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According to his vision, which he called Nationalism, America in 2000 is essentially one huge corporation. In his odd version of economics, the absence of competition means that all production is efficient and goods are cheap. Since there is enough for everybody, greed has disappeared and so has money. People are issued something like credit cards with which they can draw whatever they need from common stores. Every citizen must serve in a kind of workers' army in which all get the same pay. In lieu of financial incentives there is patriotism and "passion for humanity." People marry each other only for the finest moral and physical qualities; the race has been "purified." A minor detail symbolizes the collectivist ideal: when it rains, canopies are lowered over the streets, replacing everyone's individual umbrella.
Looking Backward not only popularized long-standing socialist ideas but also strongly influenced their further development and appeal. The Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs publicly thanked Bellamy for guiding him "out of darkness into light..." and for "fill[ing] a despairing world with hope." Not everybody shared that particular hope. Like most Utopias, Bellamy's not only was naive but also seemed to leave little room for individual freedom.
A few years after the publication of Looking Backward, there appeared a very different view of A.D. 2000. It was a sort of capitalist rebuttal, although by definition the free-market philosophy does not easily lend itself to Utopianism, with its regimented bliss. In A Journey to Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor, Socialism has hopelessly ruined Europe, while the U.S., having absorbed Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America, virtually rules the world together with its ally, Great Britain. A great-grandson of the dynasty's founder, Astor was a playboy with a serious side. Fascinated by science, he spent much time working in machine shops and patented a number of inventions, including marine turbines. His book is filled with some of his imagined inventions. Steam boilers are powered by the sun; electricity, which runs everything, is generated by tides; battery-powered airplanes traverse the sky.
At the center of the plot is the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company, which plans to reposition the globe so that the Earth's climate will be universally benign, like everlasting spring ("Polar bears will soon have to use artificial ice"). In Astor's view, "this period--A.D. 2000--is by far the most wonderful the world has as yet seen." But the world has grown too small, which is why the book's main characters take off for Jupiter in a spaceship equipped with booster rockets. "The future glory of the human race," concludes Astor, "lies in exploring at least the solar system." Ironically, this dreamer of technical progress, especially of huge powerful ships, went down with the Titanic.