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THERiverside Library
* * * * *
Looking Backward
2000-1887
By
EDWARD BELLAMY
BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANYThe Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY TICKNOR AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY EDWARD BELLAMY
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1915, AND 1917, BY EMMA S. BELLAMY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INTRODUCTION
BY HEYWOOD BROUN
A good many of my radical friends express a certain kindlycondescension when they speak of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward."
"Of course you know," they say, "that it really isn't first-rateeconomics."
And yet in further conversation I have known a very large number ofthese same somewhat scornful Socialists to admit, "You know, the firstthing that got me started to thinking about Socialism was Bellamy's'Looking Backward.'"
From the beginning it has been a highly provocative book. It is now.Many of the questions both of mood and technique are even morepertinent in the year 1931 than they were in 1887. A critic of the_Boston Transcript_ said, when the novel first appeared, that the newState imagined by Bellamy was all very well, but that the author lostmuch of his effectiveness by putting his Utopia a scant fifty yearsahead, and that he might much better have made it seventy-fivecenturies.
It is true that the fifty years assigned for changing the worldutterly are almost gone by now. Not everything which was predicted in"Looking Backward" has come to pass. But the laugh is not againstBellamy, but against his critic. Some of the things which must haveseemed most improbable of all to the _Transcript_ man of 1887 are nowactually in being.
In one respect Edward Bellamy set down a picture of modern Americanlife which is almost a hundred per cent realized. It startled me toread the passage in which Edith shows the musical schedule to JulianWest, and tells him to choose which selection he wishes to havebrought through the air into the music room. It is true that Bellamyimagined this broadcasting to be done over telephone wires, as isindeed the case to-day in some phases of national hook-ups. Butconsider this quotation:
"He [Dr. Leete] showed how, by turning a screw, the volume of themusic could be made to fill the room, or die away to an echo so faintand far that one could scarcely be sure whether he heard or imaginedit."
That might almost have been lifted bodily from an article in somenewspaper radio column.
But Bellamy did see with clear vision things and factors much moreimportant than the possibility of hearing a sermon without going tochurch. Much which is now established in Soviet Russia bears at leasta likeness to the industrial army visioned in this prophetic book.However, Communism can scarcely claim Bellamy as its own, for heemphasizes repeatedly the non-violent features of the revolution whichhe imagined. Indeed, at one point he argues that the left-wingers ofhis own day impeded change by the very excesses of their technicalphilosophy.
There is in his book no acceptance of a transitional stage of classdictatorship. He sees the change coming through a general recognitionof the failings of the capitalist system. Indeed, he sees a point ineconomic development where capitalism may not even be good enough forthe capitalist.
To the strict Marxian Socialist this is profound and ridiculousheresy. To me it does not seem fantastic. And things have happened inthe world already which were not dreamt of in Karl Marx's philosophy.
The point I wish to stress is the prevalent notion that all radicalmovements in America stem from the writings of foreign authors. Now,Bellamy, of course, was familiar with the pioneer work of Marx. Andthat part of it which he liked he took over. Nevertheless, hedeveloped a contribution which was entirely his own. It is irrelevantto say that, after all, the two men differed largely in their view ofthe technique by which the new world was to be accomplished. Adifference in technique, as Trotzky knows to his sorrow, may be asprofound as a difference in principle.
Bellamy was essentially a New-Englander. His background was that ofBoston and its remote suburbs. And when he preaches the necessity ofthe cooperative commonwealth, he does it with a Yankee twang. In fact,he is as essentially native American as Norman Thomas, the presentleader of the Socialist Party in this country.
I cannot confess any vast interest in the love story which serves as athread for Bellamy's vision of a reconstructed society. But it can besaid that it is so palpably a thread of sugar crystal that it need notget in the way of any reader.
I am among those who first became interested in Socialism throughreading "Looking Backward" when I was a freshman in college. It camein the first half-year of a course which was designed to prove thatall radical panaceas were fundamentally unsound in their conception.The professor played fair. He gave us the arguments for the radicalcause in the fall and winter, and proceeded to demolish them in springand early summer.
But what one learns in the winter sticks more than words uttered inthe warmth of drowsy May and June. Possibly I took more cuts towardthe end of the lecture course. All I can remember is the arguments infavor of the radical plans. Their fallacies I have forgotten.
I differ from Bellamy's condescending converts because I feel that heis close to an entirely practical and possible scheme of life. Sincemuch of the fantastic quality of his vision has been rubbed down intoreality within half a century, I think there is at least a fair chancethat another fifty years will confirm Edward Bellamy's position as oneof the most authentic prophets of our age.