Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" and the American Ideology of Progress throughTechnologyAuthor(s): Howard P. SegalReviewed work(s):Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 4, No. 2, Science and Technology (Spring, 1989), pp. 20-24Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162655 .Accessed: 13/01/2012 11:47

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Edward Bellamy's Looking

Backward and the American

Ideology of

Progress Through

Technology

Howard P. Segal

One

year ago Americans and others observed the one-hun

dredth anniversary of the publica tion of Edward Bellamy's Looking

Backward: 2000-1887. This re

mains the most popular Utopian novel ever published in the United States and is available today in no

fewer than six different paperback editions. Indeed, this avowedly uto

pian picture of life in America in the year 2000 continues to

be read, discussed, and de

bated, long after most of its

predictions have either come

true or, more often, have come

true only in part, if at all. Each

year, thousands of persons here

and abroad are transported along with Julian West, a young

Bostonian, from the crowding,

competition, disease, greed, and

corruption of late nineteenth

century industrial America to a

society of full employment, material

abundance, technological progress, and social harmony. In the process,

they join Julian in his quest for understanding how utopia came about

without bloodshed, much less with

out revolution, and how this trans

formed America apparently fulfills

the varying needs and desires of

every citizen. That hundreds of

other Utopian novels and non-fic

tion writings published in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth cen

turies have faded into obscurity makes Looking Backward's endur

ing popularity all the more striking.

Why should Bellamy have at

tained fame and influence while his fellow Utopians suffered obscurity?

One possible explanation is simply that Bellamy, a seasoned fiction

writer and journalist, wrote better.

A second explanation is that he

wrote just at the onset of what has

been termed the late nineteenth

century crisis of confidence in

America, where most authors wrote

during or after its peak. A third and

complementary explanation is that

imitations of Looking Backward could

hardly generate the enthusiasm of

the original. A final and deeper

explanation, which excludes none of

the other three, is that the emphasis

of Looking Backward on coopera

tion and community as well as on

technological advance offered a more

balanced and more appealing vision

than the narrower tocus ot

many of those other works, whose panaceas included taxa

tion, socialism, religion, and

revolution.

Thus, Looking Backward was

more than an attractive predic tion of utopia to be brought about through social engineer

ing, more than a Jules Verne

like fantasy. Yet to argue, as

historian Robert Wiebe does, that "Bellamy's book won its

huge audience not as fiction

but as a simple, logical essay com

bining so much that the discon

tented already accepted as gospel,"

(1) does not sufficiently account for

the presumed necessity of Utopian versions of the "gospel" or the

apathy that greeted similar Utopian

representations. Whatever the ex

planations, the works of those who

Despite the absence of formal organization and of greater

popularity for their works, tech

nological Utopians are hardly devoid of historical significance.

20 Magazine of History

followed Bellamy--as well as his own sequel, Equality (1897), a purer

example of social engineering?never aroused the same enthusiasm as

Looking Backward. Only Henry George's Utopian Progress and Pov

erty (1879), which argued for a "single tax" on the unearned--and so supposedly undeserved--wealth created by rising property values even approached Looking Backward's

popularity. For too long, however, too many

students of late nineteenth- and

early twentieth-century America have relied upon Looking Backward as a guide to the fundamental nature of American culture at the turn of the century. They have substituted

study of this one explicitly Utopian work for comprehensive, system atic, and sustained investigation of the real world during this period.

Utopian works cannot themselves illuminate more than a portion of

any real world culture because, by their very design, they deviate from and often distort existing society in order to change it. At most, they can

identify particular values, trends, and problems in the culture that

fostered them. Therefore, they must

be employed cautiously, as means to full-scale historical inquiries, rather than as complete inquiries in them selves. This is how Looking Back

ward should properly be used in the

classroom and elsewhere.

Similarly, the popularity of

Looking Backward cannot alone account for the general popularity of the principal ideas it espouses: those of inevitable progress and of

progress precisely as technological progress. These ideas long preceded its appearance. Looking Backward

may have popularized those ideas, but it did not produce them. Indeed, the intellectual origins of what I call

American "technological utopian ism" (2) may be traced back to

European works such as Johann

Andreae's Christianopolis (1619), Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun (1623), Francis Bacon's The

New Atlantis (1627), Marquis de Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical

Picture of the Progress of the Human

Mind (1795), and the nineteenth century writings of Henri de Saint

Simon, Auguste Comte, Robert

Owen, Charles Fourier, and even

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. But none of the Europeans made

technological advance their pana

cea, as did Bellamy and all of the other technological Utopians.

To be sure, visions of the United States as a technological utopia an

tedate as well as postdate Looking Backward. The earliest such work is John Adolphus Etzler's The Para dise Within the Reach of All Men (1833); among the latest is Buckmin

ister Fuller's Utopia or Oblivion

(1969). Yet Looking Backward was

part of a body of Utopian writings, fiction and nonfiction alike, whose

particular visions of technological utopia set them apart from their

predecessors and successors and

simultaneously connected them to

their non-utopian contemporaries.

Specifically, between the appear ance of John Macnie's The Diothas; Or, A Far Look Ahead in 1883 and Harold Loeb's Life in a Technoc

racy: What It Might Be Like in 1933, twenty-five individuals, including

Bellamy, published fundamentally similar visions of the United States

as a technological utopia. This set of

prophets wrote in the heyday of that

series of economic, social, and cul

tural transformations called Amer

ica's industrial revolution, where

previous prophets like Etzler wrote

in its initial stages and subsequent prophets like Fuller in its mature

stages. As Utopians inevitably do, all saw their visions through the lens of their own times, and not just in

general outline but in specific con

tent: the precise technological (and

non-technological) advances pre dicted and the forms they took, from transportation and communi

cations systems to political, eco

nomic, educational, and religious institutions and practices.

With the grand exception of Bellamy, these technological Utopi ans lived and wrote in obscurity. A

few of them knew one another

personally, and a few more knew of

one another's writings, but most of them worked alone. Consequently,

American technological utopianism never constituted a self-conscious

movement, as did Populism, for

example. Indeed, only in the 1930s, with the short-lived flourishing of the Technocracy crusade led by

efficiency-oriented engineers and

others, did it become organized at

all. What prominence was achieved

by technological Utopians came within their everyday callings as business

men or professionals. Better known

Utopians included inventor and

For too long, too many students of late nine teenth- and early twentieth-century America

have relied upon Looking Backward as a

guide to the fundamental nature of American culture at the turn of the century.

Spring 1989 21

manufacturer King Camp Gillette, professional writer Loeb, civil engi neer George Morison, clergyman Solomon Schindler, and mechanical

engineer Robert Thurston.

Despite the absence both of formal organization and of greater

popularity for their works, the tech

nological Utopians are hardly devoid of historical significance. Their

importance to us derives from the

content of their visions, their confi

dence in the accuracy of their vi

sions, and the relationship of their

visions to the particular cultural

context?and crises?of late nine

teenth- and early twentieth-century America.

In that regard, let us reconsider

Wiebe's statement. Although weak as an explanation of Looking Back ward's unique popularity, the state

ment points to the pr?existence of a

firm, even rigid set of beliefs about

contemporary American society, if

only among the millions of "discon tented" (who, like Bellamy and most

of the other technological Utopians, were as often from the respectable middle-class as from the "lower

depths"). The statement implies the

pr?existence of a coherent view of

reality, which may properly be called an ideology.

Conceiving ideology in this positive sense, rather than in its

more pejorative modern one, leads us to see ideology as an illumination

rather than distortion of reality. This, in fact, was the original mean

ing of ideology when the term was

first used in the late 1790s and early 1800s. The concept was devised by the savants of the Institut de France, and for positive purposes. To them,

ideology meant the understanding held by members of any social group about the way that group actually functioned. The size of the particu lar group to which the term applied

was not critical, so long as it was

cohesive enough to have such an

Cd

Edward Bellamy's (1850-1898) Utopian work enjoys continued popularity and influence.

understanding. In other words, ide

ology was originally a normative

concept. Though the name was new, the savants contended that the phe nomenon was not. Quite the opposite:

ideology was a necessary condition of human existence, as modern stu

dents of culture have amply con

firmed. The particular forms of

ideology naturally differed, but the concept in itself was value-free and

not culturally relative in any way.

Every social group needed an expla nation of reality. The explanation that developed and was then incul

cated had enormous impact upon the

thoughts, feelings, and behavior of

its adherents. As utopia, coined by Thomas More in 1516 as the title of his book, was applied retroactively, so was ideology after its formulation

around 1800.

Societies often have one or more

dissenting ideologies of this kind

22 Magazine of History

competing with and so criticizing the prevailing "official" ideology as Wiebe implies in the case of

Looking Backward. Wiebe's readers were attracted to its dissenting ide

ology. Indeed, utopianism is boldest as a rival to the prevailing ideology of existing society. This kind of

utopianism can be a potent vehicle of social criticism. It challenges the

ingrained assumptions of existing

society and offers significant alter

natives to them. However, utopian ism can also be a moderate or even

conservative ideology, bridging rather than widening the gap between the real and the ideal worlds by demon

strating their relative proximity. This was exactly the achievement of Look

ing Backward. Viewed as an ideologically con

servative utopia, Looking Backward

may be said to have appeared in a

cultural context predisposed to fa vor its principal themes. Far from

appealing to the discontented be cause it was ideologically radical, it

appealed to them partly because it was ideologically conservative. Its

conservatism gradually broadened its appeal beyond the already con

siderable ranks of the discontented toward the American mainstream. If this does not explain the great

numbers of Americans who were

prompted to read this book, it does explain the empathy toward Bel

lamy of those who did read it,

particularly middle-class citizens

seeking significant changes but not

wholesale revolution. Let us nevertheless return briefly

to the hundreds of other Utopian novels, short stories, tracts, and

essays published in the late nine teenth and early twentieth centuries.

The sheer number of their appear ances in the same few decades tells us something important about that

period of American history. Re

gardless of their particular values, forms, intellectual rigor, and popu

larity, all these works were intended as serious solutions to problems then

confronting American culture and

society. Moreover, all were con

ceived as full-scale blueprints of

their authors' version of utopia. The

nontechnical descriptions and draw

ings were intended to make clear the nature of Utopian society: its physi cal appearance, its institutions, its

values, and its inhabitants. Those

sets of blueprints distinguished these Utopians from the vastly larger number of Americans during this

period who were mere rhetoricians of hope or of progress, or who were

Utopian writers often

agreed on the funda mental problems of the day (increasing

po verty, un employ

ment, disease...) even

though they often dis

agreed on the specific solution to them.

less visionary reformers seeking only piecemeal changes within existing society, such as prohibition, women's

suffrage or city planning. Utopian writers often agreed on

the fundamental problems of the

day even though they often disa

greed on the specific solutions to

them. Those problems included in

creasing poverty, unemployment, dis

ease, rural and urban blight, immigration, political corruption, and centraliza tion of economic power. Equally important, a large number of Ameri cans of non-Utopian bent likewise

agreed that these were legitimate

problems even though they sought more moderate solutions to them

primarily those piecemeal re-forms.

Thus, if most of the turn-of-the

century Utopian messages were poorly received by the American public in

terms of their popularity, it was not

always because the public had a

different perception of the prob lems at hand; they had a different

ideology. Often it was the solutions

proposed--an overall demand for

utopianism rather than mere re

form, or a particular scheme for

reaching utopia--that drew this

unfavorable response. Therefore, these writings do not necessarily

drive us away from the mainstream

of American culture and society of their times, as critics of utopianism

frequently contend. Rather, these

Utopian writings, especially the tech

nological Utopian writings, lead us

back into the mainstream--if by a

circuitous route.

Technological utopianism itself

illuminates many larger and better

known developments of late nine

teenth- and early twentieth-century America. These developments range from conservation to corporate and

government reorganization, from city

planning to national planning, and from scientific management to Tech

nocracy. In effect, technological

utopianism functions like a micro

scope: by first isolating and magni

fying these piecemeal reform crusades

and by then bringing them into

collective view. This enables us to see them in their tamer--but no less

genuine--forms, either within or

close to the mainstream of American

culture which, in turn deepens our

understanding of American history.

Many persons today (not just in America) continue to equate advan

cing technology with utopia. Con

temporary technological Utopians like

Buchminister Fuller, Gerard O'Neill, and Alvin Toffler appeal to thou

sands, as do less prominent advo

Spring 1989 23

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Many people continue to equate advancing technology with utopia. At the same time, critics claim that technological progress, such

as the development of the computer, is not a panacea for the world's problems but is the problem itself.

cates of computers, robots, genetic

engineering, and "star wars" weap ons systems, among other modern

technological wonders. At the same

time, severe criticism increasingly is

leveled in America and other tech

nologically advanced societies against

just this linkage. Not a few critics, in fact, have deemed technological

progress and social progress to be

outright antitheses. They point to

such problems as technological

unemployment through automation

and robotics and the damage to the

environment through seemingly endless technological catastrophes.

The fundamental question, how

ever, is not whether technology per se is altogether ?good or altogether

bad, for it is invariably a mixed

blessing and, equally important, is

not a monolithic phenomenon any

way. The real issue, rather, is how

technological progress, once hailed

by millions as the panacea for virtu

ally all of mankind's problems not

only failed to solve a number of

material and nonmaterial problems,

but, in the minds of thousands, became a principal problem in itself

(3). A careful reading of Looking Backward more than a century after

its initial appearance is an excellent

starting point for such reconsidera

tion of America's ideology of prog ress through technology.

Notes

1. Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York:

Hill and Wang, (1967): 69. 2. Segal, Howard P. Technological

Utopianism in American Culture.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

3. Marcus, Alan I and Howard P.

Segal. Technology in America:

A Brief History* San Diego and

New York Harcourt Brace Jova

novich, (1989): chs. 7, 8.

Howard P. Segal is associate pro

fessor of history and director of the

Technology and Society Project at

the University of Maine. He is the

author of Technological Utopianism in American Culture (University of

Chicago Press, 1985), and coauthor, with Alan ? Marcus, of Technology in America: A Brief History (H?r court Brace Jovanovich, 1989).

24 Magazine of History