No “More” Socialism: Debunking Raphael Hythlodaeus’ Argument Against P

George Orwell, in his famous essay, â€Å"Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun,† aptly described the problem of any utopian ideal. â€Å"It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast†¦ Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having a toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary† (Orwell). In Thomas More’s Utopia, Raphael Hythloday is used as a conduit from which More expresses his distaste with private property. Raphael is used to lay out the Utopian alternative economic and civic system, to the common-place â€Å"peasant subsistence economy† of More’s England through his description of the idealist island of Utopia (Overton 4).Raphael’s case against private property is built upon two principle supports, mainly, what are perceived as fallacies and failures in a peasant subsistence capitalistic economy, and how seemingly intuitive the socialistic alternatives of the island of Utopia are in solving the tribulations which so perplex the world’s peasantry. If we analyze Raphael’s argument, we find that it is in effect duplicity. The assumptions made in both the construction of Utopia and the deconstructions of England’s economic system are both contradictory and completely over-simplified. With our advantage of economic and historical hind-sight we can see that Raphael lays blame without knowledge, and we can see that he ineffectively creates an island a s doomed to fail as Gorbuchev’s Soviet Union, leading to oppression on the scale Orwell’s 1984. Raphael’s tear-down of the idea of private property ... ...lopedia of Philosophy. Web. 01 May 2012. . Hunt, E. K. History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. Print. Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, David McLellan, and Samuel Moore. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford [u.a.: Oxford UP, 1998. Print. Mill, John Stuart, and W. J. Ashley. Principles of Political Economy, with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. New York: A. M. Kelley, eller, 1965. Print. More, Thomas, and George M. Logan. Utopia: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print. Orwell, George. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. Print. Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.