Utopia, dystopia and Karl Marx: How the application of communism changed a literary genre

This study examines Karl Marx's influence on the shift from utopian to dystopian literature and philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Utopian and socialist visions of the future have existed since the beginning of Western civilization; however, when Marxist socialism inspired the creation of the Soviet Union, the reality of an actual communistic society began to frighten people. Marx's communism is in part the spark that ignited the change from utopian to dystopian futuristic outlooks, and as a result, the appearance of dystopian literature at the turn on the century becomes more popular than the traditional forms of utopianism. The connection between utopianism and socialism, and the direct influence one has on the other throughout history, is reviewed in this study with a progressive comparison of Plato's Republic, Thomas More's Utopia and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, and culminating with an examination of utopian literature pre- and post-Marxism.