I invite you to contemplate and compare two rather different visions of socialism as embodied in utopian novels that appeared at the same period -- the late nineteenth century -- in the United States and Britain. Today, a century and a quarter later, they both seem outdated in many ways, but the divergent approaches to socialism that they represent still exist.

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887 was first published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1888. The novel is available online here. William Morris' News from Nowhere first appeared in serial form in the journal Commonweal of the Socialist League, starting in January 1890. Morris intended it as a critical response and alternative to Bellamy's utopia, so it makes sense to consider the two works together. News from Nowhere is available online here. In the same source you will find many other writings by Morris that are still worth reading: I especially recommend his 1884 lecture 'How we live and how we might live'.

The word utopia, together with its derivatives utopian and utopianism, is a familiar part of our political vocabulary. It originated as the title of a work by the Tudor lawyer, statesman and writer Thomas More, first published in Latin in 1516 as a traveller’s description of a remote island. Utopia is a pun: it can be read either as ou-topos, Greek for ‘no place’, or as eu-topos, ‘good place’ – that is, a good place (society) that exists in the imagination.

More invented the word, but the thing it represents is much older. Plato in his Republic discussed the nature of the ideal city state. Medieval serfs took solace in the imaginary ease and plenty of the Land of Cockaigne. More’s utopia, however, is the first to embody a response to capitalist social relations, which in the early 16th century were just emerging in England and the Low Countries (in agriculture and textiles). As the first modern utopia, it has a special place in the emergence of modern socialist thought.

Will the socialist commonwealth need a system of economic calculation? That is, will it need a method for assessing the advantages and disadvantages of alternative courses of action in terms of a common measure? Many socialists think that this will not be necessary. I would like to explain why I disagree and suggest how such a common measure might be devised.

Strange as it may seem, I do not expect all socialists to appreciate a website devoted to the future society to which socialists aspire. In particular, I do not expect approval from many who call themselves Marxists. They will say – if they deign to comment at all – that socialists should not waste time and effort speculating about the future but focus on analyzing and assisting current struggles by working people. They may quote Marx’s dismissive remarks about ‘ready-made utopias’ and ‘recipes for the cook-shops of the future’ or perhaps Engels’ assurance that the people alive at the time of the revolution ‘will know what to do.’