THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH:
September, 2009

Each month, BuzzFlash is privileged to have nationally syndicated progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann review a progressive book or DVD exclusively for BuzzFlash. See other progressive premiums at The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

Thom Hartmann's Review -- Exclusively for BuzzFlash -- for September, 2009:

"Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887"
By Edward Bellamy

Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

Ralph Nader first told me about this novel, first published in 1888 and how it was one of the major inspirations of the Progressive movement of the late 19th century. It positively inspired Eugene Debs, for example, Nader told me.

At the time, I was also reading Dan Brown’s new book, “The Lost Symbol,” an excellent read in the classic, formula-adventure-fiction of this century that’s so much fun to read. But once I started reading Bellamy’s book, I had to suspend Brown’s (I’m still working on it as I write these words) – Bellamy’s book totally captured me, even though it was written more than 100 years ago.

The plot device of Bellamy’s novel is that the hero is “Mesmerized” – hypnotized – and the trance is so deep that he wakes up in the year 2000, his bodily functions having been so dramatically slowed that he’s still a young man in his twenties and in fine physical health (albeit a bit hungry and weak).

(For those interested in Mesmerism, one of the best histories of this practice – and how it was used by Freud and then fell into disrepute, and is now making a comeback in the form of EMDR and other anti-trauma therapies – is my book “Walking Your Blues Away.” I don’t mean this as a plug for my book – although I think it’s an excellent guide both for self-help and for therapists – but because the topic has been so largely ignored since the 1890s…and deserving of a comeback.)

Anyhow, the world of 2000 has managed to solve one of the most vexing problems – arguably (at least from everybody’s point of view except the Native Americans) the biggest problem of the last few decades of the 19th century – the “problem of labor.” How to keep “capital” (rich people, and in most cases the corporations they run) from exploiting “labor” mostly the working poor.

It’s important to remember that while there was a strong middle-class in America at the time of our founding (mostly because of slavery and “free” land stolen from Native Americans), that middle class had largely vanished by Reconstruction after the Civil War. From that time until FDR’s New Deal reorganized the American economic landscape, the only “middle class” were the very few members of the professional and mercantile classes – the doctor, baker, and shop-owner. The vast majority of workers were dirt poor, and they worked for a very small 1-3 percent of the population who controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re again approaching).

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