Utopia, written by Thomas More and published in 1516, is one of the most influential works in the history of European political and social thought. In it, More describes an imaginary island whose society is organised according to rational principles, with communal property, religious tolerance and a political system oriented towards the collective good. The book functions as an implicit critique of the inequalities, corruption and injustices of contemporary Europe, using fiction as a means of questioning reality itself.
That critique becomes particularly incisive when More addresses the issue of the enclosures, condemning the appropriation of common lands by private interests closely linked to political power. When he writes that “each greedy individual preys on his native land like a malignant growth […] absorbing field after field, and enclosing thousands of acres with a single fence”, adding that “a few greedy people have converted one of England’s greatest natural advantages into a national disaster”, More exposes the economic and social violence of the process. The concentration of land in the hands of a few displaced rural populations, destroyed traditional means of subsistence and deepened social inequalities. It is a theme that runs throughout Utopia, revealing the political dimension of the work, in which the imagined ideal society also serves as a concrete denunciation of the transformations taking place in More’s own time.
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