A review by quercus707
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

3.0

The novel's conceit is that the narrator has insomnia and is mesmerized to sleep in an underground "safe room," his house burns down and everyone assumes he's dead, and he's excavated over a hundred years later in 2000 by some modern Bostonians. This is all a frame story for Bellamy's critique of industrial capitalism and presentation of an alternative system. Bellamy called his philosophy "Nationalism" but we would call it Socialism today. It's the brand of socialism that has always appealed to me - definitely Utopian: industry nationalized, and all citizens provided free education, health care, and housekeeping services(!), and required to work in jobs that appeal to them between 25-45, after which they retire in comfort and are able to pursue their own interests for the rest of their lives. Of course socialism has never worked out like this in practice, and I've always wondered why it's gone so wrong - if there is something about the system that is antithetical to human nature, if central control lends itself to easily to despotism, or if it's just impossible to sort-of do it with capitalism in place - but it's interesting to read a speculation, written in the late 1880s, of what it could theoretically look like. Bellamy can't escape his inherent sexism and that of his society, but he does make an effort to do so! The "romance" part of the book was its least interesting aspect. The most interesting was probably the critique of the culture he lived in - a critique which rings true to this day, most of the issues he raises haven't been solved.