Utopias, Past and Present

Why Thomas More Remains Astonishingly Radical

Bibliographic Data

ID6011673
AuthorsTerry Eagleton, Terry Francis Eagleton (0000-0002-9466-7855, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume27
Issue3
Pages412-417
Publication date2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueUtopian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-991X • E-ISSN: 2154-9648
PublisherThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/utopianstudies.27.3.0412
OpenAlexW2566367079
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Thomas More's Utopia, a book that will be 500 years old next year, is astonishingly radical stuff. Not many lord chancellors of England have denounced private property, advocated a form of communism and described the current social order as a “conspiracy of the rich.” Such men, the book announces, are “greedy, unscrupulous and useless.” There are a great number of noblemen, More complains, who live like drones on the labour of others. Tenants are evicted so that “one insatiable glutton and accursed plague of his native land” may consolidate his fields. Monarchs, he argues, would do well to swear at their inauguration never to have more than 1,000lbs of gold in their coffers. Perhaps this is one reason why Utopia is not bedside reading in Buckingham Palace. Instead of being worshipped, gold and silver should, he suggests, be used to make chamber pots. War is fit only for beasts, and standing armies should be disbanded. Labour should be reduced to a minimum, though the TUC might balk at the suggestion that workers would use some of their leisure time to attend public lectures before daybreak

Art history · Buckingham · Communism · Economic history · Economics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Utopia · History · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Political Economy and Marxism

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