Looking Backward

1888, 1960 Signet Classic edition
Edward Bellamy
Looking Backward: 2000-1887
Original price $1.95, bought used for $1.50
Frayed paperback
C+


This was one of the most influential books of its time, although it's less well known now.  I liked it less on this reading than I remembered, although I am still amused that Bellamy sort of predicted radio (including radio preachers) and some aspects of modern shopping.  In Bellamy's 21st-century world, money has been abolished and people live on credit cards, often ordering warehouse purchases that are delivered later, but this is all for very different reasons than in the real 21st century.  The introduction by Erich Fromm points out that Bellamy couldn't have predicted what would happen with both capitalism and socialism, or the dangers of a society run by managers, and of course Fromm didn't know what changes the next half century would bring.  (There's also a reference to contemporary "visions of travel to the moon" that would date itself before the end of the 1960s.) 

For my post on More's Utopia, I pointed out that that world wasn't very "utopian," and I doubt More meant it to be ideal.  Bellamy really seemed to think that his is the best possible world.  However, despite Fromm's belief that Bellamy shows "complete equality of the sexes," that's not what I see.  Women's roles are almost an after-thought, and I have no idea what Mrs. and Miss Leete's careers are.  (Dr. Leete is a retired medical doctor.)  Apparently, Bellamy addressed women's rights in the sequel, Equality (1897).


Bellamy does not at any time, however, seem to have thought it odd that this is a world without democracy.  The Presidents rise from the ranks and are chosen in a manner sort of like a republic.  Now admittedly, compared to the political corruption of his day, this might've been an improvement.  But again, I can't believe that Bellamy's imagined society is the best that anyone could come up with even at the time.  I also find the way the "bloodless revolution" happens, through common sense and inevitability, a bit sketchy.  Still, he meant well, and if you can get past these issues, and the somewhat bland characterizations, this book might be worth a read.