The impacts and tradeoffs of technology, communism and inequality in the fiction of "Brave New World"

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: B, Stanford University, language: English, abstract: In Aldous Huxley's piece, "Brave New World", one can find multiple ideas taken from Marxist ideology; specifically from Marx' and Engels' Communist Manifesto. The role of technology is in both works related to the creation of multiple classes, although with different power structures. This paper will analyze to what extent technology is pertinent in the pursuit of utopia, drawing parallels from the Communist Manifesto (where technology, which leads to a particular mode of production, is under attack) and the fictional piece, Brave New World (where technology also impacts the social order arguably negatively). The economic crisis of 1929, more commonly known as the Great Depression and Keynesian consumerist theory as a response to it, showed that there was a need for an alternative to address the shortcomings of capitalism. Socialism, was an enticing concept that not only sparked revolutions of nation states but also has become entrenched in modern culture.