SOURCE: "Communism?" and "Solution," in Introduction to Utopia, Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1945, pp. 66-83.

In the following chapters from his critical study Introduction to Utopia, Donner addresses the debate concerning More's portrayal of communism; he concludes that the Utopia indirectly rejects communism as a solution to social ills, arguing that human behavior, rather than social institutions, must change.

So far the apparent tendency of the Utopia seems to agree tolerably well with what we know of that "righteous and holy judge" who was its author. But we are not going to escape so easily. Of all the features of the Utopian commonwealth the most notable is the community of ownership. Yet we possess a most emphatic contradiction of the very principle of communism from the pen of More himself. In the Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, written during his imprisonment in the Tower, in expectancy of martyrdom, at a...