ABSTRACT
The modern worker recognises himself in Charlie Chaplin fighting desperately against the infernal machinery of Modern Times. A Modern Utopia appeared in 1905; in Men Like Gods, published in 1923, H. G. Wells did in fact describe a society where there are no conflicts, friction or waste. Unlike the ageing Plato, Wells may have been more optimistic later in life than in his youth, or he may have considered his “modern utopia” or second-best state as a necessary transition to a perfect society. In the modern Utopia motherhood is considered a service of the State, and a mother receives a certain gratuity upon the birth of a child. Wells’s Utopian state will do all in its power to eliminate inferior people: “For Nature’s process of having the strong murder the weak in cold blood will be substituted the ways and means of the modern men.”
