Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy

In the past I received books I subscribed to from the Easton Press. Most of the books would be in a group of; The Harvard Classics, The One Hundred Greatest Books, Great Biographies, etc. One book from one group arrived that I had never heard of. It was "Looking Backward, From 2000 to 1887" by Edward Bellamy.

Looking Backward was written in 1887. It was about a man who fell asleep in 1887 and awoke in 2000 to a utopian world where everything was run by the government. All food was distributed by the government. All clothing was bought at a government clothing store.

Can you imagine the inefficiency in a government super store compared to the efficiency of a WalMart or Costco super store? Have you seen the inefficiency of the government Department of Motor Vehicles or the city Parks and Recreation employees standing around instead of working? You won't see WalMart or Costco employees standing around, nor will they retire young with a fat pension like government employees retire.

Bellamy's book was very popular in its day because people were offered and idea that would eliminate pain and suffering, the great lure of socialism. Edward Bellamy was a socialist who was enamored with Karl Marx. His cousin, Francis Bellamy, another socialist, wrote The Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, which was designed to help centralize power in the federal government and reduce States rights.

During the later parts of the nineteenth century, life was hard and sometimes brutal. The industrial revolution caused many deaths in factories and coal mines. These deaths were mostly men. Men of the twenty first century still suffer the occupational highest fatality rate because they perform the most dangerous occupations.

Capitalism and free markets cause pain and suffering. People see socialism as a way to eliminate this pain and suffering. Socialism promises one a way to have all their basic needs met without having to get out of bed on a cold Monday morning and put up with traffic, disgruntled employers, fellow workers, and customers. If socialism worked we would all be living under socialsim.

Capitalism moves a society forward with inventions that eliminate pain and suffering. Socialism destroys a society as it invents nothing but government edicts.

Below is a review of "Looking Backward".

Charles Tolleson

http://tinyurl.com/2vk6gy The world through rose-colored glasses, January 19, 2007 Reviewer:Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) Julian West is put to sleep by a mesmerizer (a quack) in 1887 and wakes up again in the year 2000. He encounters a Dr. Leete who explains to him in great detail how the world has changed - mainly how it has been transformed into a magnificent socialistic Utopia where everyone is the same. There is no war, no competition, and everyone lives in peace and harmony. Bellamy was a true believer in Marx and his theories and he wrote this book as a pleasing presentation of Socialism and, to him, its saving graces. When the government controlled everything and everyone, he believed everyone would be treated the same and there would be no class/economic differences and struggles. It's kind of laughable, in a way, because it depicts people in a way that seems contrary to human behavior. Bellamy also didn't have the benefit of the 20th century and the horrors inflicted by Stalin, Mao and others in the name of Marx to temper his overly optimistic views. It's a classic, though, of Utopian literature; one might even imagine it the last of its kind, but Utopia will always beckon a fevered imagination that sees great unhappiness in the world.