When Utopia Lost Its Soul: How Communism Borrowed from Thomas More and Left Out God

When Utopia Lost Its Soul: How Communism Borrowed from Thomas More and Left Out God

When Sir Thomas More published Utopia in 1516, he gave the world more than a clever satire about politics and human folly. He offered a blueprint for a better society — one based on reason, equality, and shared purpose. More’s imagined island was a place where there was no private property, where people worked for the common good, and where greed and envy had no soil to grow. It was a society that balanced material needs with moral order, a harmony between the practical and the spiritual.

Centuries later, parts of More’s Utopia would be lifted and reshaped into something very different — modern communism. The idea of communal ownership, equality of labor, and the elimination of class divisions are all ideas that echo through More’s pages. But when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels reinterpreted these ideas in the 19th century, they removed the foundation upon which More built his vision: faith.

More was a devout Catholic, and religion was central to his utopian world. Though the Utopians in his book practiced tolerance of many faiths, belief in God was not optional. It was seen as essential to virtue and moral order. In Utopia, citizens believed that the soul was immortal and that good deeds would be rewarded in the afterlife. Without that divine accountability, More believed, a society could not sustain justice or compassion.

Marx and Engels saw things differently. To them, religion was not a moral guide but a means of control — “the opium of the people.” Their version of utopia was purely material and economic, grounded in historical forces rather than divine purpose. In doing so, they replaced moral faith with ideological faith. Where More’s citizens sought harmony with God and neighbor, Marx’s followers sought revolution against an unjust system.

The result was a utopia without spirit — a world where equality was enforced, not inspired. Communist regimes would later prove how fragile such a godless ideal could be when detached from conscience and compassion. More’s Utopia, by contrast, was never meant to be a political manual but a meditation on human virtue — on how people might live rightly, not merely how they might distribute wealth.

Five hundred years later, More’s work still speaks to us. In an age obsessed with material progress and economic systems, Utopia reminds us that a society’s true strength lies not in its laws or its wealth, but in its soul. A world that forgets this — that trades moral vision for ideological certainty — may find itself with equality, but without grace.

Perhaps the lesson of Utopia is this: the perfect society cannot exist without the perfectibility of the heart.