Rereadings: Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ is not very idyllic

Thomas More’s book, “Utopia,” is more referred to than read, these days. It is also misunderstood to be a depiction of an idyllic as well as an ideal society. Reading “Utopia” is far from an easy exercise; originally composed in Latin, it is available only in a very old English translation that features cumbersome sentence structure and archaic vocabulary. But the book contains some wonderfully interesting ideas, and is well worth the trouble to read. As for that, I don’t know of a single book of quality that isn’t challenging. The Utopia of the title was an island kingdom in Central America, self-sufficient and formidable enough to come to the military aid of neighbors when they were attacked. More began to compose the book when in Flanders in 1515, on a trade pact assignment from Henry VIII, and his ideal owes to what he observed in the Low Countries and to an account of an Amerigo Vespucci voyage to the New World.Today we equate utopias with the idyllic. More’s is a dictatorship, albeit a benevolent one, under King Utopus; the differences between today’s conception of the ideal and his derive from our respective ideas of freedom. Today, freedom means the liberty to be and do what we want, without much constraint. To More, 500 years ago, freedom meant relief from continual want, not the ability of individuals to do whatever they please. In “Utopia,” no one had to go hungry or be without shelter — which is why some later readers dismissed the book as touting a proto-communism — but also, no one rose much above the station of their birth. The upward mobility that is modern America’s glory was all but inconceivable then. In “Utopia,” after minimal schooling young men and women trained to follow the trades plied by their fathers and mothers. They could switch from butchery to tannery, or from wheelwright to mason, but they had no path to becoming a painter, sculptor, writer or, for that matter, a politician. There were artisans but no artists. There were local representatives but no pols, and, as important, there were no lawyers. None were needed. Nor were new laws, since the country was presumed to be in a steady condition and not expected to change. People elected to the governing council rotated in and out of their responsibilities, and that council existed as an advisory and ratifying body to the king rather than as lawmakers. The king’s decisions could only be challenged if they were very bad. Accumulation of wealth by individuals was virtually impossible, as services were for the most part bartered rather than paid for in coin.More had become convinced that poverty bred crime, and that the rich were too greedy. “Is this not an unjust and an unkind public weal, which giveth great fees and rewards to gentlemen ... or flatterers and devisers of vain pleasures; and of the contrary part maketh no gentle provision for poor ploughmen, colliers, laborers, carters, ironsmiths, and carpenters, without whom no commonwealth can continue?” He also believed that punishment for petty crimes should be commensurate with the offense — this, in an era when theft was often punished by death, a notion he declared incompatible with Christianity. More also thought prisons were counterproductive in that they did not rehabilitate. For nonlethal crimes, he decreed periods of enforced slavery, a slavery more akin to indentured servitude than to chain gangs. The term of one’s enslavement lasted for a few months or a few years. Slaves were not considered to be personal property, and to abuse them was a heinous crime — do it, and you’d soon find yourself enslaved. All males put in their time in the military, but there were few professional soldiers. Divorce was available, but after a divorce neither party was permitted to remarry. Farming, More considered a “hard and sharp kind of life,” so farmers could stop after two or three years and move into one of the evenly spaced-apart cities, while city folk replaced them behind the plow. More’s “Utopia” fails as an ideal society, in my view, because it does not factor into its social structures people’s natural desires to better themselves, to accumulate, to outshine their neighbors, and to differentiate themselves from the crowd. But then, the freedom to be individual is a late addition to the canon of being human. Next time, another utopia, Sir Francis Bacon’s colony of scientists, described in his book “The New Atlantis.” Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written more than two dozen books and many television documentaries.