Introduction to the Utopian

Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich–for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?^[1]
–Thomas More

The utopian impulse—the urge to transform the world and create a better one—has existed in every human society, though the form of that impulse has varied widely according to historical circumstances.^[2] In 1516 Thomas More coined the term Utopia, Greek Utopos–ου-τοπος, a pun meaning non-place (utopia) and good place (eutopia) at once, but we should not conflate the utopian impulse with the literary genre of utopia. Indeed, More’s vision of a socially, politically, and economically perfect world is rooted in the historical conditions of 16th century England. Even though purely imaginary utopias, abstract utopias, are often widely impractical or impossible, the tradition of concrete utopias, possible and historical utopian visions, continues to inspire real and practical changes.

Such a distinction is useful, but in no way should the abstract and concrete utopias be seen as diametric opposites. In fact, critics and scholars of the utopian theorize the interrelationship of the abstract and the concrete in increasingly complex ways. Consider Max Weber, whose utilitarian views were often considered “anti-utopian,” when in reality they emphasized the concrete over and above the abstract. In his essay “The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy” (1904), Weber takes an essentially Platonic view of the utopian impulse. The utopian exists not as a reality but as an ideal toward which we should strive. This ideal, following Weber, will take different forms across different societies, because every society will face a different set of real-world historical circumstances that act to circumvent the utopian dream in reality. Though Weber was sympathetic to certain utopian ideas, he always weighed such utopian longings against reality. Even when he judged such thinking unrealistic, Weber still believed that utopian thinking pushes us to reach for the ideal of being responsible for the restructuring and improvement of our own social life.

If the utopian impulse in real life has resulted in change to the social order, what might we call the dystopian impulse? You might assume that the dystopian impulse is essentially destructory, apocalyptic violence come to sweep the world of evil and inequity. But that’s not the case; the drive toward death is not the dystopian impulse. Both the utopian and dystopian impulses display a desire for a better world, even if they proceed by different means. The dystopian and utopian impulses are different sides of the same coin. With that said, dystopian fiction does take advantage of the drive toward destruction.^[3] We more and more, as a culture, love to imagine the end of the world. Perhaps on some level we recognize that the post-apocalypse is already here; it’s just not as exciting as we thought it would be. In that sense, every post-apocalyptic story with a strong dystopian impulse is not an embrace of destruction and death but an embrace of the destruction and death of the political systems that have brought us to this contemporary apocalyptic landscape.

We title this chapter the utopian tradition and not utopian genre because tradition provides a more encompassing view. Rather than a single genre, such as utopian and dystopian fiction, this tradition also contains manifestos, treatises, and political platforms. Utopian thought has also had a direct effect on reality itself, making utopian thinking much more than a literary affair. Many utopian projects (such as the Romantic Pantisocracy in 1794) have ended in disaster, yet others (such as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, or Karl Marx) have gone on, albeit transformed, to influence many actual, real world developments in urban design, government, trade unions, and city planning. Even more so, theorists of the utopian have identified the ‘utopian impulse,’ a fundamental characteristic of all human art and society.^[4] Since utopia is a topic that touches on subjects as varied as aesthetics, economics, and politics, the word ‘tradition’ provides a large umbrella under which many types of philosophies, projects, and works of art may be included.