any functioning and recognizably human society must have some authority, and that authority must be lodged in individuals, whether singly or in a group. Utopian theorists place the sources of legitimate political authority in various places. Some, such as Plato and More, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her classic feminist utopia Herland (1915), believe that the wise must rule. Aldous Huxley parodies this idea in Brave New World (1932), in which he makes his “World Controllers” suffering servants who are burdened with the knowledge of the dangerous truths that support their society. Bellamy makes individual political authority dependent on success in service to society expressed through labor. In Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), authority in an anarchist society comes from public esteem and respect for an individual’s contributions to the common good.
Utopian thought presents a dynamic understanding and analysis of community. As social and political animals we create places where collectively we can pursue our goals (whether defined by the individual, the family, the community or the state). Community must be a place of both conscious and unconscious attachment. Members of any real and healthy community will be able to critically reflect on its values and compare them with those of other communities. Perhaps this sets that bar very high – after all, utopian communities in reality or in thought are often isolated from the rest of the world by distance or ideology. But mindless acceptance of the values of any community suggests those values are dead and fossilized.
Finally, utopian political thought engages and supports a particular idea of progress: the idea human beings can effect changes in the material conditions of their existence and that these changes are good. Utopian thought is fundamentally linked to technological advances that help cause social and economic change. Dystopia (or anti-utopia) appears as a live genre (and political form) when the dangerous effects of technology and expanding state power become evident. Why is this? Because technology allows ideologies to be realized. Changing the world to fit your beliefs is a lot easier when you have modern weapons and up-to-date tools of repression. But dystopia also reflects the fear that our political and social forms can regress and that old practices of oppression will reappear in new and more sinister guises. Commenting on the seemingly outlandish practices in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Margaret Atwood said there was nothing new in Gilead’s apparatus of repression, that everything in the book had occurred sometime in human history.
Utopia and Politics
Utopian thought is political. Utopian thought attempts to solve political, social and economic problems. Sometimes this can mean reaching toward an ideal state. Sometimes it can be tethered to current societal conditions and, “by showing how the social world may realize the features of a realistic Utopia, political philosophy provides a long-term goal of political endeavor, and in working toward it gives meaning to what we can do today” (Rawls 2001: 128). Utopian thought is not merely some sort of academic exercise. The great utopian thinkers were politically aware and active men and women. They often risked their lives, livelihoods and reputations to advance the dream of a better world.
Utopia is that part of political thought that sees beyond what is to what could be or, more importantly, what should be. While a realized utopia might seem to have transcended politics, the path to utopia, both in theory and in practice, must negotiate the realities of human interaction, of power and planning, of ruling and being ruled. As Jameson says: “politics is always with us, and is always historical, always in the process of changing, of evolving, of disintegrating and deteriorating” (2004: 44).
But utopian thought can also be anti-political. Some utopian thinking is “based on a desire for the death of politics and the end of history” (Firth 2012: 14). Many utopian theorists sought and perhaps still seek what Thomas Hobbes called a “Nunc stans” – a final end point that renders politics, and perhaps even change, unnecessary. Utopia might begin with politics, but utopia seems to seek the end of politics. From Plato to Marx to Bellamy and beyond, utopian thought understands politics as an impediment to attaining justice and equality. A fully realized utopia renders politics unnecessary. As Alan Ryan says, “Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia paint elaborate pictures of life in utopia but share with Marx the presumption that in the absence of conflicts of material interest, administration will be necessary, but politics will not” (2012: 771, original emphasis). Any examination of utopian political thought must address the clear tension between politics and anti-politics.
Jameson says that “utopia is either too political or not political enough.” He claims that “in utopia politics is supposed to be over, along with History, Factionalism, parties, subgroups, special interests … the one thing that cannot be challenged or changed is the system itself.” But, and perhaps paradoxically, utopias often feature “eternal squabbling and bickering … never ending debates and discussions … interminable airing of differences” (2004: 42–3). Utopian thought is hyperpolitical and anti-political. This is not a particularly original observation, but it is one that should always be kept in mind. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed focuses attention on this paradox. Anarres is at once anarchist and organized, lacking an “official” political structure but riven by power struggles. No space can be walled off and declared free of conflict. Unless a utopia is a benevolent dictatorship, such as Plato’s Callipolis (“beautiful city”) in Republic, or, like More’s Utopia, it takes extreme measures to ensure that political debate is curtailed, there will be discussion and disagreement about its management. The expectation of most utopian authors seems to be that the inherent goodness of the community will be self-evident to its citizens. This will serve to limit contestation to relatively minor matters or technical questions of administration. But Jameson’s main point is clearly correct: we should expect that utopian politics will narrow and become focused on administration while simultaneously insinuating itself into all aspects of life.
Whether political or anti-political, utopia must be plausible. Magical powers or the actions of benign aliens that lead to the creation of a perfected society belong to the realm of fantasy. Utopian plans may push the limits of the possible, but they must be real enough to be seen as plausible within their own context. Utopian thought and action are the products of actual human beings, not gods or superheroes.
Are Utopia and Utopian Political Thought Western Manifestations?
Kumar emphatically states that “the modern utopia – the modern western utopia invented in the Europe of the Renaissance – is the only utopia” (1987: 3). Sargent disagrees and claims that utopianism, defined as social dreaming, is a universal human phenomenon (1994: 19). Dreams of an earthly paradise, of places of plenty and of justice, appear across all cultures. A crucial difference between Western and non-Western visions of utopia, Sargent suggests, lies in the fact that non-Christian traditions lack the fundamental break represented by the Fall in the Garden of Eden and the idea that the Fall taints all humanity with original sin (2010: 68). In many ways, the debate over whether or not utopia and utopian political thought are products solely of the West turns on how one defines a set of terms. But what Sargent called “social dreaming,” the “desire for a better way of being in the world,” is universal (Dutton 2010: 250).
Recognizably utopian ideas can be seen in various forms of Chinese thought that stress the creation of harmonious societies. They can also be seen in anti-colonial liberation movements, particularly those of Gandhi in India, and in many African independence struggles, that sought new forms of social, economic and political life uninfluenced by the colonizing power. Some of these movements might be understood as retrotopian, since many of them stressed the restoration of a time before European imperialism disrupted traditional indigenous ways of life.
In this book I focus on Western thought about utopia. I do so for several reasons, the quality and persuasiveness of which the reader is free to judge for herself. First, the main development of utopian political thought has been in those places commonly identified with “the West.” If students want to develop an understanding of the main tendencies of this tradition of inquiry and activism, they will need to examine its key exponents, from Plato to More to the present. Second, while utopian aspirations are universal, the systematic articulation of utopian political thought