feudalism to capitalism. Contradictions within capitalism blow that system apart, making way for socialism. Socialist champions of More such as Karl Kautsky in the late nineteenth century saw much of this in Utopia: the condemnation by Raphael of enclosure is of a piece with Marx's account of the accumulation and dispossession that drive the creation of the capitalist economy. Wealth falls into the hands of a few and creates a landless poor that endures great suffering. When Raphael attacks the harsh punishment of thieves, he voices an important socialist principle: that people's choices are limited by the material conditions that they find themselves in. Their lives, and therefore their actions, can be elevated by improving those conditions.
Yet socialism grew out of a critique of the smoky factory capitalism of the nineteenth century, which pitted a mass proletariat against large capitalists. This was far from the England of More's time, which still retained remnants of a feudal economy. Utopia had a handicraft economy quite different to the industrial one which socialists considered to be the foundation of a future socialist system. Both capitalism and socialism pursue by different means the end of satisfying growing human wants. Utopia, on the other hand, is a disciplined society of ascetics which aims at the restriction of desire. Gains in the efficiency of production are used not to give people more goods or mindless leisure but to allow them more time for study and self‐improvement.
Although the content and context of modern socialism are different from those of Utopia, More's book shines a light on the negative impacts of the money economy. In championing a communal way of life, it does anticipate the social vision of later socialism. The view of Utopia as an elegy for medieval Catholicism has been challenged, but even if we prefer to view More as a forward‐looking radical rather than a backward‐looking conservative, it reminds us in our secular times not to ignore the religious context of More's work. More revered the monastic way of life when it was carried out with proper discipline, and this is reflected in the high‐minded lives of the Utopians.
But Utopia is much more than a monastery writ large: it is a nation with a government, with families in which children are born and raised, and with armies that go to war when they have to. Our final glimpse of the Utopians comes at the end of Book Two when we see them at prayer in their temple. They thank God for placing them in a happy commonwealth, but ask that if their society falls short of perfection, God will show them their error. They promise to try out any new social arrangements that will take them closer to perfection. In their prayer they show the willingness of true radicals, socialist or otherwise, to boldly throw off the past and to discard unprofitable traditions in favour of better ways of life.
More recent interpretations such as those of Elizabeth McCutcheon and Dominic Baker‐Smith have emphasized the paradoxical nature of Utopia. Anticipating postmodern concerns with multiple perspectives and the subjectivity of truth, Utopia's irony and its play of opposing voices are perhaps its point. More's linguistic ploys unmoor the reader from commonplace social beliefs so that unorthodox ideas can be introduced and explored. Far from proposing a complete utopian blueprint, More tells his story of the good society through a set of shifting perspectives so as to lay bare the promises and pitfalls of the utopian quest. This is arguably the best context within which to deal with the question of who the real More was and with the potentially confounding aspects of Utopian life. Perhaps the real More, himself a complex and highly paradoxical man, is both the fictional More and Raphael.
Utopianism is a dynamic, experimental,and never‐ending method of social inquiry, not one in which perfection can easily be defined and implemented. This sense that the search for utopia has to be an open‐ended pursuit that must balance different perspectives is hinted at when Raphael has completed his description of Utopia. The fictional More says that much of what Raphael described ‘seemed very absurd’. As Raphael appears to be tired from talking, instead of arguing with him further, More leads him into supper, expressing hope for further opportunities for discussion.
Utopia closes on a note of equivocation from More: ‘I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.’
UNCOVERING MORE THE MAN
In his later career, More was caught up in the turmoil of Reformation politics. His biographical persona has often been moulded by historians according to their religious and political allegiances, making it hard to uncover the ‘real’ More. The earliest accounts of his life from which we gain many biographical details were written by people close to him. Many were hagiographies aimed at building the case for More's sainthood. They present More as witty, learned, and industrious, a morally spotless man who bravely died for the Catholic Church.
More lost some of his repute in Protestant England. The author of the first English translation of Utopia, published after the Reformation, included a rebuke in his introduction, saying that More was a man of ‘incomparable wit’ and ‘profound knowledge’ but ‘obstinate’ in matters of religion ‘even to the very death’. More was gradually absolved of his refusal to conform. His anti‐clericalism and desire for a purer church were used to rehabilitate him as a Protestant reformer in spirit if not in name.
Twentieth‐century historians led by Geoffrey Elton and Richard Marius revised these portrayals of a righteous More to reveal a complex, imperfect figure. One line of attack has been on More's involvement in the detection and punishment of Lutheran heretics when in Henry VIII's service. More's admirers have downplayed his role in these campaigns, but revisionist historians have seized on it as evidence of More being a religious fanatic – drawing a contrast with the earlier humanist More who wrote Utopia. One highly critical account by Jasper Ridley claims that if More had lived in the twentieth century he would have been the kind of zealot who in the service of an ideology justifies the death of millions.
Revisionist historians have also returned to the question of why More put aside his apparent aspirations to become a monk for family and official life. Some have argued that he chose to marry out of sheer sexual frustration, and that his decision tormented him for the rest of his life. He would only achieve a resolution of sorts at the end of his days when imprisoned in his cell, living like a monk, praying and writing spiritual tracts. More, who wore a hair shirt under his clothes and whipped himself before the altar, under this less favourable view was a brooding, conflicted man, much less attractive than the earlier picture of him. A version of this darker image appears in the acclaimed 2009 novel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which caused controversy for its less than flattering depiction of More.
These critical views have been a useful corrective to More hagiography, and help to explore the tensions at the heart of More's life and work. Both approaches often go too far though. Balanced assessments try to avoid seeing More as saint or villain and concede that much of the internal motivation for his actions cannot be known.
Despite the scholarly controversies, the popular heroic image of More is still very much alive, most famously in the play by Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons, which premiered in London in 1960 and was later made into two films. Here More becomes a sort of liberal exemplar, bravely standing up for his conscience in the face of tyranny. Speaking of the religious belief that has brought him into conflict with the king, Bolt's More says: ‘What matters to me is not whether it's true or not, but that I believe it to be true, or rather not that I believe it, but that I believe it.’ This is not the utterance of a devout Catholic of the early sixteenth century. In the modern secular world it is how we understand More and how we make him into an icon for our own times.
THE LEGACY OF UTOPIA
With Utopia, More began a lineage of utopian thinkers who have used storytelling and social analysis to explore new possibilities for society. Many later utopians wrote social blueprints and plans rather than fantastical tales, but they often cited More's Utopia as inspiration. In the late nineteenth century,
