Did Thomas More really want to abolish private property, according to Joanne Paul?

Joanne Paul's answer is both and neither. She argues More saw property, wealth and status as fictions society gives weight to, and satirised them to show they are unreal, a theme tied to his view that death makes everyone equal. Laura Ashe adds that More still made compromises, rising to Lord Chancellor and wearing the gold chain while knowing it was a chain.

• Paul notes that the 1518 map of the island, by Ambrosius Holbein, does not match the crescent shape in the text and instead resembles a memento mori.
• In Paul's reading, Utopia resembles the afterlife, where every person is just like their neighbour.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-15). Read the whole episode summary →

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