The Concept of Utopia

THE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA RUTH LEVITAS Ralahine Classics Peter Lang THE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA The meaning of the term utopia is rarely questioned, although it is used in widely differing ways. This classic text, first published in 1990, analyses the contested concept of utopia and examines how it has been used by commentators and social theorists. It is the only book to concentrate on the meaning of the term utopia, and to demonstrate the variety of ways in which it has been defined, in terms of content, form, and function. The author examines the use of utopia by Marx, Engels, Karl Mannheim, Robert Owen, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse. She defines utopia as the expression in texts and political practice of the desire for a better way of living and argues that utopian desire remains an active element in culture and politics. “This book, central to the constitution of utopian studies as a field, argues for a structural pluralism in which, according to the social constructions of desire in specific historical periods, the three components of form, content, and function are combined in distinct and historically unique ways.” Professor Fredric Jameson, Department of Comparative Literature, Duke University “Writing with clarity and grace, Levitas offers a sustained, intelligent, and critical examination of major definitions of utopia, addressing a range of recurring issues that trouble most attempts at definition. This is a strong and significant book, a far-ranging, insightful, and incisive exploration of the concept of utopia.” Professor Peter Stillman, Political Science Department, Vassar College “Levitas, in her lucid and excellent book, supplies a state-of-the-art discussion of definitional debates in the field of utopian studies. The Concept of Utopia will be of extraordinary value to anyone who teaches utopian thought.” Dr Richard Gunn, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh “As Levitas acknowledges, the publication date of the first edition of her classic work was inauspicious. Momentous changes were to usher in a near-consensus that we had reached the ‘end of history’ and that capitalism was ‘the only game in town.’ What place could be left for utopia? Twenty years later, how different things look. A neo-liberal capitalist juggernaut is out of control, threatening ecological disaster and offering only global inequalities, dislocations, and conflicts. To the re-emergent claim that ‘another world is possible’ it can be added that another world is necessary. The republication of Levitas’s classic work of recovery, analysis, and advocacy of utopia is entirely auspicious.” Professor Ted Benton, Department of Sociology, University of Essex Ruth Levitas is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol. She is co-founder and former chair of the Utopian Studies Society (Europe) and vice-chair of the William Morris Society. Her books include The Ideology of the New Right, The Interpretation of Official Statistics (co-edited with Will Guy), The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour, and Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain (co-edited with Christina Pantazis and David Gordon). Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, the sequel to this book, is forthcoming. Ralahine Utopian Studies - Volume Three THE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA Ralahine Utopian Studies Series editors: Raffaella Baccolini (University of Bologna, at Forlì) Joachim Fischer (University of Limerick) Tom Moylan (University of Limerick) Managing editor: Michael J. Griffin (University of Limerick) Volume 3 PETER LANG Oxford l Bern l Berlin l Bruxelles l Frankfurt am Main l New York l Wien Ruth Levitas THE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA PETER LANG Oxford l Bern l Berlin l Bruxelles l Frankfurt am Main l New York l Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942692 First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Philip Allan, a division of Simon & Schuster International Group. Cover image: ‘Space/no Space’ © Ruth Levitas, based on Screen 4 by PRP Landscapes. ISSN 1661-5875 ISBN 978-3-0353-0010-9 © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany For Rob and in memory of my mother Liz Levitas who first introduced me to News from Nowhere Contents Preface to the Second Edition ix Acknowledgements to the First Edition xv Introduction 1 chapter 1 Ideal Commonwealths: The Emerging Tradition 11 chapter 2 Castles in the Air: Marx, Engels and Utopian Socialism 41 chapter 3 Mobilising Myths: Utopia and Social Change in Georges Sorel and Karl Mannheim 69 chapter 4 Utopian Hope: Ernst Bloch and Reclaiming the Future 97 chapter 5 The Education of Desire: The Rediscovery of William Morris 123 chapter 6 An American Dream: Herbert Marcuse and the Transformation of the Psyche 151 chapter 7 A Hundred Flowers: Contemporary Utopian Studies 179 chapter 8 Future Perfect: Retheorising Utopia 207 Notes 231 Select Bibliography 253 Index 259 Ralahine Classics Utopia has been articulated and theorized for centuries. There is a matrix of commentary, critique, and celebration of utopian thought, writing, and practice that ranges from ancient Greece, into the European middle ages, throughout Asian and indigenous cultures, in Enlightenment thought and in Marxist and anarchist theory, and in the socio-political theories and movements (especially racial, gender, ethnic, sexual, and national lib- eration; and ecology) of the last two centuries. While thoughtful writing on utopia has long been a part of what Ernst Bloch called our critical cul- tural heritage, a distinct body of multi- and inter-disciplinary work across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences emerged from the 1950s and 1960s onward under the name of ‘utopian studies’. In the interest of bring- ing the best of this scholarship to a wider, and new, public, the editors of Ralahine Utopian Studies are committed to identifying key titles that have gone out of print and publishing them in this series as classics in utopian scholarship. Preface to the Second Edition The manuscript ofThe Concept of Utopia was completed in the summer of 1989, and the book first published in 1990. The timing was inauspicious. The intervening months had seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communist governments including those in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union. Political discourse in the West was triumphalist. Francis Fukuyama declared ‘the end of history’, claiming that ‘What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.1 Television and press commentary on the collapse of communist regimes referred repeatedly to the collapse of utopia, with utopia itself equated with Marxism, communism and totalitarianism. Politically, both Marxism and utopia were regarded as ‘over’, and wider political and intellectual discourses followed the same trend. It was not a good moment to bring out a book which is explicitly about the idea of utopia, a large proportion of which is concerned with Marxism and utopia. The eclipse of Marxism has continued. In Spaces of Hope, David Harvey reflects on ‘the difference a generation makes’: in the 1970s, he observes, arguments for the continuing relevance of Marx were filtered through the work of Louis Althusser or Antonio Gramsci, even as academics and stu- dents engaged in reading groups on Capital. Yet in the early twenty-first century, when the depredations of global capitalism and violent conflicts over natural resources are obvious for all to see, neither Marx nor Marx- ists are read.2 The failure of Soviet communism is still assumed to be abso- lute and undifferentiated, despite consequent violent conflicts expressed in ethnic and nationalist terms in, for example, the former Yugoslavia and in Chechnia – and despite the dramatic falls in life expectancy in the former Soviet Union and Hungary. By extension, Marx, bizarrely seen as x Preface to the Second Edition the architect of twentieth-century communism, remains off limits. And ideologically, the ‘self-evident’ failure of this utopian project is still used to invalidate aspirations for alternative modes of social organisation and ways of being that can be construed as ‘utopian’ in the widest sense. Such alternatives are more necessary than ever in the current geo- political and environmental context. The eight Millennium Development goals, set in 2000 for achievement by 2015, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, and ensuring environmental sustainability, will not be met.3 If, as Theodor Adorno wrote, ‘There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one shall go hungry any more’, achieving this seems beyond the capability of hegemonic capitalism.4 The context of global warming and climate change makes clear that environmental sustainability will also not be achieved. Indeed, the potential costs of this in one developed nation have been set out in the Stern Report, commissioned by the British government, with estimates at 40 per cent of GDP and rising.5 The global consequences are momentous. Usable land resources will become scarcer as higher temperatures bring rising sea-levels and unstable weather patterns.

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