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