As I mentioned earlier, no one person owns the land in Utopia but it is public property which is cared for by the working population. Cricitcism of the Enclosure system, whereby smaller farms on what had previously been common land were enclosed and the land was made available only to the owner, is also prevalent in the first book of Utopia as the character of Raphael Hythloday discusses English law. This may have been written in reaction to the Manorial system, prevalent in medieval Europe, which related serfdom towards a particular section of land or that of a property owner.

Provided with a house and garden (equal in size and quality as everyone else).

Ensured to work the same hours as each other.

This is a very simplified version of the system and in some ways, Utopia adheres to this, but the quality of life within these factions of society are similar.

Marx was a staunch critic of slavery and condemned the American slave trade, remarking in Capital “in the United States of America, every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic.” Utopia in the 16th Centuryĭespite this, the book is revolutionary in the way that it deals with class structure, as similar to now, 16 thcentury England roughly operated on a three-tier class system: labourers (working class), yeomen/merchants (middle class) and aristocracy (upper class). The book is not an argument for communism and should not be seen as such, but aspects of it have influenced left-wing literature due to its Marxist characteristics.

Due to this, the Utopian society is not equal because of the existence of slaves and therefore does not fit into the requirements of a communist society. He didn’t believe that capital punishment worked as it seemed pointless, with no way of redeeming or rehabilitating the criminal (which is ironic considering that More himself was beheaded). Due to the fact that people in Utopia are born and raised equally, culturally and financially, he believed that criminals should be punished very harshly. More was a lawyer, which informs his views on slavery as a form of sentencing. In Utopia, people are not enslaved because of racial or religious factors, but as a punishment for a crime. More and Marx differ, however, when it comes to the morality of slavery, which the latter argued against. Portrait of Thomas More (1527)by Hans Holbeinthe Younger. More was the son of a lawyer, so he ought to have been used to arguing and playing Devil’s advocate! The idea of public ownership of the land being virtuous and something to argue for would have, for More, come from his religious background. While it might seem strange that More, who later in life became Lord High Chancellor of England, would argue against the ownership of private property – it actually isn’t. The Communist Manifesto argues wholeheartedly against private property ownership, and even goes so far as to say that “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single phrase: Abolition of Private Property.” Both philosophers argued that private property didn’t include things like personal belongings (clothes, books, art, etc.) but land ownership or property which has been acquired through dishonest and exploitative means, or as Marx would put it “bourgeois private property”. In Utopia, the fictional country which the book revolves around, society is “based on communal ownership instead of private property” and most Utopians are equal (more on that later). The parallels between the two philosophies are many, predominantly when discussing property ownership/rights and the re-distribution of wealth. It is important to note before I continue this comparison, that Marx had much contempt for the middle class utopianists of the time, but when reading his theories and More’s texts, it is impossible not to notice the similarities between their ideologies.

Utopia by thomas more