Utopia

According to Raphael, problems such as political corruption, poverty, and crime are all perpetuated by the existence of private property. To minimize or eliminate these problems, it is necessary to rid society of private property and the illusory freedom and happiness that is often ascribed to it. In keeping with his views on the nature of freedom and justice, Raphael claims in Book 1 that justice cannot be achieved until private property is abolished completely (44-45).

Raphael’s insistence that private property must be abolished comes toward the end of Book 1. Given its placement, the claim plays an important role in the text’s thematic structure. First, it offers a summation of the previous discourse on the origin of social problems like crime and poverty and political challenges like corruption. Secondly, it constitutes a clear transition from the wide-ranging dialogues in Book 1 to Raphael’s extended description of Utopia in Book 2.

Gilles and More insist that Raphael’s political wisdom, gained through his world travels, would make him a valuable advisor to royal courts (19-20). Raphael rejects this idea, since he claims that kings have more interest in acquiring wealth and waging war than ruling justly (20). Read in light of Raphael’s call for the abolition of private property, the reason for such corrupt leadership becomes clear. As long as private property exists, it will remain the driving force in political life, and kings will rule in the interest of property and profit rather than people. Their advisors, keen to remain in power themselves, will be only too happy to support them in these endeavors. According to Raphael, this leads to the waging of unnecessary wars, misuse of the legal system to fill the royal coffers, and other abuses.

Raphael interprets broader social problems in terms of the pernicious effects of private property as well. Poverty is not a choice or a natural condition. No one would decide to be poor, and nature provides more than enough for all people to live in health and comfort. Poverty is perpetuated by the pursuit of private property whereby the few are enriched at the expense of the many (23). England serves as Raphael’s (and thus More’s) prime example. Motivated by a desire to profit from the demand for wool, the emerging merchant class seized up any agricultural land it could get its hands on, displacing the farmers who once grew crops there. In addition to causing instability in the wool market, this led to food shortages, inflation, and massive increases in unemployment and indigence (25-26). The predictable result of these trends were other social problems like begging and theft. Raphael notes that he sees the communist ideal as more compatible with Christianity than private property (99). In this, we find a clear distinction between the position More articulates and the materialist and atheistic critiques of private property advanced by Marxists in the 19th and 20th centuries. For Marx, communism meant the abolition of forms of social and economic alienation that gave rise to religion as a form of comforting fantasy used by the ruling class to stave off demands for social change. For Raphael, it seems, genuine religion is compatible with calls for justice and social change, and demands both.

Raphael’s call for the abolition of private property also serves as a pivot point between the two major sections of the work. After Raphael insists that social problems could be solved once and for all through the elimination of private property, More replies with several familiar criticisms. First, he insists that without the acquisition and enlargement of private property as a motivation, people would become lazy, living off the labor of others. As a result, there would be massive shortages of goods. This, in turn, would encourage violent crime, disorder, and a total lack of respect for authority (45).

Here we see two sides of the debate emerge in stark contrast: those who believe that private property is the source of all social ills and must be eliminated, and those who believe that communism would perpetuate the problems it seeks to solve. Raphael asserts that if More had seen Utopia’s prosperous, well-organized society, then he would see that his objections are misplaced (46).

More’s presentation of this theme clarifies his authorial choice to divide most of the novel into two large books. Raphael’s detailed description of Utopia in Book 2 constitutes a response to criticisms of the communist ideal offered by the character Thomas More in Book 1. This structure, which hinges on the theme of private property, invites the reader to recall the questions and debates raised in the first book while reading through Raphael’s account of Utopia in the second book.