Looking Backward

A stimulating, thought-provoking utopian fantasy about a young man who's put into a hypnotic sleep in the late 19th-century and awakens in the year 2000 to find a vastly changed world where crime, war and want no longer exist. A provocative study of human society as it is and as it might be.

Not just a novel, Looking Backward (1888) along with its sequel Equality (1897) is a critique of American capitalism. Edward depicted the year 2000 as being the date that competitive capitalism would have been stamped out in favor of what he called a "cooperative commonwealth."

The theories in the book inspired many "Bellamy Clubs," which led to the formation of a Nationalist Party, that advocated the federalization of public services. In 1889, Edward co-founded (along with his cousin Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), author of America's Pledge of Allegiance, the Society of Christian Socialists. And in 1891, Edward founded the "New Nation" in Boston, an organization that for some time promoted his leftist views. Edward had other interests, such as psychic phenomena, which he explored in some of his writings, but for the most part, he limited his novels to socialist concerns.

American educator, John Dewey, proclaimed "Bellamy’s Looking Backward second only to Marx’s Das Kapital as the most influential book of modern times.” According to former New York State “Teacher of the Year,” John Taylor Gatto: “(T)he society Bellamy describes is a totally organized society, all means of production are in the hands of State parent-surrogates. . .Society in Bellamy’s ideal future has eliminated the reality of democracy, citizens are answerable to commands of industrial officers, little room remains for self-initiative. The State regulates all public activities, owns the means of production, individuals are transformed into a unit directed by bureaucrats.”

One biographer says of Edward, "(I)t should be pointed out that though Bellamy is usually spoken of as a 'Utopian Socialist,' he was nothing of the kind. His system was a pure state capitalism, a complete nationalization of all industry which actually has much in common with the totalitarian state, now spoken of as Facism."

—Our thanks to Israel Wayne for much of this review. Some content from "I Pledge Allegiance: The Socialistic History of the Pledge to the Flag," used with permission.