“I grieved to think how brief the dream of human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.”
That is the traveler in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Leaping forward in time, the traveler discovers a world in which the pastoral Eloi are living lives of rustic comfort, eating the fruit of the land with nary a bit of toil or sweat. Meanwhile, the terrifying Morlock, using vast machines to provide air to their subterranean lair, venture forth under the cover of darkness to feast on the Eloi.
Wells’ earth of the future is a rather unattractive place. That is, after all, his intention. As is his wont, Wells uses this science fiction tale to moralize about the evil economic system in Britain in 1895. Enraptured by the ideas of the Social Darwinists, Wells’ sets his mind wandering over how both humans and society will evolve in the global survival of the fittest. One of the most well-known socialists of his age, Wells unsurprisingly imagines a future where the lifestyle of the rich become ever more indolent and the wretched poor are gradually forced out of sight into the underground to work the machines. The Morlocks eating the Eloi is little more than a morbid revenge fantasy. A century and a quarter later, it is rather obvious Wells’ Social Darwinist predictions were comically wrong.
He should have known better.
Read the rest at Adam Smith Works
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Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr. Moreau “That is the Law; Are We Not Men?”
Ropke, Wilhelm, A Humane Economy “Commerce and Culture”
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