Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [21]
Nearly five hundred years after Utopia was first published, scholars still debate whether it was intended to be, in whole or part, a serious statement of political theory, More’s preferred ideal society, or a fiction supposedly built on humanism. Whatever his intended approach, More obviously meant for his work to have meaning, which it has for centuries.
The crux of More’s critique, delivered through Hythloday, seems clear—his revulsion with the injustices and inequities of society at the time: “Here now would I see if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity the justice of other nations, among whom I forsake God if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice. For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith, or an usurer, or, to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living either by idleness or by unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and plowmen, by so great and continual toil as drawing and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so unnecessary toil that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, should yet get so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem much better and wealthier? For they be not put to so continual labor, nor their living is not much worse, yea, to them much pleasanter, taking no thought in the mean season for the time to come. But these silly poor wretches be presently tormented with barren and unfruitful labor, and the remembrance of their poor, indigent, and beggarly old age killeth them up. For their daily wages is so little that it will not suffice for the same day, much less it yieldeth any overplus that may faily be laid up for the relief of old age” (142).
Moreover, for More, the individual’s pride is his greatest malady and destructive of the sameness and oneness of purpose so crucial to a just society. “And I doubt not that either the respect of every man’s private commodity or else the authority of our savior Christ … would have brought all the world long ago into the law of this weal public, if it were not that one only beast, the princess and mother of all mischief, Pride, doth withstand and let it. She measureth not wealth and prosperity by her own commodities, but by the misery and incommodities of others; she would not by her good will be made a goddess, if there were no wretches left over whom she might, like a scornful lady, rule and triumph, over whose miseries her felicities might shine, whose poverty she might vex, torment, and increase by gorgeously setting forth her riches. This hell-hound creepth into men’s hearts and plucketh them back from entering the right path of life and is so deeply rooted in men’s breasts that she cannot be plucked out” (144, 145).
More’s response is to fabricate an egalitarian society that claims to provide for all wants and needs on an equal basis by expunging humanness from the human being and suppressing individual pride—that is, free will and personal fulfillment—for the good of society. In Utopia, the individual is not trusted to care for himself. His highest value is that of an insipid worker compliantly obeying orders. His personality must be reengineered. His own desires and happiness, therefore, are made indistinguishable from those of every other individual. More controls the individual and his environment, which extends to the most basic aspects of life.
Despite the establishment of representative councils, the power of the state is nearly absolute, for the problem, as usual, is not the utopian fantasy, which is self-evidently prophetic, but the flawed individual who is unable, on his own, to live up to it. As a result, people are forced to work on farms, move to different homes,