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and join other families. They must wear the same type of clothing, live in the same style homes, and reside in similarly designed towns. They eat, sleep, and dress as told. The individual is constantly prodded, yanked, and pushed to do that which he may not wish to do. He is even encouraged to self-euthanize when his illness or weakness interferes with his ability to contribute to society. But for those few who become, for example, Phylarchs and Tranibores, all citizens must be involved in farming and other forms of manual labor. Thus, even more thoroughly than the Republic, More’s Utopia demands conformity, uniformity, and communal living for nearly all of its inhabitants. Apart from its religious component, it is similar in kind to, and a forerunner to, the “utopian socialism” in The Communist Manifesto and its emphasis on radical egalitarianism.

Of course, Utopia is no paradise. It substitutes one evil for another. Like the Republic, Utopia misapprehends man’s nature. Rather than nurture it, Utopia suppresses it. Among other things, More does not amply tackle the necessity of his ideal society to establish a far-reaching administrative and enforcement apparatus to oversee his society’s intricate rules. While he metes out punishment for certain indiscretions and offenses, the coercion and repression required to impose order must be more elaborate and brutal than More acknowledges. For example, surely stubborn resistance by some if not most families to the forced separation of its members, or the relocation of citizens from cities to farms to work the fields whether they want to or not, would require police-state tactics to effectuate. It is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, which was instituted more than 440 years later, resulting in the death of millions of Chinese. Furthermore, while Utopia provides a form of representative government, More does not explain how such a government can exist within the framework of a thoroughly controlled cultural and economic climate, the purpose of which is to denude the citizen of his individuality (pride); or whether it can exist as the carefully planned society More intended should the families vote for representatives to undo the supposed ideal parts of his society.

Utopia’s peninsula is also turned into an island for the purpose of isolating its citizens from the rest of the world, with some exceptions. Mobility within and outside the island is monitored and strictly regulated by the Prince himself. By severely limiting external influences and interactions of most kinds, More’s paradise would undoubtedly stagnate and regress—economically, intellectually, scientifically, technologically, culturally, etc.—for the flow of information and access to knowledge that contributes to the vitality, growth, and energy of a society are largely proscribed, much like many of the communist regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Although More was an enormously courageous man of deep faith, executed by King Henry VIII for his principled refusal to disparage the Roman Catholic Church, and although his invention, Utopia, was, I believe, intended as a humane response to the contemporary society that undoubtedly troubled him, More was no more successful than Plato. Utopia is a tyrannical society, destructive of individual sovereignty and free will, with many of the attributes of a communist state.

CHAPTER FOUR

THOMAS HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN AND THE ALL-POWERFUL STATE

THOMAS HOBBES WAS A partisan of the English royalty who was appalled by the series of civil wars between the English Royalists and Parliamentarians, religious turmoil, and general anarchy that led to the execution of Charles I. He fled to France where, in 1651, he wrote Leviathan,1 which was influenced by what he had observed and experienced.

Hobbes argued that as men live in a constant state of fear, anxiety, and conflict, they could not be trusted to govern themselves. As such, a “Sovereign” must be given absolute power over men (“Subjects”) to protect them against themselves and outside invaders