Wang Chuangchuang: From National Legislation to Social Cooperation
In the view of the British historian J.C. Davis, as a category of ideal society, "Utopias are not idealizations of nature, nor do they demand the idealization of human nature; rather, they are idealizations of organization through rational design." In other words, compared to other types of ideal societies, the Utopia possesses a stronger sense of reality—it is "another world within this world." Regarding the relationship between these two worlds, many commentators believe that Utopia is a mirror image of the real world, the two being diametrically opposed and insurmountable. John Milton remarked, not without disappointment: "To sequester out of the world into Atlantic and Utopian polities, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition" [1]. But for early modern Utopian authors, their works were guides for action to realize an ideal society. How, then, in their conceptions, was the ideal mode of social organization transformed into political practice? Engels offered a trenchant analysis of this question. In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, he pointed out: "The immature state of theoretical knowledge corresponded with the immature conditions of capitalist production and the immature state of classes," and this theoretical immaturity was manifested in the attempt to solve social problems through thinking reason—that is, by inventing a new and more perfect system of social order and "imposing it upon society from without by propaganda, and, where it was possible, by the example of model experiments." In his view, "propaganda" and "model experiments" were the schemes of the Utopian socialists for achieving an ideal society. This discourse succinctly summarizes the political praxis of Utopian authors before the emergence of scientific socialism. However, Engels did not delve deeply into the historical connotations of these two methods—propaganda and model experimentation—or the relationship between them, and academic circles have rarely discussed them. Therefore, a further exploration remains necessary.
I. Realizing the Ideal Society through State Legislation
The 16th and 17th centuries were a period of transition toward modern society in England. During this era, social differentiation triggered by economic development intensified, and the traditional social order was challenged. Concurrently, a view regarding the possibility of social reform emerged, with Utopian thought being one such manifestation.
Thomas More's Utopia was written in 1515, while he was serving as an Under-Sheriff of London. In the book, he attacked English society of the time, pointing out that private property and the psychology of pride [2] were internal and external reflections of one another, causing social crises such as theft, robbery, insurrection, and riot. His critique was comprehensive and profound; as Erasmus noted in a letter to Guillaume Copé: "If you want to understand the source of almost all the evils of a state, read More's Utopia." Yet, unlike other humanist works of the period, More did not provide a corresponding "prescription" after diagnosing social ills. Instead, he paradoxically fixated on a fictional traveler, Hythloday, through whose mouth he described an ideal state positioned as the antithesis of English society. In this country, private property was abolished, and relations between people were equal; it was regarded as the "best state of a commonwealth." Was the Utopian social system, then, the prescription More wrote for English society? At the end of the book, Hythloday praises the Utopian system lavishly, but the attitude of More—the character in the book—is highly ambiguous. He believes "many things occurred to me, both in the manners and laws of that people, that seemed very absurd... I cannot perfectly agree to everything he hath related. However, there are many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments."
Was Utopia merely More's playful jeu d'esprit, or did it contain deeper meaning? This is an empirical question that cannot be settled, but More's contemporaries viewed Utopia with great seriousness. In a letter to Thomas Lupset, the French humanist Budé stated plainly: "We owe a debt of gratitude to Thomas More, who in Utopia has presented the world with a model of the happy life. Our age and posterity will look upon this work as a treasury of wise counsel and excellent regulations, which all nations should adopt as a model and establish as their own systems." In the marginalia Erasmus added to Utopia, he praised More repeatedly, regarding Utopia as a "holy commonwealth that Christians ought to imitate." In the eyes of scholars at that time, Utopia possessed practical value and possibility.
How, then, were the institutions of Utopia to be practiced? More did not answer directly. However, from his fictional history of Utopia, we learn that the island was once called Abraxas, and its people were initially in an uncivilized, rustic state. It was only after the outsider Utopus led an army to occupy the land and promulgated laws that the inhabitants of Abraxas became civilized and cultured. In other words, the initiation of social reform relied on Utopus, this external leader, who advanced the process of Abraxian civilization through legislation. This conception of More's was reflected in many subsequent Utopian works. For example, Francis Bacon wrote in New Atlantis: "Nineteen hundred years ago, a King reigned in this island... His name was Solamona; and we esteem him as the lawgiver of our nation." Robert Burton told readers in The Anatomy of Melancholy: "I will yet, to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a New Atlantis, a poetical Commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself." Harrington's The Oceana also fictionalized a legislator, Olphaus Megaletor, through whose mouth he wrote: "a legislator is to be but one... just as the creation of a book or the building of a house cannot be brought to perfection if it is not finished by one author or one architect."
Explaining changes in social order through a fictional legendary legislator is a widespread phenomenon in the ancient world. Frank and Fritzie Manuel believe that from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, many Christian Utopias benefitted from the ancient Greek tradition; their fictional realms were "either the Sparta of Lycurgus, whose image was ascetic and communistic; or the Athens of Solon, whose image was a loose democracy and tolerance for sensory pleasure... for centuries, every Utopian work in Europe tended to chose one of these two legislators as its model." Unlike the ancient Greek tradition, however, Renaissance Utopian authors did not merely explain social order; they intended to transform it. Their method of achieving this was not to expect to hold political power themselves, but to offer advice to sovereigns through their works, thereby seeking opportunities to guide the monarch in governing the state. This gave Utopian works the characteristics of the speculum principum (mirrors for princes) [3] genre of the Renaissance.
Similarly, another group of Utopian authors was even more direct, presenting their blueprints for an ideal society to Parliament or powerful individuals. In A Description of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria, the author Gabriel Plattes wrote in the dedication: "I am confident that this Parliament will lay the cornerstone of the world's happiness before its adjournment, and I am willing to venture my humble contribution... I humbly pray this glorious Parliament to adopt these suggestions." Gerrard Winstanley dedicated The Law of Freedom to Oliver Cromwell, expecting the latter to put it into practice. He wrote: "I have now set the candle at your door; for you have the power in your hand to provide for the public liberty if you will." In Winstanley’s view, "Cromwell, rather than Jesus Christ, was the agent of change." Clearly, the writing intent of this category of Utopia was more explicit, and the desire to transform society more intense.
Whether through the "mirror" approach or the "petition" approach, these Utopian works converged on a single conception of realization: the expectation that a monarch or parliament holding political power would, through legislation, achieve a fundamental transformation of social life on a national scale. It was precisely from the perspective of political practice that Utopian authors of this period had no intention of mobilizing the masses to transform English society; their works were not even written for the masses. In their view, the masses were irrelevant to legislation; concentrating political power in the hands of one person was undoubtedly a more realistic approach. In contrast, at the end of the 17th century, a new category of Utopia appeared. It compressed the various elements of an ideal society into a small community, which existed in the form of an enterprise or a neighborhood, embedded within the state and accepting the institutions of the existing society. Therefore, this type of Utopia no longer sought institutional transformation at the state level, but instead called for cooperation among all social strata to establish "pilot sites" [4] for the ideal society.
II. The Rise of the "Little Commonwealth" Model
After the Stuart Restoration, Utopian writing in England gradually entered a low ebb; it was not only inferior to previous generations in quantity but also lacked the comprehensive deliberation of its predecessors. The British historian Christopher Hill wrote: "After 1660, the Utopian yearnings of religious rationalists for a better world were completely shattered"; "The golden age was no longer the future in millennial aspirations, but a past that was gone forever." Arthur Morton argued that Utopian works of this period were of "low quality and had almost no positive effect on the development of Utopian conceptions." However, during this period, a "little commonwealth" model emerged in Utopian writing, which became the main form of Utopian practice thereafter.
In 1659, Peter Cornelis Plockhoy, a Dutch scholar living in England, published The Way to the Peace and Settlement of These Nations (also known as A Way Propounded to Make the Poor in These and Other Nations Happy). This book was written in English, took English society as its object of analysis, and intended to be implemented in England; it was the pioneer of the "little commonwealth" model in Utopian works. The book begins by condemning the inequality and disorder of contemporary society, arguing that "wicked governments or governors, greedy large merchants and retailers, and lazy, idle, and negligent teachers, and such people, keep all people under the bondage of slavery." Under such oppression, "many ordinary craftsmen or laborers act with lies and deceit, and for the honest and good people who are oppressed, their consciences cannot endure such practices." Plockhoy felt that he, and others similarly dedicated to the common welfare, had a responsibility to remove "the yokes that the worldly and spiritual Pharaohs have laid upon the masses." Unlike the solutions of his predecessors, however, he no longer sought total reform at the national level. Instead, he used the joint-stock company (which he referred to as a "little commonwealth") as the model for an ideal society, attempting to select a limited population within a limited territory to participate in market competition through collective production. His Utopia was thus regarded as "an attempt to solve part of the social ills by very realistic means, without any fiction or adventure."
Plockhoy’s plan began with capital from the rich—that is, "let some capable people lay the foundation, first by putting a sum of money into a common stock for the common welfare, and with this money buy a piece of land." On this land, he planned to build two large structures. One would be in the city, capable of housing 20 to 30 families, serving simultaneously as a warehouse and a shop to sell daily necessities such as cloth, linen, and stockings; the other would be located by a river in the countryside, built for the purpose of a convenient life, equipped with rooms for dining, storage, books, and the sick. In the "little commonwealth," the rich would not need to engage in production and could enjoy public welfare and a portion of the products. The residents engaged in production would be recruited; Plockhoy required them to be of four types: farmers, craftsmen, mariners, and teachers, preferably unmarried to ensure work efficiency. Among them, residents in the city would engage in trade, responsible for selling cloth, linen, stockings, and other commodities; residents in the countryside would engage in production, including tilling, fishing, raising livestock like cattle, sheep, chickens, and ducks, planting fruits and vegetables, and making necessary drinks and snacks to supply the needs of the community. Such a conception already attempted to integrate agriculture and manufacturing, enabling the "little commonwealth" to become a self-sustaining collective.
In Plockhoy’s vision, through rational planning of the production process, the "little commonwealth" would achieve high production efficiency. Moreover, since the commodities produced were priced at the lowest margin of profit, the selling prices were not high. Combined with low residential rents and low living costs, this guaranteed the price advantage of the commodities. Therefore, he believed the goods produced by the "little commonwealth" would be extremely competitive, its scale would continuously expand, and the ideal social order would spread accordingly. Through this method, English society would reach the state of an ideal society.
More than thirty years after the publication of The Way to Happiness for the Poor, the scholar John Bellers published Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry. Much like Plockhoy’s "Little Commonwealth," Bellers's college was a community organized according to the principles of a joint-stock company (which he termed an "epitome of the world"). From a practical perspective, Bellers's work resembled a prospectus; by elaborating in detail on the benefits of participating in the plan, he sought to raise capital and recruit personnel to launch the construction of the College of Industry. To persuade the wealthy to invest, Bellers enumerated reasons in three areas. First, on moral grounds, the rich have an obligation to assist the poor. Quoting Sir Matthew Hale, he noted: "The rich, as stewards of [God’s] wealth," "must discharge their duties, and the best way to do so is to employ those who need relief and reformation." Second, the investment would yield returns. For instance, investors would receive high-quality wool, linen clothing, shoes, and stockings from the college every year, and their children would receive a fine education. As the scale of the college expanded, its wealth would continuously appreciate. Finally, the rich inevitably depend on the poor. He wrote: "The rich have no other way of living, but by the labour of others, as the landlord by the tenant, and the merchants and traders by the laborers, unless they turn Levellers [5], and work themselves." In other words, without a diligent laboring poor, the rich would have to perform manual labor themselves. "Suppose a man had 100,000 acres of land, and as many pounds in money, and as many cattle, as this money would buy; and no labourer; what could the rich man do? He must be a labourer."
To recruit the poor, Bellers likewise listed various incentives. First, the college provided comprehensive welfare. "Whether in health or sickness; single or married; women or children, all shall enjoy the necessaries of life. If parents die, the orphans will be educated and cared for, and their future marriages will be encouraged." Second, life in the college eliminated many mental anxieties. Bellers wrote: "Currently, men have a double care besides their bodily labour; first, to provide for themselves and their families; second, to guard against the intrigues of others in buying and selling. In the college, these cares are superfluous; all he needs to do is a simple day's work." Therefore, "compared to the world outside, life in the college is more comfortable." Finally, college life was a form of salvation. He stated: "Many lose Heaven by their care for this world... The daily life in the college, by restraining their attachment to the world through honest labor and religious instruction, will make the college a school of virtue." In short, Bellers intended to tell both rich and poor that, whether from a short-term, long-term, or even afterlife perspective, college life was attractive and served the interests of both parties.
In addition to the form of the joint-stock company, utopian conceptions in the late 17th century also featured "little commonwealths" in the form of communities, which shared many conceptual similarities with the joint-stock company model. In terms of writing style, both included a main body of discourse followed by a question-and-answer section. In terms of practical implementation, both began with the stages of fundraising, land acquisition, and recruitment. However, these two types of little commonwealths also differed in several respects: community utopias were generally located in rural areas, with agriculture and handicrafts as the primary sectors of production; they emphasized self-sufficiency over economic competition; and they used faith rather than interest as the means of binding individuals together. A representative example is An Essay Concerning Adepts published in 1698 by an author writing under the pseudonym Philadept. Philadept referred to his ideal community as a "Kingdom or Little World." it consisted of four contiguous parishes [6] that cooperated with one another, equivalent in scale to a small town. Each parish had a lord of the manor who resided in the manorial house with his family, governing the town like a king among his tenants. The community's economic activities were primarily agricultural, supplemented by various handicrafts, and were self-sustaining. According to his vision, "each parish has an ample number of carpenters, masons, smiths, plowmen, weavers, and other socially necessary professions." Everyone, in addition to their specific job, was to share in agricultural labor. For food, ammunition, and other items that the community needed but could not produce, they would "trade with the world outside using a common fund." Administratively, the community exercised strict control over the residents' diet, daily life, and recreation to realize a simple and temperate communal existence. According to Philadept’s vision, once social morality improved, the "Adepts" [7] possessing the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone would appear; they would serve society with their knowledge, bringing "wealth, contentment, virtue, health, and strength."
Unlike the "mirrors for princes" [8] genre of utopian works, the "little commonwealth" utopias emerging in the late 17th century relied on cooperation between various classes rather than the impetus of political power for their realization. Furthermore, in the settings of the former, utopias were often closed—isolated on distant islands, existing as another world parallel to reality. In the settings of the latter, utopias were embedded within existing society, accepting its traditions and institutions as a constituent part of society and participating in real life. Finally, compared to holistic reform schemes, the "little commonwealth" practiced a method of gradual social reform through pilot projects and demonstrations. After the 18th century, the little commonwealth model became the primary mode of the utopian movement; according to incomplete statistics, as many as 134 small-scale utopian communities were established between 1825 and 1914.
III. Reasons for the Paradigm Shift
The shift in utopian thought in the late 17th century was, on the one hand, related to the specific religious beliefs of the authors. For example, Plockhoy was closely associated with the Mennonites, and his works reflected Mennonite characteristics such as passive obedience to government and an emphasis on sectarian community. Bellers, as a member of the Quakers, faced persecution, which may have prompted him to contract his imagination back toward the community. Philadept displayed Hermetic tendencies in his writing, believing that the government was corrupt and that hope for reform lay with the Adepts. More importantly, however, changes in socioeconomic conditions during this period provided the necessary environment for the utopian authors' conceptions. After the mid-17th century, England’s economic situation continued to improve, but social stratification became increasingly severe. The poor of this period were mostly peasants who had lost their land during the process of commercialization. Once they were "detached from the traditional agrarian order, they were perhaps unconsciously swept into the modernization process of British society. Outside the secure rural parish, the lower-class English entered a world of few patrons and uncertain employment." Compared to the influence of climate on peasants, the fluctuations of the market were even more volatile for urban workers; once economic conditions soured, they faced the risk of unemployment and falling into the ranks of the indigent who relied on relief to survive. Professor Paul Slack argues that while the number of people in absolute destitution decreased during this period, the number of people living in poverty actually rose. The opening of the 1662 Poor Relief Act pointed out: "The number of poor people needing relief in the cities of London and Westminster is constantly increasing, and the poor throughout the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales are so numerous as to be a burden." Contemporary scholars estimated that in 1696, the number of poor and beggars in England approached one-quarter of the total population. Against this backdrop, discussions regarding the "problem of the poor" proliferated.
To address the problem of the poor, the Poor Relief Act of 1662 authorized Justices of the Peace to remove poor people who had moved into a parish. The Poor Relief Act issued in 1697 followed this logic, authorizing parish churchwardens and overseers of the poor to send migrant poor living or staying in the parish back to their place of birth or the parish where they previously received relief. Such methods failed to resolve the increasingly grave poverty problem of the time. Unlike the government's strategy, the Mercantilists of the day neither favored providing a continuous stream of relief to the poor nor intended to prohibit their migration. In their eyes, the poor were a potential resource, and poverty itself had its uses; they proposed that "it is in the interest of the state for the majority of the population to be maintained in a state of poverty." This discourse was based on "traditional wisdom"—the belief that wealth brings idleness while poverty fosters industry. Contemporary scholars offered various suggestions, including lowering wages, raising prices, creating employment opportunities, and emphasizing the education of poor children, all aimed at forcing the poor to cultivate habits of industry. As for the actual plight of the poor, they showed little sympathy or mercy.
Utopian works of this period likewise focused on the problem of the poor, but their solution lay not in restricting the movement of the poor or exploiting them, but in reshaping social relations—specifically addressing the polarization between rich and poor caused by market activities. Since Thomas More, utopian authors had tended to use legislative means to adjust the distribution of wealth and realize social relations of equality and mutual aid. However, after the 17th century, with economic development and the growth of market society, government oversight of economic life continuously decreased. "The connection between the state’s material resources and the people who lived by them was severed. The common wealth had become a collection of private wealth." It was in this context that the 17th-century Mercantilist Gerard de Malynes dismissed More’s proposals as absurd, because "without private interest, there is no common interest." Accordingly, the outcry for the defense of private property rights became louder; even the Levellers during the Civil War opposed the equalization of property. Richard Overton began An Arrow Against All Tyrants by declaring: "To every Individual in nature is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for every one, as he is himself, so he hath a self-propriety, else could he not be himself; and on this no second may presume to deprive any of, without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature, and of the Rules of equity and justice between man and man." In such a context, adjusting wealth distribution through legislation appeared impractical.
How, then, could the problem of the poor be solved and social relations be reshaped while respecting private property rights? The rise of the joint-stock company provided utopian authors with a new line of thinking. In 1662, Charles II approved "limited liability for all investors," marking the establishment of the earliest form of the modern "democratic" joint-stock company in England. Using dividends as a return, it absorbed idle social wealth and effectively met the capital management needs of large-scale engineering, important innovation projects, and professional financial operations in long-distance trade, mining, and metallurgy. "It obtained monopoly privileges more conveniently than any private group, thereby protecting fixed investments." When many overseas trade channels were disrupted by war in the late 17th century and a large amount of capital sat idle, stocks became a popular investment target for the public, and joint-stock companies flourished. In terms of total volume, "between 1689 and 1695, the paid-in capital of English joint-stock companies expanded from £630,000 to approximately £3.5 million; the number of companies grew from 11 to about a hundred; the capital used for investment already overloaded the stock market."
Faced with the public's passion for investment, utopian authors of this period realized that adopting the form of a joint-stock company would make it easier to obtain funds to establish pilot projects for an ideal society. Plockhoy emphasized the productive efficiency of his "Little Commonwealth" and used the products and company profits as returns to attract investment, intending to purchase land in London, Bristol, and Ireland. Bellers recognized: "When there is profit to be made, it is relatively easy to raise £1000, while in the name of charity, it is difficult to raise even £100."
Beyond their advantages in capital raising, joint-stock companies represented a new mode of social cooperation. The historian Richard Grassby described the joint-stock company as "a miniature state," noting that larger joint-stock companies often employed a vast staff, including "secretaries, accountants, lieutenants, physicians and surgeons, soldiers, clerks, schoolmasters and artisans" who acted not as independent merchants but in collaboration as employees of a collective of shareholders. Shareholders were divided into majority and minority shareholders according to their capital contributions; the latter did not participate in corporate management and existed merely as a rentier group, while the majority shareholders exercised the management functions of the firm through democratic means via corporate bodies such as boards of directors and boards of supervisors. Investors, managers, and employees were bound by a nexus of interests, exchanging cooperation for benefits. This effectively eliminated competition among members and endowed the enterprise with a "public" (公 [9]) character. For many joint-stock companies, their members, much like members of guilds, were referred to as "brothers" and even maintained guild-like apprenticeship systems. In the spring of 1661, the "charter" granted by Charles II to the East India Company included a phrase stating that it could "admit and receive... Apprentices, Factors, and Servants" as members [of the company]. This unique organizational model of the joint-stock company coincided perfectly with the communal life advocated by utopian authors, providing another reason for the rise of the small-republic model.
Finally, the political instability in England since the Civil War also prompted utopian authors to adopt the small-republic model. John Bellers believed that "states and governments are often subject to revolutions and changes, and individual families even more so. In these ups and downs, who can tell whether they are making money or being ruined?" Compared to the state or the private individual, he believed the form of the company was the most stable and enduring: "it is like the body of a man, which is not easily to be divided... and whatever changes may happen (unless the people here are destroyed), even if it is plundered, it can be reorganized again within twelve months."
In summary, in late 17th-century England, the mainstream of economic thought focused on seeking growth and increasingly understood economic phenomena through a mechanistic cosmology, where moral necessity was treated only as a background factor. In such a context, how to resolve the problem of the poor, or how to defend economic morality in the pursuit of profit, became new problems facing utopian authors. Represented by thinkers such as Peter Plockhoy and John Bellers, they were inspired by the emerging joint-stock companies to envision utopias based on the small-republic model, advocating for the resolution of social problems through social cooperation. In the context of the time, this was undoubtedly progressive. However, as capitalism developed and class struggle [10] became increasingly severe, these ideas of calling upon the bourgeoisie to open their purses gradually devolved into mere utopianism.