Ever since H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1885, science fiction has served as a not-so-secret way to unpack problems of social class. Today, we tend to think of these sorts of tales as “anti-capitalist,” insofar as the plot directly addresses the injustices of a class system that separates people into the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
In the far future of The Time Machine, it’s not very subtle. The Morlocks are literally eating the Eloi. With his far-future dystopia, Wells darkly suggested that the problems of a capitalistic hierarchy are inescapable, with half of the human race destined to be consumed by the other.
