The
other day someone referred to the Just Third Way as “utopian.” It was one of those occasions when you
realize that some people might not know exactly what they are talking about. Quite a large number of people seem to think
that a utopian scheme is one for an ideal society. Not quite.
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| Sir Thomas More |
Sir
Thomas More, whom the Catholic Church has declared a saint for having his head
cut off for refusing to swear to what he knew was not true or to worship the
State, wrote a book he titled Utopia:
“Nowhere.” Although the book was clearly written as a satire (the name of the
purported author, “Raphael Hythloday,” signifies “Lying Traveler Who Tells
Outrageous Tales”), a number of otherwise well-intentioned and educated people
have taken Utopia as the blueprint
for More’s ideal society.
As
a Christian humanist, More was concerned with the changes that the Tudors had
imposed on England. As a lawyer, he saw two of these changes as particularly
damaging to a just society: the shift from sovereignty of the human person to
the State, and the effective abolition of private property.
In
England under the Plantagenets (at least in theory), the people were sovereign,
and the heir apparent needed the consent of the people assembled in parliament
before he could be recognized as king. This was why Richard III Plantagenet
presented his legal case to the legislature in Titulus Regius — and why the Tudors went to great lengths to
destroy all copies of the document when they came to power.
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| Richard III |
This
is because Henry VII Tudor asserted a claim to the throne on the basis of a
previously unrecognized, even unknown, “right of conquest.” The kingship became
hereditary in theory as well as in fact.
Although
Cobbett blamed it on Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII, the concentration of capital
ownership (primarily land) began in the reign of Henry VII. As a lawyer, More
knew very well that, as Benjamin Watkins Leigh of Virginia noted, “Power and
property can be separated for a time, but divorced, never. For as soon as the
pangs of separation are felt, power will take over property, or property will
purchase power.”
Under
the Tudors, then, the common people of England lost not only power, but the
very claim to power. Understanding the danger, More satirized the situation in Utopia.
For
example, to demonstrate the dangers inherent in the growth of State power as
ordinary people lost even the nominal right to power, More calmly presented the
“common sense” the Utopians showed in deciding whether a proposed war for
profit would be successful. This, of course, begged the question as to whether
a war of such obvious naked aggression could in any way be considered just,
much less common sense.
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| Henry VII |
More
also claimed that the Utopians had abolished private property and described all
the presumed benefits that accrued to them. This was in spite of the fact that
he knew full well that because a just social order is built on widespread
capital ownership, every word he said was nonsense.
More
had previously started to make similar points in his uncompleted The History of King Richard III, of
which a number of the incredible “details” More invented out of whole cloth
have actually been accepted as solemn truth. Shakespeare did not help any by
repeating them. That was probably not why More dropped the project, however.
The
fact was, utterly absurd details aside, More’s quasi-fictional “Richard III”
bore too great a resemblance to the all-too-real Henry VII, and England was an
actual place. “Utopia” — “Nowhere” — was a much safer vantage from which to make
biting social commentary.
Blandly
saying outrageous things that could not possibly be true is classic satiric
technique. The problem is that it is likely to backfire when readers either do not
know the real situation or are deceived by the matter-of-fact tone. When
Jonathan Swift first published A Modest
Proposal, for example, some people thought he was seriously advocating
cannibalism as the solution to poverty. According to some authorities, even
today a few people are taken in.
#30#