The Republic of the Future; or, Socialism a RealityDodd, Anna Bowman
Science
The Republic of the Future; or, Socialism a Reality
Dodd, Anna Bowman
Utopias
I found it, however, far more difficult to account for the cloud of
melancholy and dejection which appears to have settled upon this
people, than to seek the causes of the above physiological aspect. I
asked myself, again and again, why should this people, of all people,
be full of this discontent and unhappiness? Haven’t they come to the
realization of all their dreams? Have they not attained to the very
summit and to the full glory of the possession of their social, civic
and political desires and aspirations? Is there not equality of sex?
Has not leisure instead of labor become a law? Is not private property
abolished--is not the land the property of the State--the wage system
become a thing of the past, and the possession of capital made a crime
punishable by law? Does not the State also exist for the people,
educating them, training them for their work in life, distributing
among them any surplus funds that the public treasury may accumulate,
and furnishing for their amusement and leisure a vast system of
educational clubs, educational theaters, public games, museums and
shows? If a people are not happy under such conditions, what will
insure content?
Yet come with me. Let us walk through the principal thoroughfares, and
watch the multitudes of people wandering listlessly up and down the
streets; let us see them as they drift aimlessly into the theaters,
museums, clubs; let us look in on them as they idly finger the new
books and newspapers, yawning over them as they read, and you will
agree with me, that the entire population seems to have but one really
serious purpose in life--to murder time which appears to be slowly
killing them.
After much thought on the reasons of this strange apathy, this inertia,
and sloth of energy, I have come to two conclusions which have helped
me to solve the problem of this people’s unhappiness. My first
conclusion is that the people are dying for want of work--of downright
hard work; my second conclusion is that in trying to establish the
law of equality, the founders of this ideal community committed the
fatal mistake of counting out those indestructible, ineradicable human
tendencies and aspirations which have hitherto been the source of all
human progress, to which I alluded in my last letter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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