Three Moderate Solutions to Income Inequality in Utopia: Hertzka, Herzl, and Wells

This article describes three utopian attempts to ameliorate the negative effects of income inequality that are less revolutionary than those of More and Bellamy. Rather than dispensing with money or gold, these three utopias modify existing institutions with the aim of lopping off the extremes of both wealth and poverty without upending the entire social and economic structure. Discussion includes Theodor Hertzka’s Freeland (1891), Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland: The Old New Land (1902), and H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia (1905). The three utopias provide potential solutions by undercutting causes of poverty and intergenerational wealth accumulation rather than by economic leveling, and by stressing a fresh start for each generation. The primary tools in this effort are education, universal healthcare, a safety net of basic income, fiscal transparency, confiscatory estate taxes, and common ownership of land.