to be gained from borrowing some of their socialist ways. It is therefore most profitable to read Thomas More’s Utopia with a perfectly open mind: without becoming a captive audience for its Christian homiletics but neither rejecting it wholesale as merely a very naïve piece of Christian propaganda.
In the meantime, let us marvel at the effort of yet another wishful thinking totalitarian. Apparently, Christian communism, once we take a long hard look at it, becomes indistinguishable from the totalitarian ideal. The commune looks more and more like a totalitarian State, and the State looks more and more like a Christian commune.
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