Looking Backward From 2000 to 1887

by Edward Bellamy

According to Erich Fromm, Bellamy's novel Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America." It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. In the book, Julian West, an upper class man from 1887, awakes in 2000 from a hypnotic trance to find himself in a socialist utopia. The book influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. "It is...