Our Icarian is an early riser by necessity, for at 6 a.m. breakfast is served in a restaurant or factory. It is not a capricious breakfast; it is such a breakfast, perhaps, as the guardians of Battle Creek, Michigan, dream of. The food that is served in Icaria is regulated by a committee of scientists; and while everybody has all that is good for him, precisely what is good and in what amounts, someone else has decided in advance. So it is at present in our armies and navies, and to some extent in our cheap lunchrooms, the difference being that there remains, outside Icaria, the possibility of breaking away from the routine and following caprice and appetite without respect for the committee of dietitians.
When our Icarian has breakfasted, he goes to his work, seven hours in summer, six in winter. He works the same number of hours as every other Icarian, and whether he works in the field or the workshop, the products of his industry are deposited in public stores. Who is his employer? The State. Who owns all the instruments of production and service, down to the horses and carriages? The State. Who organizes the workers? The State. Who constructs the stores and factories, attends to the cultivation of the ground, has houses built, and makes all the things necessary for clothing, lodging, and transport? The same. In theory, the public is the sole proprietor and director of industry; in practice—Cabet doesn’t tell us otherwise and it necessarily follows in a system of national industry—a body of engineers and officials have taken over the dictatorship of Icar and are running the affairs of the community.
When he is through with his work, our Icarian possibly changes his clothes. Exactly what clothes are necessary, and what are permissible has already been prescribed by a committee on clothes; which comes to saying that every Icarian’s dress is a uniform, even as every Icarian is an official of the State. Eating, working, dressing, sleeping—there is no getting away from State regulations. The uniformity that irks us in modern life and that makes people who have some remnant of free initiative in their makeup chafe in the civil service, to say nothing of the army, is extended to the last degree in Icaria. Napoleon’s conception of a nation in arms is dominant; only now it is a nation in overalls.
Our Icarian’s father and mother were married after a six-month interval of courtship. Since they took advantage of the institution at the earliest moment permitted by law, he was twenty and she was eighteen. By education, they had been taught to look upon conjugal fidelity as a desideratum; and they realized that concubinage and adultery would be looked upon as crimes by public opinion, even if these crimes were not punished by law. Before our Icarian was born his mother received public instruction on maternity.
Up to the age of five our Icarian’s education was domestic; but from the fifth to the seventeenth or eighteenth year, domestic instruction was combined with intellectual and moral education, under a program laid down by a committee which had consulted all systems of education, ancient and modern. His general or elementary education was the same as that of every other Icarian; but at seventeen for girls and eighteen for men, his professional education began.
The only industries or professions open to our Icarians were those recognized and sanctioned by the State; and every year a list is published telling the number of workers needed in each profession. The number of workers, in turn, is determined by a committee on industry, which plans the amount of goods that must be produced during the coming year. Our Icarian begins work at eighteen, his sister at seventeen; and he is exempt from work at sixty-five, while she would be exempt at fifty. The republic, I may note parenthetically, asks from each commune the sort of industrial and agricultural production which goes best with its natural resources; delivering its surplus production to other communes and giving it, in turn, what it may lack.
Cabet describes all these institutions in the minutest fashion, down to the noiseless window with which each Icarian’s house is equipped; but the broad outlines of the industrial and social system are contained in this picture. What we see is a National State, abundantly organized for war, and remaining on that footing in the midst of its peacetime activities. What is not of national importance, in this scheme of things, is of no importance; and the people who decide what is or is not of national importance are the officeholders—I find it difficult to discover a utopian equivalent for this word or to fancy any great improvement in utopia—in the capital.
The political activities that regulate these Icarian institutions do not greatly reassure us. From each of the thousand communes two deputies are chosen to hold office for two years: this constitutes the national representation. The basis of this system is the communal assembly; and from this communal assembly the provincial representatives are drawn. The national executive consists of sixteen members, each with a special department; and it is plain that here is the seat of power; for exactly what business remains in the hands of the two thousand legislators when the food committee has determined the amount and variety of food, the industrial committee the quantity and kind of manufactured products, and the educational committee the methods, subjects, and aims of education, it is a little hard to determine.
There are no newspapers and no means of organized criticism, except the right of submitting propositions to the popular assemblies. The only thing resembling public opinion is the collective opinion of these assemblies. The newspapers are published by the government, one for the nation, one for the province, and one for the commune; and they are devoted solely to the
