 More's UtopiaDavid Reisman Chapter 2 in Economy and Utopia, 2026, pp 5-22 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: More, politician and polymath, was the first to describe an imaginary visit to an uncharted island of which the customs and institutions had been unaffected by Western civilisation. King Utopus had been the first philosopher-ruler of his small state. The politics of Machiavelli and the economics of the mercantilists looked ahead to the theories of interest and conflict of Hobbes a century later. To More, the economics of profit, property, markets and conspicuous consumption would stoke the flames of division and threaten social cohesion. Not just protection but regulation would be necessary to ensure social integration. Rulers should leverage on empirical evidence to solve social problems like poverty, made worse by agricultural enclosures. The watchwords should be moderation, communalism, rationality and justice. There should be few but targeted laws. The national economy should produce enough but not too much. Satiety is possible but still it is expected that all people will work. Consumer goods are available free of charge from national storehouses. Education and healthcare are also as-of-right. As for religion, competition between alternatives is likely to produce convergence on sensible worship. Keywords: More; Utopia; Property; Renaissance; Political Thought; Mercantilism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24894_2 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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