The English Utopia

by Arthur Leslie Morton

This is not only a history for the people of England but is a history of the people of England.

It shows the main lines of development which have in turn contributed towards the structure of society as it exists to-day. “Great men” are only dealt with as part of these larger movements and the reader will not find needless details of the private lives of kings and queens. He will, however, find discussion of such subjects as the causes of the peasant revolts in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the economic basis for the growing power of the new bourgeoisie in the sixteenth century, the economic and political causes of the revolution of 1640 and the class forces involved; the industrial revolution and the triumph of industrial capitalism, and its effects on the workers; their struggle for organisation and a political party; the origin of the first world war and the world economic crisis.

Genres: History

295 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Arthur Leslie Morton was an English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is best known for A People's History of England, but he also did valuable work on William Blake and the Ranters, and for the study The English Utopia.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was rather fascinating for two reasons. Firstly, because it analyses English utopian literature from the 14th century to the beginning of the 20th. Secondly, because it is such a product of its time - it was published in 1952 and the author is an avowed Marxist. This colours the whole structure of the book, as Morton sees the validity of utopian visions in terms of how closely they reflect notions of class struggle, socialism, and communism. The influence steadily increases throughout the book, until the end when Morton states that utopian literature is no longer needed because the USSR has achieved a real utopia. There is a dark irony to reading this, really, knowing with the benefit of hindsight that Stalin’s Russia was more of a brutal dystopia. Interestingly, the term dystopia is not used here, as it is a much more recent innovation than utopia and seems only to have been popularised recently. ‘anti-’ and ‘negative’ utopias are instead referred to.

The initial chapters were thus helpful for what they told me about the time being written about, whereas the latter told me far more about the time when this book was written. From the former, I’d pick out the interesting comparison between Swift’s Gulliver's Travels and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The discussion of William Morris and News from Nowhere is rather hagiographic, however. On the other hand, the author has little respect for H.G. Wells and his slew of utopias, which apparently display a lack of ‘any scientific understanding of society’. In the final chapter, it becomes clear that to the author all utopian literature is either tending towards a Marxist conception of history or is completely wrong. This is obviously a very different conception to today’s idea of utopian literature and why it exists, as Marxism has lost all of its influence on the social sciences (and neoliberalism has apparently taken its place). I was surprised by the savaging given to 1984, probably the best known dystopian novel. It is described as, ‘the frankest reaction, a determination to resist the “actual realisation” of Utopia, a deep conviction that we must cling to all existing institutions, however corrupt, since any change can only be for the worse’. This strikes me as an inaccurate reading, as well as an unfair one. Orwell was a socialist, but appeared to have lost any faith in the USSR’s communist regime during the Spanish Civil War. (There’s a really interesting radio programme about this on iPlayer, actually.) Morton’s narrow conception of 20th century utopian literature sees no purpose to the dystopias that we know see as prescient warnings - especially 1984 and Brave New World. Morton accuses both of containing a fear of the working class, whereas I’d call it more of an ambivalence. Neither book has much empathy for them, but both display in different ways how the poor majority can be systematically manipulated and repressed. It's also worth noting that each writer's fiction is assumed to be a direct reflection of their personal politics.

This book is a historical document, both for helpfully summarising older utopian writing that isn’t easy to get hold of, and for demonstrating a particular understanding of utopia based on Marxism. The historical narrative is of a continual progress towards the glorious utopia of communism - it’s sad to realise that this hope turned into horrific totalitarian oppression. Moreover, we have no such hopeful narrative today. At one point Morton dismisses liberalism as useless and out-dated, whereas today neoliberalism is such a dominant ideology that we barely notice it. The collapse of the USSR provoked such an outpouring of Fukuyama-type triumphalism that socialist notions of utopia have yet to recover. Literature instead abounds with dystopias, warning of terrible things to come.