Utopia

One of the central and unifying themes of Utopia is the question of how and why social problems arise. Connected to this is the issue of how such social problems (e.g., poverty, crime, political corruption) might be effectively addressed. What sort of political and legal apparatuses should be used to solve such problems? Should we treat social problems as manageable but unavoidable symptoms of human nature? Or, recognizing that these problems arise from the social conditions in which individuals live, should we attempt to alter those conditions such that the problems disappear?

More’s novel broaches this theme in different ways. Throughout the dialogues that comprise Book 1, the characters present a range of perspectives on these questions and related issues. The English lawyer with whom Raphael dines in Book 1 exhibits a lack of reflection about these issues; he cannot understand why capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to theft because he has not even attempted to understand why people steal. In allowing the lawyer to appear naïve or obtuse with respect to these questions, More encourages the reader to reflect upon this theme even before Raphael raises the issue just a few lines later (22).

According to Raphael, capital punishment does not deter theft for a simple reason: Economic trends, driven by a greedy desire to maximize profits on the part of landowners, have displaced large numbers of agricultural workers who have no other marketable skills.