The Dangers of Communism

The Time Machine was published in 1895, seven years after Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Although the communist movement was gaining in popularity, many people feared a breakdown of long held social class systems. Because of the industrial boom, the proletariat classes in Western European countries were already growing and beginning to lash out against the richer capitalists. Communism seemed to offer salvation to the laborers and danger to the capitalists by spreading the wealth to those who needed it, rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few.

The Time Machine stresses the dangers of communism to the reader, using a pseudo-scientific explanation of Darwin’s evolution theory to create the semblance of legitimacy. The Time Traveler arrives in the year 8200, he expected that “the people…would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, and everything” (83). Instead he finds two races that have devolved from the peak of humanity because they lacked capitalist competition. The “higher” race descended from the capitalist, is graceful and delicate. The “lower” race, descended from the laborers, is entirely bestial.

The Eloi (meaning elite) are like children, easily amused and distracted, but still human. The Traveler claims to have never “met people more indolent or more easily fatigued” (86). They lack machinery, complicated speech, physical abilities, everything that humanity prides itself on having. When Weena is drowning, only the Traveler has strength enough to save her. The Eloi do not even have the ability to consume meat or refined foods; they can only live off what they can easily take from nature, i.e. fruits and vegetables. The landscape reflects the change in the people because “the house and the cottage…such characteristic features of…English landscape had disappeared” (88) which the Traveler blames on communism.

The Morlocks (combining the words for human trash and warlock) are bestial laborers that creep out at night to kill the defenseless higher race. The proletariats have become almost like nocturnal apes. The Traveler quotes Darwin’s example of the Kentucky caves to show how the race has evolved from working all day in factories to now living underground. They react solely on instinct, killing and stealing. They maintain some of the machines underground, providing for the Eloi because the work is now imprinted into their genes.

While both races have devolved, because the Eloi began as capitalists (who are naturally smarter and more evolved), they have devolved into children, while the Morlocks have devolved into beasts. The class struggle that was just gaining steam while Wells was writing The Time Machine is projected into the story. The Morlocks are finally getting revenge for being “thrust out of sunshine and ease” (120) by the capitalists by savagely picking off the poor Eloi. Wells allows that the capitalists had done wrong by denying the proletarians wealth and luxury, but he is also warning the reader of what will happen if communism is allowed to continue unchecked. Not only will humanity devolve, but eventually the brutish proletarians will have their final revenge by killing the Eloi who have what little grace left behind by their humanity.