Utopia as a forecast of things to come? (2024)

Utopia was an attempt to draw attention to the social problems facing England and an invitation to seek their solution. In this, More succeeded, at least in part. According to Kautsky, “We have every reason for thinking that the impression made by Utopia was so great that Henry was obliged to make concessions and lighten the burdens of the people” (2002: 54). A few months after the appearance of Utopia, Henry VIII abandoned his war policy and surrendered a portion of his French conquests. “A policy of peace, economy, sympathy with Humanism were the prospects offered to Henry VIII’s Court. They were illusory, but there they were” (Kautsky, 2002: 55). Utopia may have had an impact from a short-term perspective, but how did it fare from a longer historical perspective and what happened to More’s decision to advise the Prince?

We know that real-life efforts to build classless societies in Soviet Russia or Maoist China did not eliminate inequalities. As observed by Orwell, some people under the new systems became ‘more equal than others’. As a prophecy of a system of social justice and enlightened leisure, Utopia failed, but paradoxically, it foreshadowed, perhaps unintentionally, the ominous aspects of real-life dystopias.

We mentioned that Utopians, to function, needed the labour of slaves. Forced labour was considered more expedient than capital punishment, and Utopians were willing to buy prisoners even from other countries to use them as slave labourers. It is surprising how closely the ordeal of the slaves in the 16th-century fictitious Utopia resembles some of the practices employed in the modern-age GULAGs or ‘Arbeit macht frei’ concentration camps.

All slaves in Utopia were distinguished by a peculiar mark, which they could not lay aside. They were not allowed to go out of their bounds or to talk with a slave of another jurisdiction. Any attempt to escape was punished as severely as the escape itself.

It is death for any other slave to be accessory to it; and if a freeman engages in it, he is condemned to slavery. Those that discover it are rewarded - if freemen, in money; and if slaves, with liberty, together with a pardon for being accessory to it.

(U: 673-682)

There is a tragic personal ending to More’s thoughts about the role of the philosopher and his relationship with the Prince. The dialogue between More and Hythloday in Utopia remained open-ended, but it was closed in More’s life. Hythloday’s misgivings about entering the services of the Prince were vindicated. In spite of his early friendship with Henry VIII, More was sent by the King to the scaffolds.

Utopia was at least in part a projection of More’s views, but these views ran into conflict with real politics. The tolerance of Utopia gave way in More’s later years to vitriolic and merciless attacks on ideological foes, but this same weapon was turned against him. The circle closed. Plato’s warning (quoted by Hythloday) that a philosopher who will become an adviser to the King will change nothing save precipitate his own downfall proved to be right. Utopia as an attempt to foretell or foster social change failed, but so did the ‘roundabout’ way to reform policies by advising the Prince.

This is sadly the final page in the life of a person who Erasmus of Rotterdam praised as a ‘genius such as England never had and never again will have’ (quoted by Watson, 1994: 193), and whom G.K. Chesterton called the “greatest historical character in English history” (1929: 63). More’s tragic end should not veil, however, the relevancy of More’s attempt to solve the dilemma of achieving a socially desirable and politically sustainable balance between work and leisure. There is a worrisome resemblance between the 16th century’s ‘enclosures’ of lands, accompanied by an exodus of job-seeking farmers, and today’s ‘closures’ of job opportunities that makes More’s intent (if not the solution) of bridging the gap between work and leisure distinctly salient and up-to-date.

Notes

1 Parts of this chapter were published: Zuzanek, J. (2016) Work and leisure in Thomas More’s Utopia. Leisure Studies, 36 (3), 305-314, DOI 10.1080/02614367.2016.1182200. The permission given by Routledge for using this material is greatly appreciated.

• 2 A serious attempt to examine the role attributed to leisure in Thomas More’s Utopia can be found in Dooley (1986).
• 3 William Roper’s The Life of Sir Thomas More was written in 1553 and republished in the 20th century. Roper was More’s son-in-law.
• 4 Game of aiming and throwing flat rings to encircle or land as close as possible to a peg.

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