Utopia

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Mark Stephen Jendrysik. Utopia

Contents

Guide

Pages

Series title. Key Concepts in Political Theory

Utopia

Copyright page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 What is Utopia? What is Utopian Political Thought?

Homo utopicus: The Mindset of the Utopian Animal

Defining Utopia/Utopianism

Types of Utopia

Defining Utopian Political Thought

Utopia and Politics

Are Utopia and Utopian Political Thought Western Manifestations?

2 Utopianism Before Utopia

Sparta as Utopian Myth/Model

Plato’s Republic: The Great Thought Experiment

The Problem of Total Commitment

The Bible as Utopian and Dystopian Inspiration

3 Inventing Utopia

Utopia as Critique

The Just Society

Religion and Politics in Utopia

More’s Utopia as Political Thought

4 Utopia and the Age of Revolution

Utopian Dreaming in the English Revolution

Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers

James Harrington’s Immortal Commonwealth

The American Revolution and Thomas Paine

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution

The Problem of Utopia and Revolution

5 Utopia and Modernity

Varieties of Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Utopian Thought

Bellamy’s Disciplined Utopia

Morris’s Pastoral Utopia

Wells’s Platonic Utopia

Gilman’s Feminist Utopia

Twentieth-Century Variants on the Theme

Utopia as a Process

Toward Dystopia

6 Utopia and/as Ideology

Marx/Marxism as Utopian

Ernst Bloch: Hope and Dreams

Libertarianism as Utopian Ideology

Designing Libertarian Utopia

Utopia as Liberation

Whither Utopian Thought?

7 From Utopia to Dystopia

Dystopian Themes: Freedom/Isolation/Hidden Evil

Zamyatin’s Machine State

Huxley and Inhuman Stability

Orwell and the Nihilism of Power

Atwood and Dystopian Isolation

The Dystopian Post-human

The Anthropocene as Dystopia

The Necessity of Dystopian Political Thought

8 Does Utopia Have a Future?

The Status of Utopia

The Future of Utopian Theory

What is to be done?

References

Index

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Mark Stephen Jendrysik

Any student who begins to study utopian political thought faces a daunting yet exciting task. Daunting because of the vast scope of the subject and its enormous and growing historical and philosophical range. Exciting because utopian thought calls forth a desire for a better world and presents the student with a massive menu of choices in terms of what and whom to study and where to place her energies.

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Utopian thought looks toward a social, political and economic organization for humanity that is self-evidently right to the people who live under it. Utopia is aspiration, planning and action directed toward attaining a more just society. But an honest contemporary utopian will recognize the impossibility of a final answer. To avoid the clear dangers of utopian ideals enabling oppressive regimes, she will aim for utopias that recognize human autonomy and liberty and the dynamic nature of human society. Sargent sums up this approach: “most utopias aim to improve the human lot not by repression but by enhancement, and as long as we do not aim for perfection or eliminate the possibility of change, such utopias can stand up to the all-too-prevalent dystopias of the present” (2006: 15).

Sargent says, “dissatisfaction is the beginning of utopianism” (2010: 48). But utopian thought must do more than just point out problems. Political thought that merely critiques existing injustices provides no way forward. Utopian thinkers must provide a meaningful set of ideas that might be applied to contemporary society. We should always keep in mind that many things that once seemed impossible are now commonplace. Utopia does not arise naturally. Its creation represents an act of human will that creates a break in history. Consider More’s island of Utopia. The island was once a part of the mainland. It was severed from that connection by the order of King Utopus. What does this mean? Utopian thought and action require a separation from the mundane, from the existing world and its ways of life. Utopian thought seeks to open mental space for new and different understandings of how to organize our lives. In doing so it tries to expand the limits of what is possible and desirable by challenging political, social and economic structures that appear “natural.” So, in Agrarian Justice (1797), Thomas Paine tries to change the minds of his contemporaries about the meanings of property, merit and desert. Karl Marx makes a similar effort, working to fundamentally shift understandings about the relations of labor and capital.

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