Thomas More's Utopian Society

In the book Utopia, Thomas More portrays a perfected society in which the economy is based on ideals of communism. “I readily confess that in the Utopian commonwealth are very many features which in our societies I would wish rather expect to see.” None today would choose to have these qualities because there aren’t individualized gains in Utopia. People want to be the greatest that they can be. More’s society is about the public’s well-being. It’s about what one person can do for many. The civilization is not predicated on becoming wealthy in money, but rather it is based on becoming wealthy in friendship and kindness. Some occupations require hard labor daily with low expenses, while other occupations receive about the same amount for very

The marketplace has everything one needs to live off for himself and his household. The civilization produces surplus of everything so that everyone is able to take to fulfill their needs. Whether the commodity is fruit, meat, bread, toilet paper (if that was invented by that time), fish, or whatever one desires, all of it is easily accessed with no cost whatsoever. The Utopian society has no use for money. They place no or little value on gold and silver so as to “protect themselves from events that might or might not happen.” (pg. 75) Events such as going to war-they are able to just pay off the enemy so that they don’t have to fight. “Nature gave us gold and silver no use which we could not easily do without; the folly of mankind gives them value because they are rare, but nature on the other hand… made the most useful elements openly available, like air, water, and earth, but she hid away what is vain and unprofitable in the most remote recess.” (pg. 75) In a sense they aren’t wrong for degrading the value of gold and silver. We see this as ridiculous because our whole structure of life is based on acquiring high-end commodities that display how wealthy we are compared to the people around us. The Utopians don’t see value in it because that’s not what their whole mentality and attitude towards life is. They don’t care about individualism unless it’s about how a single person did so many charitable deeds for the people around him. This is an ideal for people. It teaches us that one doesn’t have to be the best in a certain field of life. We are all created equal, and we shouldn’t look at someone else and say that that guy right there is a low life, a nothing, and shouldn’t be amongst us. How can one say such a thing?! We go through life judging people based on their looks, intelligence, wealth. We never seem to give the guy a chance to show what he’s made of. And even if he doesn’t have any