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Thomas More's Utopian Society

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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 …show more content…

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

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Carnegie stated that it is “much better this great irregularity than universal squalor” (Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth”). I believe that Carnegie contradicts himself with this statement, and I feel that it could be considered to create an ethical situation. Through his works he emphasizes the importance of sharing wealth for the greater good of society and to bridge the gap between the classes, but yet this statement seems to say that only a few are chosen to be wealthy while the rest of society is not. It in some ways undercuts the capabilities of the lower class. The giants of industrialism made their fortunes because of the labor of those worked for them.

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Utopia was written in 1516 by a man named Thomas More, during the time that conflict was escalating and would eventually turn into the Reformation. The book is a detail of one of the main characters, Raphael Hythloday, idea of a perfect society. Though many speculate that More did not perceive the Utopia as a perfect society at all. I personally, agree with this statement. I don’t think that More wanted to start his own society or thought he was better then the leaders of his own country as Plato did in his book The Republic; however, I do believe that More used the book to discuss the things that he wanted change in his current country.

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Moreover, they are able to embark on wealth accusation without letting communal resource lay to waste, through the use of currency. “…a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the over plus gold and silver…” (The Second Treatise of Government 29). Man may flourish through property acquisition, wealth acquisition, and the security from common wealth to know they will remain unchallenged to their own. In terms of the duty citizenship, this ideal

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