Bellamy’s view of socialism is such a different view than I
was expecting him to take before I begun to read. Perhaps as a post-McCarthy era
country it has been ingrained in us from an early age that everyone is supposed
to believe socialism/communism to be evil, always-lurking-around-the-corner
kind of threats. However, Bellamy seems to view it as a viable option. His main
character is a little disturbed and frightened by the idea of socialism but
from the excerpts we read, it is phrased and presented as a functioning and
ideal society. The citizens who live in this world all seem to be happy with it
and in turn, horrified by the society that the main character comes from. The
year 2000 honestly sounds like a pretty nice place to live and it’s a shame
that it isn’t the version of 2000 that we saw. (For transparency’s sake I
should mention that I tend to lean a bit anti-capitalist in my
political/economic views so I was bound to enjoy this society.)
One thing I loved about Bellamy’s 2000 was that people who
cannot for medical reasons work are provided with money even if they can’t do a
lot. This is a big problem that I have with capitalism where a lot of people
with disabilities cannot work and because of this they end up homeless or very
impoverished. The idea of providing them with an equal amount of money for the
work they can do is wonderful to me.
I’ve seen a few posts that argue that this system is not a
good one. However, I would ask how this is different from the other societies
we’re studied so far? Of course some of the minor things are going to be
different such as clothes but economically, these societies are the same. The
only difference is that this is stated to be a socialist/communist society
whereas for the other readings the ideas were there but the name was not. I
think we’re too afraid as a society to entertain the thought of a society run
by explicitly stated socialist/communist ideals because of the fact that we
live in a country that teaches that those are evil.
However, there are some aspects of this society that mirror
our own. The idea that what lead to a socialist conversion in our government were
big businesses monopolizing the market and smaller businesses being reduced to
nothing is something we are seeing now. This novel provides us with one possible
option to stop this from happening.
Another similarity is the idea of credit cards. Bellamy’s
prediction of this is so uncanny that I wonder if he could somehow see the future.
Perhaps the most important prediction Bellamy made however,
was this one:
In our current society we do help out those with disabilities and those who are unemployed by provided them with government stipends. However, the current compensation is not sufficient enough to support these individuals and sustain a quality lifestyle in the long term. I am not sure that they could ever be compensated equally to active workers in our economic system but an increase in their compensation would be very beneficial.
ReplyDeleteHahahahaha that was excellent. I would hope Bellamy was Team Harry or Team Zayn. Outside of that, I can't ever disagree that communism seems like it's not a bad thing. Holy god that was a terrible sentence full of double negatives. Communism seems good, but for whatever reason, it's unattainable in modern society. However, taking some of the core values of communism and socialism definitely would be beneficial.
ReplyDelete