Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde appears in Utopia For Realists as a recurring touchstone for Rutger Bregman’s argument that utopian aspiration drives progress. The book opens its case with Wilde’s line: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at… Progress is the realization of Utopias.” Bregman returns to Wilde when arguing that technological abundance should be redistributed — noting that “as far back as the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde looked forward to the day when everybody would benefit from intelligent machines that were ‘the property of all.’” The book quotes Wilde’s view that “on mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends,” using him to frame the case for basic income, a shorter work week, and machines owned in common rather than concentrated.

Context: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish poet and playwright (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest); the lines Bregman cites come largely from Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”

Where this appears

• Utopia For Realists — Wilde as the epigraph-source and authority for utopian progress and machines as “the property of all”