I'm guessing that it's "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy. I bought it recently and the date 1887 reminded me of it. I haven't read anything beyond the introduction and I don't know if I want to continue. The introduction itself is stomach-turning.
You are correct. But oddly enough, I didn't find it stomach truning at all. Reading this utterly, fantastically naive utopian novel and comparing its futuristic vision of an ideal American government-run society in the year 2000 with the reality of the past century was an experience in pure schadenfreude for me.
I think every Freeper should read it, and that we should never stop beating modern Progressive Democrats over the head with it.
Getting this book back in front of the public consciousness as the intellectual root of modern American progressivism will go a long way towards humiliating and destroying the entire Democratic Party agenda.