The Scarlet Empire

David M. Parry (1852-1915) was the president of Parry Manufacturing Co., Parry Oil and Pipe Line Co., and the Parry Auto Co. He was not a professional writer, but it was his love of capitalism and his hatred of socialism that inspired him to write the dystopian, anti-socialism satire, The Scarlet Empire in 1906. Although Parry was not a professional writer, the novel is actually well done....so well done, in fact, some have suggested that the novel was ghost written.

The protagonist, John Walker is a socialist activist living in New York. Finding capitalism in the U.S. too depressing, Walker attempts suicide by jumping into the ocean at a pier in Coney Island. He is rescued by a man in a diving suit who takes Walker to the lost, under-sea island of Atlantis. Atlantis has a socialist government (the only one of it's kind in 1906) and Walker is initially pleased and excited about living under a political system his has championed for years.

However, it doesn't take long for Walker to become disenchanted with socialism. Parry does an excellent job describing a system where the beliefs of socialism are carried to their logical limits.

The story was written years before the Russian revolution that brought about the Soviet Union, but the system of government in Atlantis predicts the Soviet government rather well. The idea of "equality" has been taken to absurd limits and the people are not encouraged to work hard or bring about any sort of innovations. Like the heavy use of vodka in Soviet Russia, and the advance toward legalized drugs among leftists in the U.S., the Atlantians are encouraged to smoke a narcotic weed - lethe - which dulls their mind and makes the system livable.

I found the idea of placing the story in Atlantis a bit cheesy, but overall, the novel does contain some interesting story lines, as well as destroying socialism at it's core.