After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the more directly political applications of the generic utopian concept fell into disrepute. The notion that human societies can improve dramatically and swiftly, chiefly through revolution; the expectation that human nature forged in such circumstances would emerge morally cleansed and recharged; and the idea that a morally superior proletariat would be the chief agent of such a transition are now upheld by very few. To its critics (including many insiders) Marxism-Leninism was the chief cause of the practical failure of these assumptions, which often resulted in oppressively dystopian regimes. Notwithstanding efforts to reconstruct the Marxist edifice on humanist foundations in the 1960s and 1970s, the project was largely abandoned by the mid 1980s.
Nonetheless, the world has moved on, and after the 2008 economic crisis, the relevance of any critique of a persistently unstable and exploitative capitalism system became increasingly clear. The present collection of essays addresses this context. Utopia seems useful again—witness the popularity of Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists (2017)—because alternative ways of viewing the world now seem again insufficient and/or defective. The general proposition that we should be able to conceive of much better worlds, and try to create them, then, seems widely relevant once again. The general question at issue is whether anything useful has been learned respecting the relationship between utopia and dystopia, such that a chastened but more mature political thought can reappropriate the concept of utopia without once again embracing its more manifest failures.
The present collection engages very little with the concept of dystopia by way of any admission of utopian guilt, and that is a pity. Stalin is mentioned twice, Mao three times, and Pol Pot not at all. Their regimes killed about a hundred million people applying utopia to politics, and many historians regard them as no better than Hitler’s. But no historical account is offered here of why. Auschwitz is condemned as a threat to utopia (p. 277), Kolyma not. Why? The Left’s ostrich-like, persistent incapacity to come to terms with the worst parts of its history is thus revealed again. Why did Leninism destroy the possibility of opposition? Is unanimity the heart of utopian aspiration in politics? Did Marxism necessarily terminate in Bolshevism? Is utopianism more antipolitical than political? Such questions demand a historical response, not merely pure theory.
One would expect, given the title of this book, that some concession would be made to the contradictions among the three perspectives indicated in the subtitle: In 1921, Lenin killed off anarchism in the new Bolshevik state, and at the 10th Party Congress and in suppression of Kronstadt also any radical (Soviet) democratic alternative. Without a confrontation with these tragic developments, left thinking cannot move forward. No Utopia Without Dystopia should be the motto of such explorations. One editor simply tells us that “the perversions into which earlier utopias once fell have been more or less purged and their dangers diffused” (p. xxiii), as if that was the end of the story. And, the presumption seems to persist that Marxism is not itself a form of utopianism (p. xxviii), which is now wholly unsustainable. The editors criticize utopian studies for not engaging sufficiently with such themes but then hardly do so themselves, ignoring much that has been written in this field by non-Marxists.
Nonetheless, the 14 essays in Political Uses of Utopia, chosen from publications across some 40 years of scholarship (so why are these billed as “new” perspectives?) offer a broader plea for the readmission of utopia to political debate, albeit one skewed by their temporal asynchonicity. Marx, central to many of these essays, is the specific subject of one by Franck Fischbach. But there is little concession to the argument that the Marxian approach to utopia has generally been very biased and one-sided, and that the pretence that “scientific socialism” dwarfed and negated “utopian socialism” has long been highly suspect. The fact that Marxism continues, through writers like Frederic Jameson, to exert a considerable influence on the field of utopian studies is not found remarkable, much less suspect, or worthy of scrutiny. One editor insists that a “dialogue” with Marxism is the most important aspect of modern utopianism (p. xxvii). To do this, a dialogue between Marxists and non-Marxists is necessary. Miguel Abensour’s very dated but still provocative and incisive essay here, from 1971–72, shows Marx and Engels engaged with earlier socialists, though much more is known today about this relationship, but its plea for a revival of the programmatic aspects of Marxian communism (p. 45) seems hopelessly misplaced today.
A 2004 essay by a leading German utopian scholar, Richard Saage, asks whether the classic definition of utopia has relevance for our future. Here, at least, Karl Popper’s critique of utopia is utilized, though it is appraised as having missed the target (p. 62). But the dystopias of George Orwell and others are treated seriously, as posing a real challenge to utopianism, and the intolerance of Marxian communists for other forms of utopias is acknowledged (p. 77). Francisco Fernandez Buey gives a good contextual overview of Thomas More’s original work and some of its interpreters, with some reflections on Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Bloch and the “end of utopia” debate. Peter Hallward treats the issue of a “general will” in relation to the utopian tradition. Étienne Balibar focuses on the contrast of “utopia” to “imagination.” John Grant examines the specific contribution of Frederic Jameson to modern debates on the subject. Michèle Riot-Sarcy examines some early nineteenth-century French approaches to utopia. Michael Löwy discusses the contemporary global justice movement. Ruth Kinna looks at some of the many points of intersection between utopianism and anarchism. A series of essays by Jacques Rancière, Raymond Geuss, and Étienne Tassin then look at some of the more theoretical implications of the main concept. The collection is rounded out by a fine essay by S. D. Chrostowska, which distances contemporary radical politics from many forms of utopianism and makes a plea for utopian politics as a politics of “happiness” (p. 291).
Collectively, these essays indicate the increasing attractiveness of the idea of utopia for current movements seeking social and political change, as well as the likely irrelevance of many traditional approaches to the central issues raised by the concept. Some disclaimers notwithstanding, this penetrating and well-chosen collection of essays, many of which have not previously been available in English, is a useful place to start engaging with the broader problems the title indicates. “Utopia” will continue to mean many different things, but its relevance to contemporary affairs can now be restored. Liberalism, too, has presented its utopia and this too has been found wanting. The time is ripe to reassess the entire subject, to recognize that its “three faces,” as Lyman Tower Sargent terms them, require a unitary approach, and to use a confrontation with past failings as a means of projecting better futures.
