The Story of Utopias

After a man’s education has been completed in the common school system, which extends straight through college, he must first serve a term of three years in an unclassified labor army, which performs all the rough and menial tasks of the community. When this period is over, he is permitted to offer himself as a recruit in any of the trades or professions which may be declared open by the government, and can train for his calling up to the age of thirty, in the national schools and institutes. In order to attract people into occupations where they are needed, the hours are reduced and, for the dangerous trades, volunteers are called for. There are however no discriminations in pay. Every person is credited with a sum of four thousand dollars per annum at the National Bank, a sum which he receives because of his needs as a man and not because of his capacity as a worker. Instead of being rewarded for giving the full measure of his energies and abilities, a man is penalized if he fails to do so. It is possible to shift from one branch of the service to another, under certain restrictions, even as in the navy one can change one’s rating and apply for service on a different ship or station, but except for the possibility of retiring on a half-income at the age of thirty-three, everyone must remain at work until he is forty-five.

To this rule there is one exception; and we may note ironically that it is made in favor of the writer’s guild. If a man produces a book he may name his own royalties, and live as long from this income as the sale will allow; and if he wishes to start a newspaper or a magazine, and can get credit from a sufficient number of other people to support his enterprise, there is nothing to prevent him from remitting service to the amount his guarantors are ready to deduct from their personal income. In other words, a man must “either by literary, artistic, or inventive productiveness indemnify the nation for the loss of his services, or must get a sufficient number of people to contribute to such an indemnity.” This is the one open hole in our militarized, industrial utopia; and I think it is the most acceptable feature in the whole system. A community organized as a single unit, directed by a general staff at Washington, and perpetually exhibiting a herd complex which every institution would naturally reinforce, might not be a very genial shelter for the soul of an artist; but if it were, this means of support would doubtless be fair and excellent for the encouragement of the arts.

To go back to our army. The entire field of production and distribution is divided into ten great departments, each representing a group of allied industries; and each particular industry is in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which has a complete record of the plant and the force under its control, of the present product, and of the means of increasing it. The estimates of the distributive department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus, representing the particular industries, and these set the men at work.⁠ ⁠… “After the necessary contingents have been detailed for the various industries, the amount of labor left for other employment is expended in creating fixed capital, such as buildings, machinery, engineering works, and so forth.”

In order to safeguard the consumer from the caprices of the administration, a new article must be produced as soon as a certain guaranteed demand for it has been established by popular petition, whilst an old article must be continued to be produced as long as there are customers for it, provision being made that the price rise in accordance with the greater cost of production per unit.

Now the general of this industrial army is the president of the United States. He is chosen from among the corps commanders; and it is provided that every officer in the army, from the president down to the sergeant, must work his way up from the grade of common laborer. The chief peculiarity of this system consists in the way in which the voting is done. The voters are all honorary members of the guild to which they belong; that is, men who are over forty-five years old; this applies not merely to the ten lieutenant generals, but to the commander-in-chief, who is not eligible for the presidency until he has been a certain number of years out of office. The president is elected by vote of all the men of the nation who are not connected with the industrial army; for any other method, Bellamy thinks, would be prejudicial to discipline. There are various names for this practice: one of them is gerontocracy, or government by the aged; and another, more familiar, is “alumni control.” When we recollect that the hardships of military service look rather mild and pleasant to the man who has been mustered out, I doubt if the youngsters in the industrial army would stand much chance of having their lot improved if the initiative for a change had to come from the alumni. Yet we know what even the formation of a worker’s shop committee would be in an industrial army: it would be mutiny. As for criticism of the administration, that would be treason; admiration for the practices of another country would be disloyalty; and advocacy of a change in the method of industry would be sedition.

True: corruption and bribe-taking and all the dirty scandals that we associate today with a financial oligarchy would be wiped out in utopia; but this merely means that the defects of the old order would disappear along with its virtues. What would remain would be the defects that arise when a nation is in arms, and when there is no escape, by travel or