The crux of Morris’s short review is a profound disagreement with Bellamy on a central issue.īellamy’s future society is profoundly regimented. Himself the author of a number of medievalising romances, Morris was, therefore, intellectually well-suited to sympathise with the aims and style of Bellamy’s book, and in 1889 he published a review of it in the SDF’s official magazine, The Commonweal. In 1883 Morris joined the newly-founded Social Democratic Federation, the first official socialist party in England, and spent the last years of his life writing pamphlets arguing for socialism, and travelling around the country, making passionate speeches to working class audiences. During the 1860s he became increasingly disgusted by the appalling exploitation of much of Britain’s working population by the class of factory owners, bankers and lawyers, and the poverty and misery which resulted. William Morris was born in 1834 and, despite his privileged upbringing at private school and Oxford, and his lifelong interest in arts and crafts, he became a deeply political figure. explain very systematically how a centrally planned socialist economy – which has abolished money, gives everyone the same education, requires everyone to work but assigns them jobs best suited to their abilities, and pays everyone the same monthly amount of ‘credits’ – has eliminated the economic chaos, gross waste, and revolting inequality of the society of his day.highlight the appalling inequality and inefficiency of the runaway capitalism of his own day.

It tells the story of an upper-class citizen of Boston who falls into a deep sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the same city, one hundred and thirteen years later, in 2000.īellamy was a socialist and uses the Perfect Society he describes as existing in 2000 to: The answers proposed in Looking Backwards will excite or shock, and spur a reappraisal of the best path into our own future.In 1888 the American author Edward Bellamy published his utopian novel, Looking Backward. It is sobering to discover that the author's analysis of the ills facing industrialised societies remains shockingly familiar today: pollution, exploitation, poverty, crime and the use of wealth to buy influence. Throughout the book Bellamy contrasts this futuristic paradise with the appalling inequality and exploitation of the nineteenth century. Urban squalor and pollution are gone, inequality has been abolished, and every member of society is provided with a solid education and all material wants. During his 113-year sleep he discovers that Humanity has made huge technical and social advances. One of the most influential of all late 19th century American novels, Looking Backward tells the tale of Julian West, a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, who after having dined with his fianc e, is placed in a mesmeric trance on 30th May 1887, and awakes to find himself in the year 2000.

Looking backward book