Socio-economic Utopianism in Spain at the End of the Nineteenth Century: La Nueva Utopía by Ricardo Mella

Abstract

Abstract In 1890, Ricardo Mella—one of the foremost theorists of Spanish anarchism—published the short novel La Nueva Utopía [The New Utopia], which had been awarded a prize in Barcelona's Second Socialist Contest the previous year. It was a time of resurgence for the utopian novel in the western world with numerous proposals for different models of socialism. In particular, there were three works in quick succession which were well received and eventually became classics: Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), Hertzka's Freiland (1889), and Morris's News from Nowhere (1890). This article analyzes Mella's novel as the major example of the utopian genre in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century and as an effective means of spreading his model of anarchist collectivism (as opposed to anarchist communism). In it, he shows the future libertarian society in glowing colors. In addition, the article compares the model of social organization developed in La Nueva Utopía with those proposed in the three famous contemporary works (by Bellamy, Hertzka, and Morris).