Chapter Commentary of Utopia - Study Guide by Thomas More

old person is beyond being helpful, is a burden to self and community and is therefore encouraged to suicide. Their rational justice can impinge on individual rights and can create moral injustice as discipline and fear of social ostracism curtail freedom. Too much freedom would, it is assumed, threaten the stability and security of the commonwealth. This, in the nature of things, has to be the political goal of highest priority. We must then notice how there appear to be suffocating constraints in Utopia – it is a flawed commonwealth – when individual liberty requires restraint in order to effectuate Utopian’s attempt to secure more liberty and leisure for all.

Communal labour – the idle are expelled from society

Among the Utopians agriculture is a science in which all are instructed. The children in the schools learn its history and theory. From each group of thirty farms twenty persons are sent annually to the neighbouring cities to make room for an equal number who come from city to the country so that all have a taste of farm life. In addition to agriculture all people are taught a trade. They only need to work for six hours a day because it is sufficient to provide them with all the necessaries and comforts for life; little time is spent in supplying useless or vicious luxuries. Division of labour is always equal and these sentiments are echoed in Marx when he says

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Like the communes of Leninist Russia, Utopia maintains collective farms.

In a classless society there is no exploitation of one group by another. This is of course something More realized and one was one of his reasons for devising an ideal commonwealth. More was most likely revolted by the luxury of the sixteenth century Europe’s ruling class. He saw that this luxury was the result of the peasants and so to cut out this poverty necessitated cutting out the ruling classes’ luxury. More saw that there was no benefit to the common good if all the peasants work all day and night, and that the work only benefits a small minority. The idea that Hythloday presents of every worker being able to see and enjoy the fruits of his labour lending it dignity and not simply relegating them to the role of drudges; resembling Marx’s view of labour.

Community and Family

In the cities groups of families have common dining halls, although anyone who chooses to do so may dine at his own house. Slaves perform the menial service in these dining halls, while the women of the various families by turns superintend the preparation of the meals. When the Utopians have produced enough to supply them for two years, they use any surplus which they may have to carry on commerce with neighbouring nations, securing from them gold, silver and iron and other things they need in turn. They do not use gold and silver as money, since they have common property but they procure it principally to hire mercenaries from among their neighbours.

More is conservative in his family structures in comparison to Plato who would have children raised communally to prevent family bonds from forming. In Utopia social units are synonymous with the family unit. When a couple plans to marry the pre-marital ritual is an interesting and theoretically somewhat comic event: the wife to be or husband to be must show themselves naked to their respective partners. Whilst this appears as ridiculous we are faced with a logic based on a reasoning equal to that of the lusty and economically driven ‘Wife of Bath’ in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales;

"When men go to buy a colt, where they are risking only a little money, they are so cautious that, though the animal is almost bare, they won’t close the deal until saddle and blanket have been taken off lest there be a hidden sore lurking beneath".

And so marriage and trade are likened in terms of utility and investment.

The oldest male heads family units and utopia appears as hospitable and understanding towards mothers. The concept of eliminating parental bonds is non-existent as not only do parents keep their children but