Would You Like To Live In Utopia?

There is a manifest rhetoric and repetition in the rules that seem to be active in negating, not creating, freedoms in order to construct a social system. For one to object to the lack of privacy would be a minor, reactionary, position. The more pertinent enquiry is into the complete absence of individuality and subjectivity in Utopian society. Hythloday asserts that the Utopians are free of Europes (and particularly Londons) social and institutional failures. The Utopians are free of many of these grievances and inconveniences, but they are not free. To be free, and feel free, in Utopian society is to submit to the dominant ideology: to submit to the Syphogrants; Phylarchs; Princes; and the King. Since there is a hierarchy, there is a form of power. There is rule making, arbitration, and enforcement; hence there is room for abuse and inequality. Indeed, it is difficult to find an example of a contemporary Communist society that has not exploited its people to a terrible degree, with the ambiguous exception of Fidel Castros Cuba. Thomas Mores Utopia portrays a society with no tenable position or allowance for the human as an individual, and for that individual to dissent. A Utopian citizen has, figuratively speaking, become commodified: they are part of the body politic, and Utopia owns and controls them as much as they own and control Utopia. They have been effectively reified and are, essentially, labour power. The Phylarch, Princes and King appear to possess, by virtue of their involvement with lawmaking and arbitration, some modicum of power and control.