Eloi, Okies And The Pioneer

"Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

"'Communism,' said I to myself."

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 6, p. 35.

Clearly, the Time Traveler means communal living, not bureaucratic dictatorship.

"Once aloft, Scranton had adopted the standard economy of all tribes of highly isolated nomad herdsmen, to whom the only real form of wealth is grass: a commune, within which everyone helped himself to what he needed, subject only to the rules which established the status of his job in the community."

-James Blish, A Life For The Stars IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 131-234 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 154.

Money is used only for foreign trade.

(Before we move on, here is another interesting quotation from A Life For The Stars, given that we are now in the year 2024:

("The first interstellar expedition was launched from the Jovian satellary system in 2021..."

-CHAPTER FOUR, p. 168.

(It is not only Robert Heinlein's Future History that has dated.)

"'Any ship is a natural communist state.'"

-"The Troublemakers," p. 104.

Not any ship! The speaker refers, more specifically, to a large spaceship. Presumably, if a spaceship, like a sea ship, is to function as a ship, i.e., is to travel from port to port, then it needs a line of command from captain to officers to crew? That is not a commune. However, this spaceship is large enough to carry a community of several thousand people. That community might function as a commune.

Evan Friday thinks that the ship should be a meritorious hierarchy but again that refers to the line of command, not to the community.