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Thomas More's Utopia
Ryan Renfro
Due to an inherent flaw in the nature of man, every human society
has had its imperfections. If one considers this fact, it
is not odd that there has also been a continued interest in the
idea of a perfect society, know as an utopia from Sir Thomas
More’s book of that same title. More spent his
life in the service of Henry VIII and undoubtedly saw many of the
problems and abuses of power in sixteenth-century society.
So was More’s point to show how a perfect society could be
created? This was clearly not the case, as he named his
ideal society Utopia, a word meaning nowhere in Greek. More’s
desire in writing Utopia was instead to take a number of
problems of his society and show how Utopia’s societal
structure enabled it to avoid these problems altogether.
More, being part of the ruling class of society, felt that
princes and other rulers were principally responsible for most of
the wrongs in society, saying “the springs both of good and
evil flow from the prince, over a whole nation.”[1] Greedy rulers
increased their treasures by controlling prices to their
advantage, taxing for made-up wars, fining for forgotten laws,
and by many more ways of stealing from the poor of their
countries.[2] Raphael,
More’s traveler who had recently returned from 5 years among
the Utopians, obstinately refused to serve monarchs because of
their preoccupation with wars of conquest “than on governing
well those they possess.”[3] He mentioned the history of the
Achorians, who thought it their business to conquer a neighboring
kingdom, but soon found it to be as troublesome to sustain rule
over it and protect it from other aggressors as it was to conquer
it in the first place.[4] Raphael
also complained that these wars mangled the populace, making them
as useless to society as the nobility and their hordes of idle
followers.
The wars that Raphael spoke of created a need for soldiers who,
having no means of support between wars, turned to theft, at
which their bravery acquired in battle greatly aided them. [5] Not to say that
soldiers were the only thieves around, for the poor were reduced
to thievery as well. Out of work because the nobles saw it
fit to turn more land to pasture, Raphael tells of how the
English peasantry was forced out of work and driven to either
begging, in which case they were arrested as vagabonds, or to
theft, the punishment for which was hanging. More also
attack capital punishment for theft, asserting that it was
madness to have the same punishment for theft as murder,
especially in a society which forces men to these means in order
to survive. [6] More goes as far to
give a practical solution to this problem when Raphael tells of
the Polylerits and their method of punishment for theft. They
require that the guilty pay back the debt and serve the community
in some way, but never chain or imprison them.[7]
In the second book of Utopia, Raphael explains to More the
society and institutions of the land of Utopia. By virtue
of the nature of Utopia’s institutions, the Utopians are
able to circumvent what More has explained as some of the greater
problems in sixteenth-century society. The first and most
striking difference between More’s representation of Europe
and of Utopia is that Utopia has no private property. This
is a strange concept for More, however Raphael explains that this
eliminates theft since all own things in common. In fact,
the people of Utopia have so much wealth that they consider the
liberal supply of gold which they all keep in their houses to be
the stuff of children and slaves, and thus only use it to hire
foreign mercenaries to fight their wars.[8] They do not display their wealth, but
all dress plainly in dull clothing which aids in freeing them
from that monster of all sins, Pride. Now this does not
mean that More is seriously suggesting that that Europeans should
abandon all private property and live as communists, but he is
suggesting that private property is the means by which the fatal
flaw of greed ruins the lives of so many. Rather than
pursuing their own private concerns, the Utopians “prefer
the public good to one’s private concerns” and
“limit pleasure only to those appetites to which Nature
leads us.”[9]
In contrast with Europe’s monarchs, the Utopians elect their
magistrates on the basis of merit and ability. These
leaders consider the good of the country over their own good and
do not alone hold all the power, for decisions are made in
councils.[10] They
are not removed from the rest of society as in Europe; instead
they understand agriculture and at least one other trade from
their previous experience, as they are apt to change jobs as
often as they change houses. None are idle like the upper
classes in Europe because all are in the same class. They
work but six hours in a day because everyone works, so, since
there is work being done by those who in other societies do
nothing, the hours of all are reduced.[11] This surplus of labor not only creates
large amounts of leisure time in which the Utopias better their
minds, but also allows for a surplus of goods that eliminates any
want, and “It is the fear of want that makes
(man)…greedy or ravenous.”[12] Thus More not only suggests how a
society with responsible leadership can grant a better life to
its inhabitants, but how a society so structured would improve
the lives of the poor by giving them a chance to work and goods
without having to worry about losing these things to a
monarch’s greed. Because they have everything they
could reasonably expect out of life, the Utopians have no need to
take from others and even if they were to commit a crime, only
the most serious are punished by anything more than slavery.
So if More never intended some colossal restructuring of society
such as the abolishment of private property, what is his
intention in writing this book? Is he just a frustrated
administer long fed up with the problems of contemporary society
letting off steam? Like most utopias to follow, More’s
utopia is just a view of how things could have been but never
will be; however, it also gives the reader an idea of how he can
act in order to increase the standards of living of the people
around him.
[1] Thomas More, Utopia, p. 5
[2] Ibid., p. 19
[3] Ibid., p. 5
[4] Ibid., p. 18
[5] Ibid., p. 8
[6] Ibid., p. 9
[7] Ibid., p. 12-13
[8] Ibid., p. 44
[9] Ibid., p. 49
[10]Ibid., p. 32-33
[11] Ibid., p.34
[12] Ibid., p. 38