Looking Backward, 2000-1887 [Hardcover]

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The title, "Looking Backward" is derived from the dialogue between the main character and the family that found him, throughout which aspects from the "current" society of the year 2000 are contrasted with that of the past. The dialogue evolves to include Bellamy's theories on economics, production, political agendum and other less defined, though no less well-conceived, philosophies on social direction and operation. I found it most interesting that he was able to foresee the rise of corporations and their monopoly over production and distribution at a time when industrialism was at its infancy.

I could write pages upon pages about the ideas in Looking Backward, but instead I'll just point you to the text itself. As a reviewer, one is always tempted to incorporate their own bias into the review. For instance, I have read reviews of this book that dismiss it for promotion of what later became known as socialism. This is most absurd as such a narrow minded dismissal not only blames a text for the faulty implementation of a faulty system in despotic hands but ignores the intent of the author, which was to illustrate a society based upon unity and equality as opposed to the current system disunity and inequality. I have also read reviews that suggest the book to be 'incomplete' for not elaborating upon the details in which the society of 1887 transformed to the Utopia of 2000. I put forth that such a task should not and cannot be undertaken by an author whose intent is to outline their ideal society, as it is to the rest of us who would see the ideal realized that would need to undertake its practical development and application. The task of all authors is to spread ideas, not necessarily to implement them.

If you are looking for a good story to read, skip this book. The story is pretty weak and the writing is in most instances overly technical at times when simple language would suffice. What makes it the classic that it is are the ideas expounded within the text. The most admirable and practical example of such to me was his views on concerted production, where the extreme wealth of the state is achieved through the industries working together towards a single cause (the wealth of the state, of course) instead of against each other, profiteering from the collapse of their competitors. I also envy the idea, however unattainable it would seem, that since all wages are equal for all citizens, each pursues his vocation solely for the genuine love of the field.

Time and time again while reading through this text, I could not help but pause and ask myself why such a system as described by Bellamy couldn't and doesn't exist. Perhaps it is too unrealistic. Perhaps it is too idealistic. But as I like to think, perhaps it just makes too much sense for such a flawed species to accept.

While I do respect Bellamy's views and understand the context in which they germinated, I cannot help but describe his future utopia as nothing less than naïve, socialistic, unworkable, and destructive of the individual spirit. Indeed, it sounds to me like vintage Soviet communism, at least in its ideals. Bellamy is a Marxist with blinders on. I should describe the actual novel at this point. The protagonist, an insomniac having employed a mesmerist to help him sleep through the night, finds himself waking up not the following morning in 1887 but in a completely changed world in 2000. His bed chamber was a subterranean fortress of sorts which only he, his servant, and the mesmerist (who left the city that same night) even knew about, and apparently his home proper burned down on that fateful night and thus his servant was clearly unable to bring him out of his trance the following morning. It is only by accident that Dr. Leekes of twentieth-century Boston discovers the unknown tomb and helps resuscitate its remarkable inhabitant. 20th-century life is wholly unlike anything the protagonist has ever known, and the book basically consists of a number of instruction sessions by the Leekes as to how society has been virtually perfected over the preceding 100 years. There is no more war, crime, unhappiness, discrimination, etc. There are no such things as wages or prices, even. All men and women are paid the same by virtue of their being human beings; while money does not exist, everyone has everything they possibly need easily available to them for purchase with special credit cards. Every part of the economy is controlled by the national government, and it is through cooperation of the brotherhood of men that production has exceeded many times over that of privately controlled industries fighting a war against each other in the name of capitalism.

Bellamy's future utopia is most open to question in terms of the means by which individualism is supposedly strengthened rather than smothered, how a complex but seemingly set of incentives supposedly keep each worker happy and productive, how invention or improvement of anything is possible in such a world, and how this great society does not in fact become a mirror of Khrushchev's Russian state. Such a society consisting of an "industrial army" and controlled in the minutest of terms by a central national authority simply sounds like Communism to my ears and is equally as unsustainable. Of course, Bellamy wrote this novel many years before the first corruptions of Marx's dangerous dreams were made a reality on earth. As I said, I disagree with just about everything Bellamy praises, and I think almost anyone would agree his utopia is an impossibility, but I greatly respect the man for his bold, humanitarian vision and applaud his efforts to make the world a better place. In fact, many groups organized themselves along the lines of the world Bellamy envisioned, so the novel's influence on contemporary popular thought is beyond question. Looking Backward remains a fascinating read in our own time.

I should make clear that the novel is not completely a dry recitation of socioeconomic arguments and moralistic treatises. Bellamy makes the story of this most unusual of time travelers a most enjoyable one, bringing in an unusual type of old-fashioned romance to supply the beating heart of a novel that had the potential to become overly analytical and thus rather boring reading otherwise. He also managed to grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me around a couple of times with his concluding chapter, quite shocking me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. This great humanist of the late nineteenth century can teach us all something about what it means to be truly human, although I fear that his socioeconomic theories are themselves far too romanticized to have much practical relevance in the lives of modern men and women.