The Frenchman Étienne Cabet, the founder of the Icaria movement, was even more radical in his relationship to freedom of the press. In his utopian Voyage to Icaria he envisions that only his enlightened republic would have the right to print books. The republic [would be] able to rewrite all the books that were imperfect. . and to burn all the books judged to be dangerous or useless. Cabet later moved to the United States and in the middle of the nineteenth century attempted to create a model republic based upon his ideas, which of course, at the beginning, would assume the form of a pure dictatorship and would compel the inhabitants to adhere strictly to all established norms of life in the colony. He forbade drinking and smoking and instructed the denizens to establish families and turn over to the community the responsibility of raising the children. Cabet’s ideal republic (like all ideal communities), however, had no hope of succeeding and rapidly disintegrated.
Bolzano too planned out the life of his society in detail. He did away with property inheritance and outlawed youth organizations unless each meeting was overseen by an elder who had the proper worldview. He planned education and determined how many workers would be needed in various places. Everything was to be done, of course, in such a way that they would be happy.
All architects of the ideal state appealed to the happiness of the citizens. It is I, claimed Charles Fourier, who will be thanked by current and future generations for initiating their happiness. . We are going to witness a spectacle which can only be seen once in each globe, the transition from incoherence to social combination. This is the most brilliant movement that can ever happen in the universe, and the anticipation of it shall be a consolation to the present generation for all its miseries. Every year of this period of metamorphosis will be worth centuries of ordinary existence. But humanity did not thank him, and he did not become an actor in his theater.
The mistake of the utopians lay in their assumption that it is possible to build the ideal state with the agreement of the people. They believed in the ideal person who, as soon as he is afforded the opportunity to act honorably and fairly, would be transformed into a conscious citizen doing his utmost to serve, happily and willingly, the good of the community. And so was born the image of the joyful, enthusiastic citizen for whom the enlightened ruler would plan all of his feelings, activities, and mutual relationships (including amatory ones) and rigorously subordinate him to discipline — which was, however, gladly accepted. He who does not submit has chosen the fate of the pariah. It was a logical conclusion. As soon as the incontrovertible good was discovered, it would be possible and correct to require that everyone be in its service. Those who did not, were violating it, and because the community embodied the good, it would be necessary to deal with them as criminals.
It is here that the onetime advocates of the ideal community are in agreement with their modern successors. When we read not only the works of Marx but also Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun, or Bolzano’s vision of the state, we are amazed that all these dreams of justice and the new arrangement of the community actually epitomized the despotisms or at least the precursors of dictatorships as they are commonly understood. Their authors rightly suspected that people would hardly wax enthusiastic over artificially created relationships. Therefore, they mercilessly put to death everyone who wrenched himself out of the established order. Thomas More suggested imprisonment for those who engaged in premarital sex, and because the parents were responsible for such corruption, they should be imprisoned as well. Marital infidelity would be punished even worse; the serial transgressor would pay for it with his neck. More also advocated the execution of anyone who dared discuss public affairs unofficially and would proclaim war on every state that possessed uncultivated land and did not allow the immigration of surplus citizens of the Utopia. We do not know if Adolf Hitler read Utopia, but at least on this point he decidedly acted according to its principles.
In Cabet’s Icaria, there is not a police uniform to be seen. But this is not important. Uniformed policemen are unnecessary because in our community all citizens must keep watch over the upholding of the laws and pursue or report criminals. How accurate this two-hundred-year-old characteristic of the police state is.
In his turn, Campanella demands the execution of everyone who deviates from the strict order of his state. For example, he would punish with death a woman who uses high-heeled boots so that she may appear tall, or garments with trains to cover her wooden shoes. His image of prisons and hangmen in the future ideal state is prophetic of Bolshevism, which came several hundred years after Campanella’s death. They have no prisons, except one tower for shutting up rebellious enemies. The accused who is found guilty is reconciled to his accuser and to his witnesses, as it were, with the medicine of his complaint, that is, with embracing and kissing. No one is killed or stoned unless by the hands of the people. . Some transgressors are allowed to put themselves to death: they will place around themselves bags of gunpowder, light them, and burn to death, while exhorters are present for the purpose of advising them to die honorably. . Certain officers talk to and convince the accused man by means of arguments until he himself acquiesces in the sentence of death passed upon him.. . But if a crime has been committed against the liberty of the republic, or against God, or against the supreme magistrates, there is immediate censure without pity. These only are punished with death. He who is about to die is compelled to state in the face of the people and with religious scrupulousness the reasons for which he does not deserve death, and also the sins of the others who ought to die instead of him, and further the mistakes of the magistrates. If, moreover, it should seem right to the person thus asserting, he must say why the accused ones are deserving of less punishment than he.
It is as if the modern era were begun by Rousseau’s Social Contract which, just like many other utopias, begins from the proposition that at one time people lived in a state of marvelous innocence. Their primary luxury was freedom and will. This paradisiacal condition was destroyed by the emergence of private property. Rousseau does not suggest doing away with private property, however. He describes in detail the specter of the people or the citizen as a kind of revolutionary power, a source of truth, a guarantor of knowledge, and therefore the highest judge. Something incontrovertible and just, which is called the general will, emerges from the unified will of all citizens who have a common interest. This is expressed by the law. The state itself watches over the fulfillment of the laws and the carrying out of justice. This general will always embodies truth. He who refuses to submit can be compelled to be free. He who continually contravenes, he who scorns the will of the people, deserves nothing less than death. Rousseau deliberates over who should ensure that this general will is fulfilled and at the same time not abused, and he comes up with the enlightened ruler, who would be able, as it were, to change the nature of every individual.
The people, then, over the course of further centuries, would become the shield concealing the crimes of those who in their name act as their benefactors and enlightened rulers.