BELLAMY, EDWARD (1850–98)

BELLAMY, EDWARD (1850–98)

Edward Bellamy, who is remembered primarily as the author of the utopian novel Looking Backward 2000–1887 (1888), was born and died in the same small town, Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, and spent most of his short life in New England. After a brief legal career, Bellamy turned to journalism, and edited a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1872–7, but he found his calling as a writer. Novels such as The Duke of Stockbridge (1879), Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process (1880) and Luddington’s Sister (1884) were well received and established his reputation.

But Looking Backward brought him prominence. In Looking Backward, Bellamy combined the traditional utopia with the sentimental novel and produced a bestseller, which has never since been out of print. The hero, Julian West, who has had trouble sleeping, is put to sleep in an under-ground room in Boston in the year 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. West was a wealthy Bostonian who was worried about industrial relations and poverty, and was, therefore, a sympathetic observer of the future Boston.

When West awakes, Boston has been transformed. The old buildings are gone and replaced with tree-lined boulevards, squares and culde-sacs, and new buildings designed to fit the new life and reflect its grandeur. Even the air is cleaner since the city is now smoke-free.

But the real changes in the future are in economics and politics, particularly in the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labour. Through the development of monopoly capitalism, enterprises became larger and larger, and were simply taken over by the state. No one has to worry about a job or food, clothes or housing; therefore, everyone has the time and energy to pursue a great diversity of intellectual interests. The future is a bit bland and middle class, but it would be a paradise to all but the wealthy of 1887 Boston.

This new Boston was brought about through gradual change not violent revolution. Bellamy recognized that there would be opposition to the takeover, but he argued that given the choice of losing their property violently or losing it peacefully, the monopolists would choose to lose it peacefully and enjoy its benefits rather than lose it violently and perhaps perish with it.

In addition to the change in the ownership of production, the central change in Bellamy’s society was in the organization of labour, which was also nationalized. The labour system, the industrial army, is organized like an army—the term of service is 24 years, from 21 to 45, with a workday averaging six hours. Shortening or lengthening the workday equalizes occupations.

Everyone starts their service in the same way as common labourers. Then each individual can chooses an occupation, but whether they get their first choice depends on a

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combination of need and aptitude. Professional training is open to everyone until age 30; again, though, the combination of need and aptitude must be correct.

Each person in Bellamy’s future Boston receives an equal income, which is not transferable and cannot, except in very unusual circumstances, accumulate from year to year. As a result, consumption fuels the economy.

The entire structure is unchanging and little legislation is passed. Bellamy contends there is little needing legislative decisions because fundamental laws are in place and work. Since there is no conflict in society, and there are no special interest groups to be appeased or paid off, there is little for a legislature to do.

The political organization is primarily administrative and in the industrial army. The administration works under democratically established limitations. It cannot, for example, eliminate a product for which there is any demand whatsoever. It can raise the price to cover costs but not punitively. It also must produce any product requested as long as a certain level of consumption (indicated through a petition system) is expected. Thus, according to Bellamy, a centrally planned economy can be much more efficient in responding to demand than a free-market system and can provide greater freedom of choice.

In Looking Backward women are members of the industrial army but leave when they become pregnant. As a result, most women serve some 10 to 15 years in the industrial army; those without children serve the entire 24 years. Bellamy says that women’s work is lighter, with shorter hours and more frequent vacations, and was criticized more for these paternalistic sentences than for any other part of the book.

One form of gender differentiation is built into the system. Women’s work is separate and has a separate hierarchy under a woman ‘general-in-chief’ chosen by women. Also, in legal cases where both parties are women, the judge is a woman; where there is one man and one woman, both female and male judges must agree on the result. Thus, in Looking Backward Bellamy clearly discriminates against women while trying to balance that discrimination by empowering them in a separate sphere that actually institutionalizes their political inferiority.

The society envisioned by Bellamy appealed to many people, and a movement began to encourage the adoption of many of the proposed reforms. This movement, the Nationalist Movement, developed initially in New England, and quite a few Nationalist Clubs were established there in the first years after the publication of Looking Backward. The Nationalist Movement was largely made up of members of the middle class, and many members were also Theosophists. From 1889 to 1891, The Nationalist was published in Boston as a means of fostering Nationalist ideas and communication among the Clubs, and from 1891 to 1894 Bellamy edited and published The New Nation. Looking Backward also produced Nationalist movements throughout the world, and Nationalism was particularly strong in Europe and the Antipodes.

The initial focus of the Nationalist Movement in the USA was municipal ownership of utilities, and, since this coincided with widespread corruption in the utilities, and a movement already existed arguing for municipal ownership, they had some successes. Bellamy, though, took the movement into the national political arena and brought it into close affiliation with the People’s Party. When that party was soundly defeated in 1896, the Nationalist movement in the USA began to collapse. Nationalist movements in other countries continued well into the twentieth century.

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Over the 10 years he lived after the publication of Looking Backward, Bellamy and others responded to criticisms of the book, and, finally, Bellamy decided to write a sequel that included changes in important institutions. Looking Backward had been particularly criticized for its treatment of women, and for its authoritarian structure, and Bellamy addressed both these issues.

Bellamy came to see women as full partners in his new society. Machinery, he argued, allows women to take on even the most physically demanding jobs, but also in the future women will be physically much stronger than they were in the Boston of his day. Women in the Boston of the year 2000 spend a great deal of time in physical exercise. In fact, everyone must participate in obligatory exercise at least until age 24.

Other changes in Equality also signal Bellamy’s changed attitude toward women. In Looking Backward

he had taken jobs such as washing, ironing and sewing out of the home, but in Equality he got rid of such jobs altogether. He did this by using paper clothes, which are recycled rather than washed. Rugs, sheets and all other household materials are discarded rather than cleaned, and he devised a water bed and air-stuffed pillows so that feathers, and other stuffing for pillows, mattresses, chairs, etc., which produce dust, are unnecessary.

Bellamy also made significant changes in the political system. In Equality the people have much more direct control than they did in Looking Backward. Bellamy still left much of the political system unclear, but a shift is obvious. In Equality all elected officials are liable to be recalled at any time. And all major legislation is referred to the people before being passed. Thus, there is much more political participation possible for people of the 1897 version of Bellamy’s future Boston.

By limiting the hours of daily work and reducing the years of labour, Bellamy has radically redefined the role of labour in a person’s life. Leisure activities become the defining characteristic of human life, not work, and there are no official or financial limitations on leisure activities. Hence, an area of life in Bellamy’s future may be in a limited sense authoritarian while all the rest of life is freely under personal control.

WILLIAM MORRIS argued that Bellamy was mistaken to design his society around the reduction of labour. Morris, who wrote News from Nowhere (1890) in response to Looking Backward, argued that the goal should be to make labour more pleasurable. Bellamy did not directly respond to Morris’s criticism.

Worn out from his 10 years of prominence, Bellamy died of tuberculosis in 1898.