A cityless and countryless world : $b An outline of practical cooperative individualism

Description

"A cityless and countryless world : An outline of practical cooperative…." by Henry Olerich is a utopian novel written in the late 19th century. It presents a visionary program of “practical co‑operative individualism” through the account of a Martian visitor who contrasts his advanced, harmonious society with Earth’s wasteful cities and isolated farms. The work lays out a full social and economic design—large communal “big-houses,” electrified infrastructure, efficient agriculture, rational education, voluntary governance, and equitable sex relations and property norms—aimed at maximizing freedom, health, and happiness. The opening of this work begins with a preface that applauds scientific achievements while indicting pervasive social evils, and declares the aim to outline a system uniting voluntary cooperation with individual liberty. The narrative then shifts to the exemplary Uwins household in the village of Dozen, where a charismatic stranger, Midith, arrives during a storm; he soon reveals he was born on Mars and, after winning the family’s trust, explains Mars–Earth differences, the feasibility of interplanetary travel, and offers a sharp critique of Earth’s poverty, exploitation, coercive government, money and land systems, gender inequities, schooling, and cruelty to animals. He expounds a Marsian worldview grounded in evolution and the nebular hypothesis, then sketches their living arrangements: no cities or countryside, but “big-houses” of about a thousand people set along electric motor-lines amid parks, gardens, and conservatories, with nearly all domestic and industrial functions powered by centralized engines. Early chapters also redefine wealth (healthy bodies and minds, material sufficiency, and mental riches) and begin a taxonomy of labor (productive, unproductive, destructive), before the excerpt breaks off.