Surveillance and Self-Rule in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward by Chamelaeon Wombatowski --------------------------------------------------------------- The world which Edward Bellamy constructs in his novel Looking Backward is similar to many other utopias: it is a blueprint of an ideal society, set out either as a goal to strive for or an ultimate ideal, depending on whom you ask. It differs, however, in that Bellamy weaves a narrative into his blueprint, one much more detailed than More's sketchy question-and-answer session. It is a story, and it allows Bellamy to add traditional literary devices into his blueprint to enforce and suggest the underlying concepts he is attempting to get across. One such concept he builds on is the idea of self-rule, especially with respect to the policing of aberrant behaviors. In fact, through his novel, Bellamy puts forth that a necessary condition of utopia is the replacement of a formal policing system by collective and informal societal controls. This replacement applies the utopian concept of self-rule to societal behavior. The world Bellamy creates is a utopia, obviously. The problems of crime, hunger, and unemployment are gone, vanished after the restructuring of the United States and the implementation of the Industrial Army. Like Plato and More, some of it is setting up a logical premise and then handwaving, but the concept Bellamy uses for explaining why people work without a capitalist wage system is interesting, if not entirely explicit. The system is divided up into three classes of workers, excluding the militaristic bureaucracy above them. The workers are assigned to the classes based on the quality and skill of their work, or as Bellamy says: "...excellence receives distinction corresponding to the penalties which negligence incurs," (80). The workers are regraded periodically, and reassigned to a new level if their work warrants it. The benefits of a higher skill rating are a wider choice of specializations within the field, a badge of rank, and more interestingly, a public announcement in the national newspaper about the promotion. Along these lines, Bellamy later says that "...honorable mention and various sorts of prizes are awarded for excellence less than sufficient for promotion..." (82) Bellamy does not elaborate on the concept of the prizes, but is very careful to mention the concept of public honor, as he does when he compares the working man to a soldier: "...honor and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty, were the motives which they set before their soldiers..." (63) "...Never was there an age when these motives did not call what is best and noblest in men," (63) says Dr. Leete, and his insistence upon the topic of public honor and recognition implies that in Looking Backward, this is the most important recompense for hard work and dedication. Changing focus for a moment, let us consider the concepts in Williams' "The Limits of Spatialized Form". Williams posits "a regime of total visibility" (28) , in which the element of an independent overseer has been removed and instead, even someone from a distant past can stand above it and see everything clearly, as West does both physically and metaphorically from Dr. Leete's house. While describing the effects of the Industrial Army on this independent observer, he says "... Bellamy would thus seem to have created a utopian prospect, which ... has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere." While Williams is speaking in terms of literary observance and space as defined by the book, what he says is accurate literally as well. The people of Bellamy's utopia control themselves economically just as they do governmentally - the concept of self rule has been applied to the world of industry, and the end result is the Industrial Army. The people govern their own production just as they govern their laws. However, that is not where the usefulness of William's concept of the object observing itself ends. When the people as a whole value hard work and diligence, and in every other important aspect of their lives are moderating themselves, what occurs is that the people also moderate the social aspects of their own lives - or more correctly, the concept that other people are observing you, as Bellamy could observe all of Boston, causes you to moderate your behaviors to conform to societal norms. While rarely explicitly mentioned, the underlying theme of this surveillance in people's public lives is evident through several important passages in the book, one of which reads: " 'It is rather a matter of course than compulsion,' replied Dr. Leete. 'It is regarded as so absolutely natural and reasonable that the idea of its being compulsory has ceased to be thought of. *He would be thought to be an incredibly contemptible person who should need compulsion in such a case.*'" (41, emphasis added) Dr. Leete and West are not talking of something as humanitarian as blood or organ donation; they are speaking merely of the actual act of going to work every day. Even such a thing as taking a day off from work to enjoy the weather, a concept almost everyone in our time eagerly identifies with, is anathema to the culture Bellamy has set up. You go to work, no questions asked, no excuses given. Another example occurs as Leete and West discuss the judicial system, and Leete mentions that "Falsehood is, however, so despised among us that few offenders would lie to save themselves." (133) Not only has society taken a concept as ubiquitous as the lie and made it absolute anathema, it has managed to suppress its use in what many might call a survival instinct. It is not that the individual person is merely more advanced in Bellamy's utopia, but mankind as a whole has hoisted itself on its own bootstraps by, essentially, allowing for everyone else to see what parts of your business you make public. Another example of the self-control in society is the monetary issue. Everyone knows how much you make - it's the same as they do. Or as Bellamy put it: "It is known that what is spent one way must be saved another." (71) By this logic, not only is an ostentatious display a waste of money, it would actually be discouraged as improper budgeting, and everyone would know you'd done it. The concept of manners is another instance of the self control coming into play: "...but no officer is so high that he would dare display an overbearing manner toward a workman of a lower class." (135) There is no explicit punishment for doing so, but nobody does, because everyone will know you have done it, and thus your punishment will be a lessening in the eyes of society. The concept of self-control being a utopian principle is not found merely in Bellamy, however. Hints of it run through More's Utopia, and more famous counterexamples exist in Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. Both 1984 and Brave New World are novels based on an external control, separate from the populace in general - Big Brother and a rigid caste system, respectively. What's telling about this is that both 1984 and Brave New World are classically considered to be dystopias - the opposite of a utopia. However, just as self-control is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for utopia, so external control is merely one facet of what makes up a dystopia. Even if self-control is a necessary part of a utopia, the question of its feasibility remains. Since Bellamy does not explicitly define his forms of self-control, he also neglects to address the feasibility behind it, as he does with most of the concepts involving his Industrial Army. But coincidentally, the very concept of societal self-control already exists on the planet Earth, and not in a utopia, either. The country of Japan is a place steeped in tradition and propriety, where formality comes before anything else. Even the language is structured in forms meant for conversing with people whose social status you know is different from yours. The society is also very focused on conformity. The phrase "hito no me" means "the eyes of others" and can also be found as "mowari hito no me urusai desu", or "the eyes are noisy". The idiom refers to the knowledge you have that when you break tradition or propriety, every one else will know it. It embodies exactly the concept of societal self-control, and it is a living, working concept in Japan that causes the people there to follow the social rules that help make society there work. The replacement of a formal, external observer by a society which observes and polices itself brings about an evolution of sorts, not of individual people, but of humanity as a whole, dragging itself up a few rungs on the societal ladder. Like most utopias, the idea cause problems when put into practice; Japanese society is riddled with problems of Ijime, the abuse of people who stick out. Nonetheless, the concept of societal self-control is as important to utopias as the concept of self-government is, and Bellamy recognized this as he wrote Looking Backward.