A trip to Plutopia

Description

Encovragements, for such as shall have intention to bee vnder-takers in the new… is a satirical political pamphlet written in the early 20th century. The book imagines a so-called utopia where a tiny elite controls a vast labor force, using indoctrination, engineered scarcity, and science to maximize profit. Its likely topic is the critique of plutocracy, industrial exploitation, and the dehumanizing logic of unregulated capitalism. The story visits Plutopia, an island society with 500 wealthy rulers and 49,500 numbered workers. The workers live in cramped cells, wear paper-sack uniforms, eat three “food pills” a day, and labor twelve-hour shifts; families are separated and children are raised in institutions that drill them to chant “I want to work! Twelve hours a day!” By contrast, each plutocrat lives in a palace, spends only in vast denominations, and boasts that government, courts, and police are unnecessary because psychology keeps the “hands” obedient. A leading plutocrat reveals plans to breed ideal laborers combining brute strength, blind loyalty, and minimal intellect. The narrator tours the training school, where a minor lapse—a child yearning for skates—alarms teachers, and a worker’s quiet wish for an extra pill is treated as subversion to be managed by diluting rations. The piece ends by warning that simple human desires and dissent, however small, threaten the fragile security of this exploiters’ paradise. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• Short stories
• Satire
• Dystopias -- Fiction
• PS