ABSTRACT In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy, though making an appeal to the middle class, also seeks to combine progressivism with an ethos of aristocratic cultural dominance as a way to civilize the masses and make socialism appealing to patricians. Eschewing a hereditary aristocracy, Bellamy endorses a cultural one, finding the imperative to do so in optimistic notions of American social mobility. Instead of portraying socialism as a threat to the elite, Bellamy invites the Brahmins of Boston and, by extension, of America to view socialism as a path to universal acceptance of upper-crust refinement. Read from this perspective, Looking Backward suggests unsettling realities: that America is essentially a class-conscious society; that its capitalist economy, though merit-based in theory, fosters the dynastic concentration and transfer of wealth; and that if the hereditary beneficiaries of industry cannot be persuaded that a nationalized economy is to their personal advantage, it is unlikely to happen.
