Eutopia No Longer: Surrendering of the Blueprint Utopias

Introduction

Imagine a world in which all conflicts of conscience, ethics, and personal interest were non-existent; a society in which the barriers to a decent and joyous life for all human beings had been removed; a society in which the resourcefulness of modern technology and industry was put to the task of decreasing labor and increasing leisure; a perfect picture of the world in which peace, equality, and harmony are universal. These elements characterize the western tradition of utopian literature. Why do these natural desires for the future of humanity and society lead to the powerful counter-movement of anti-utopianism? For many critics of utopianism, the attempt to map out a blueprint or plan for an ideal society inevitably leads to authoritarianism, tyranny, and totalitarianism to achieve and maintain that ideal. In short, the repudiation of utopia by liberal or anti-communist, anti-utopians stems from witnessing the dominating events of the twentieth century: two immeasurably destructive world wars, Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism, the Cold War, and more. Misguided historical interpretation has “generally lumped together all the varieties of utopia as one and the same thing” (Kumar, 91). Consequently, “More or Morris points in the same direction as the utopian theory of Owen or Marx” (Kumar, 91), which help the detractors of utopianism form a tenuous connection between “blueprint” utopianism and the blights of Stalinism and Nazism.

Unfortunately, any further investigation into the rise and domination of anti-utopian sentiment in the twentieth century is beyond the scope of this discussion. Here, the endangered nature of the “blueprint” utopias or literary utopian works is the principal concern. The following will: briefly define the tradition of “blueprint” utopias; discuss the principal arguments against “blueprint” utopias; examine the responses from utopian apologists; and attempt to reconcile blueprint plans and ideas as a necessary component to utopianism.


“Blueprint” Utopias

According to The Oxford English Dictionary, utopia is defined as a place or state, ideally perfect in respect of politics, law, customs, and conditions. As social theory, it is dismissed as an impossibly ideal scheme. There are numerous genres and categories of utopias, most of them being postmodern. There are even conflicts between content and function within specific types of utopias. For the purpose of this essay, blueprint utopias will be defined as literary narratives characterized by two primary functions: “a critical function which draws attention to the defects of existing arrangements;” and “a prospective function which outlines alternative ideas or arrangements to be formulated in more satisfactory terms later” (Hudson, 111). Put more eloquently, Krishan Kumar states, “The utopian writer lives in two worlds. His is correspondingly a double vision. He looks down from utopian heights with . . . comic relish for the follies and vanities of his own world. He looks up from his own world with a tragic sense of the unattainability of the ideal” (Kumar, 96). Examples of this literary canon include, but are not limited to: Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two, Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis, and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia.


Against Planning Freedom

After the fall of communism, the standard critique of utopia has come to be tacitly accepted, even among those who see value in utopianism. “The standard critique of utopia, advanced by Central European intellectuals maintains that utopia is not only unrealistic and impractical but dangerous, in so far as it encourages human beings to give vent to totalist . . . states, and provides an illusory basis for human action” (Hudson, 17). Can blueprint utopianism be considered an instance of totalitarian thought? The rational aspects of blueprint utopianism, namely the detailed descriptions of planning society, have been severely criticized by a number of modern thinkers, including Karl Popper, Friederich Hayek, Isaiah Berlin, and Leszek Kolakowski.

Critics of utopian thinking and planning attack both the methods and the goals of utopians. Dating back to Plato’s Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s ideal city-state. He claimed that it sacrificed the values of individualism and self-interest in order to achieve the goal of group cohesion. Aristotle believed that “too much unity or identity of interests can lead to social defects, such as loss of individual identity” (Richter, 5). Aristotle’s argument against blueprints in not especially applicable to this discussion, but it effectively sets the basic point of the conflict between blueprint utopianism and its critics: “The idea of planning freedom in detail . . . is an oxymoron at best” (Jacoby 3) and a dystopian nightmare at worst. The following will consider the arguments posed against utopian planning by notable intellectuals, theorists, and scholars. In addition, prominent works of dystopian literature will be addressed as a powerful extension of liberal, anti-utopian arguments.


The Liberal Assault

To describe the liberal case against blueprint utopianism, the principal focus will begin with the anti-utopian arguments of Isaiah Berlin. Of course there are numerous political theorists and thinkers who have attacked utopian planning in the name of liberalism, but Berlin has done so with a persistence and influence greater than the majority of the others. This is not to say that Popper, Kolakowski, Talmon, Hayek, and others will not be cited, but Berlin “is representative of a particular school of liberal thinking that regards utopianism as a sui generic mode of thought inimical to liberal-democratic theory . . . and, if scholarly citations are any indication, [he] is also one of its leading exponents” (Goodwin 2, 99).

Before reaching Berlin’s critique of utopianism, it is necessary to describe his defining features of utopia. According to Berlin, the main characteristic of most utopias is the fact that they are static. “Nothing in them alters, for they have reached perfection, and nobody can wish to alter a condition in which all natural human wishes are fulfilled” (Berlin, 20). Since the anti-utopians hold that blueprint utopias map out a perfect social harmony or human condition, an idea closely linked to millenarianism, the contradictions with liberal ideology occurs during attaining and maintaining utopian plans. For Berlin, no perfect solution is possible in human affairs. The attempt to produce it is likely will lead to great harm. Berlin poses a rhetorical question, “if it is possible to attain a final solution to all human ills, then what price could be too high to pay for such a goal?” (Goodwin, 60). His assumption is that, “those convinced they had discovered the only true path to ultimate salvation would also feel they had a license to do away with the liberty of choice . . . resistance would have to be stamped out, and hundreds of thousands might have to perish to make millions happy for all time (Berlin, 15). This, according to Berlin, connects blueprint utopias to Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Achieving utopia became the justification for the slaughter of millions in wars or revolutions: “gas chambers, gulags, genocide, all the monstrosities for which our century will be remembered – are the price men must pay for the felicity of future generations” (Berlin, 16). Berlin’s liberal case against utopian planning consists of establishing a link between utopia as political theory and the pursuit of absolute, monistic goals.

It appears evident that anti-utopianism, “presented by refugee scholars of great repute and allure, . . . became the conventional wisdom of our time; it damned utopianism as the scourge of history” (Jacoby 2, 52). Viewing Isaiah Berlin’s work as overvalued, historian Russell Jacoby states that Karl Popper “was the first and probably the most important figure . . . to elaborate a forceful anti-utopianism” (Jacoby 2, 52). Popper believes that utopianism is misplaced rationalism. Utopias accept as true that “all rational political action must be based upon a more or less clear and detailed description or blueprint of our ideal state” (Kumar, 90). To him, the utopian method must lead to violence and suffering. Jacoby notes that, “[Popper] dedicated The Poverty of Historicism to the ‘memory of countless man and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny” (Jacoby 2, 52). Popper’s assumptions appear to have exposed the dangerous form of social engineering lurking below utopian ideas, ever threatening to suppress individualism and pluralism. Popper makes a sharp distinction between the sinister “utopian engineering” and what he describes as “piecemeal engineering.” “The piecemeal reformer ‘tinkers’ but does not pursue a ‘method of re-designing [society] as a whole.’ On the other hand, the . . . ‘utopian engineer’ aims at ‘remodeling the whole of society in accordance with a definite plan or blueprint’” (Jacoby 2, 54). Popper insisted that the reality of human nature and life was too unpredictable for radical reformers or social engineers. Utopian plans require a huge gamble in the name of perfection and harmony. It could never reach its potential and redeem its lofty promises. As more effort is put into radical reforms, the less likely the end result would be anything desirable, eventually deteriorating into an authoritarian and totalitarian dystopia.

In 1944, a year before Popper’s The Open Society, Friederich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom. Here Hayek, like his contemporary Popper, argues against planning on the basis that it inevitably leads to totalitarianism. For Hayek, “communism and fascism are merely variants of the same totalitarianism” (Parker, 16). But unlike the previously mentioned liberal thinkers, Hayek was an economist first and foremost. He did not reject the assumptions of utopian blueprints, but wished to modify the content. His utopian blueprint was that of a pure, free-market society. Here socialist blueprints in utopia are criticized and are replaced with “a spontaneous order (‘catallaxy’) developing organically and taking the form of . . . disorganized capitalism” (Parker, 17). Hayek’s argument displays the common belief among anti-utopians that planning socialism creates communism, which plants the corrupting seed of totalitarianism in utopian projects.

Echoing the ideas of Berlin and Popper, Leszek Kolakowski also believes that blueprint utopianism leads to a totalitarian coercion. He fears that “a feasible utopian world must presuppose that people have lost their creativity and freedom . . . and that all of mankind has achieved the perfect satisfaction of needs and accepted a perpetual deadly stagnation as its normal condition” (Kolakowski, 238). He continues to warn that, “the victory of the utopian dreams would lead us to a totalitarian nightmare and the utter downfall of civilization” (Goodwin, 56). It seems perfectly reasonable to assume that with any utopia, there would have to be a strong central authority to guarantee the proper construction of harmony and happiness while eliminating forms of pluralism deemed subversive to society. For example, look closely at Edward Bellamy’s vision of the American future in Looking Backward. Although published in 1888, it seems like an eerie ideological glorification of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The government is deeply nationalistic and is an all-powerful entity; citizens must divide all profits equally, and their loyalty is guaranteed through the strict military discipline of an “industrial army.” Incentives for high achievement in industry consist of bronze, silver, and gold medals which somehow spur ambition and performance. The arts and aesthetic pluralism are stifled or neglected by the façade of a militaristic society. This fear of planning and controlling society stems partially from Kolakowski’s personal experiences escaping from socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, but it also clearly evident within the text of famous blueprint utopian works. By offering itself as a practical, political system, “[utopia] provides new names for old injustice, . . . Utopias . . . have become ideologically poisonous, . . . a device to force the door of paradise” (Kolakowski, 240).


On Dystopias

As most college undergraduates delight to assert in their essays on utopia, the detailed blueprints of More and Bellamy are flawed, oppressive, and inherently incompatible with liberal and democratic ideology. They claim profound insights when they note the deficiencies of these plans when compared with today’s pluralistic, diverse, and free society. In Utopia, a citizen cannot travel from city to city without approval by the government; freedom of religion is respected and celebrated, but the personal renunciation of religion in any form is a crime; “In Christianopolis, Johann Valentin Andreae described the clothing women wear in a seventeenth-century utopia: they ‘have only two suits of clothes, one for their work, one for the holidays; and for all classes they are made alike . . . the color for all is white or ashen grey” (Jacoby, 170). In other works, such as B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two, the description of utopia outraged so many contemporary readers, that it effectively became a dystopian piece depending upon the temperament of the reader. An extreme cynicism of the genre affects even the apathetic readers of blueprint utopias. Where does this come from?

The influence of dystopian work on the twentieth century is as overwhelming as it is invisible. “From Brave New World to 1984, generations of high school and college students learn the lesson that utopias in general, and communism in particular, are not only doomed, but destructive” (Jacoby 2, 8). It is the popular belief that when Aldous Huxley imagined a genetically engineered and drugged society, he was imagining a world in which the utopian planners intended society to be oppressed or stifled. Anti-utopians (and the majority of the apathetic public) see 1984 not as a society designed to terrorize or create unhappiness. Within the narrative, these societies were specifically designed to be utopian, not dystopian. This might lead some to suggest that one person’s utopia is another man’s dystopia, and vice versa. The error here is succumbing to the subjective view of utopian ideas. There are objective elements within the blueprint utopian tradition which cannot be easily found within dystopian literature and should not be ignored when evaluating the influence of dystopia in the collective consciousness of modern society.

From 1984 comes the confident belief that utopia seems to make only one very clear demand: obey. The more perfect a utopia strives to be, the more stringent become the controls. The inescapable reality of authoritarianism is reached, Big Brother is born. The society depicted by Orwell is absolutely totalitarian, with barely anything resembling happiness or harmony. “Knowledge is defined as ignorance, love as hate, freedom as slavery, war as peace. Thought-control has been achieved by the manipulation of language. Privacy, pleasure, and mystery have been taken out of sex and reproduction by the interference of state authority. Science has become the handmaiden of a destructive technology . . . and Big Brother . . . triumphs over all disloyal citizens” (Richter, 7). But the Inner Party of Oceania disposes of elements and ideas which characterize blueprint utopias. “The contrary of every utopian end prevails in order to satisfy the power-sadism of the Inner Party” (Kateb, 236). O’Brien, Winston Smith’s interrogator, describes the aims of the party as “the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic utopias that the old reformers imagined” (Kateb, 236). Furthermore, Russell Jacoby analyzes the interrogation: “it demonstrated that Winston still imagined the Party retained a progressive commitment to happiness or freedom. O’Brien corrected Winston. The Party seeks power for its own end, simply to wield power . . . to cause suffering” (Jacoby 2, 11). Some believe that absolute power has the potential to corrupt even the noblest plans, but to ignore the stark differences between the benevolent intentions of blueprint utopianism and the malevolent objectives of dystopian planners is to oversimplify and overrate dystopian criticism of utopia. It is the commitment to happiness, harmony, freedom, and equality which distinguishes the social planners of blueprint utopias from those of Oceania.


Betrayal of Utopia

This section was originally intended to describe the arguments of the utopian apologists and supporters in defense of their beloved tradition. Disappointingly, it falls dramatically short of that goal and becomes more or less a continuation of the attack on blueprint utopias. Of course, there are still intellectual and academic writers defending blueprint utopias to some degree. The previous discussion on anti-utopianism in the form of dystopian literature defended utopianism on the grounds that “to read 1984 as a straightforward attack on utopia or socialism takes some doing” (Jacoby 2, 10). Jacoby goes on to convincingly argue that “many elements [in 1984] bespeak capitalist Britain, not communist Russia” (Jacoby 2, 10). Similarly, George Kateb doubts that 1984 even has the elements required to be considered as an anti-utopian critique of utopia. “Good intentions must be taken for granted if “utopian” and hence “antiutopian” are to have any meaning . . . If Brave New World is a hell of pleasure, 1984 is a hell of pain” (Kateb, 235). Perhaps not as convincing, Kateb continues by citing alternative categories of pseudo topia, semitopia and negative topia.

In fact, Russell Jacoby and many others have responded to the argument advanced by many liberal anti-utopians: “conventional wisdom links utopia and violence” (Jacoby, 169). He believes that the factual basis for this is slender. “The notion that utopians are violent and that realists are benign belongs to the mythology of our time” (Jacoby, 169). This notion includes the argument that utopianism is connected to the infamous totalitarian regimes of modern times: Stalinism, Nazism, Fascism, and Communism. While some utopias are indeed anti-pluralist and authoritarian in character, there is no connection between utopianism and the fanaticism required for violent revolution and totalitarian regime. “[Totalitarianism] is too complex a phenomenon, both historically and ideologically, to be reduced to an alleged product of some utopian frame of reference” (Donskis, 39). Barbara Goodwin expounds, “the utopian mode of thinking . . . [shows] that the rationalist approach and commitment to a single truth has virtues which the empiricist, piecemeal, ‘open,’ laissez-faire approach advocated by Popper and others lacks” (Donskis, 40). Further more she argues, “that anti-totalitarian and anti-utopian thinkers deceive themselves in their presentation of liberal-democratic society as paradigmatically open” (Donskis, 40). It possible that planning freedom need not include revolution or coercion, and lead to authoritarianism. Education, experimentation, and democratic choice are viable methods to be combined with utopian blueprints.

To defend specific blueprint utopias, Bellamy’s Looking Backward draws significant attention by both sides. Indeed, Looking Backward can be condemned as communistic, authoritarian, and nationalistic. Bellamy’s reaction to those who feared the totalitarian implications of his vision: “aren’t we parts of a great industrial machine right now? The only difference is that the present machine is a bungling and misconstructed one, which grinds up the bodies and souls of those who work in it” (Spann, 197). It is arguable that, “government in Bellamy’s socialist utopia is neither tyrannical nor permissive, neither totalitarian nor democratic. All that remains by way of governmental services is the administration of decisions which are arrived at technically” (Spann, 40). The government of Bellamy’s utopia conducts affairs without politics. Political strife was replaced by a rational technocracy. To the anti-utopians who attribute revolutionary violence to blueprints, Russell Jacoby responds, “What does talk about violence and utopians have to do with Edward Bellamy and his vision of vegetarianism?” (Jacoby, 169).

From the impassioned and articulate arguments in defense of utopia, it appears that at least the study and appreciation of utopianism survived the anti-utopian onslaught. But it is at this point where liberal critics and utopian supporters find common ground. They believe the blueprint planning of utopian literature is an exhausted tradition, but the critical and inspirational benefits of utopias should continue to be celebrated. Planning utopia is marginalized, ignored, or disavowed as a legitimate function of utopian thought. The sociologist Karl Mannheim, in his book Ideology and Utopia, argued that “the complete disappearance of the utopian element from human thought and action would mean that . . man would lose his will to shape history, and therewith his ability to change it.” Furthermore, British sociologist Ruth Levitas “remains committed to the notion that utopia has an ‘essence’, which she identifies as the desire to a different, better way of living” (Hudson, 18). Even those who advocate for a partial return to utopia are prepared to accept the irreconcilability of blueprint utopianism and reality. Lewis Mumford values utopia as “a largesse of spirit and imagination” (Jacoby 2, 32), “a harmless mode of escape for the restless and dissatisfied” (Richter, 4) and others see in utopian literature as a source of inspiration, guidance, and influence. But the surrender of utopian planning is only affirmed by these concessions to modern anti-utopianism. Krishan Kumar holds true that “the attempt to realize utopias as a political project is fraught with danger. It is, at best likely to bring about a society bearing only the slightest resemblance to the utopian conception . . . At worst it will create the opposite of utopia, an anti-utopia of authoritarian regimentation” (Kumar, 95).

But Kumar still believes that “utopian conceptions are indispensable to politics, and to progress” (Kumar, 95). The new perception is that regardless of their authors’ intentions, most utopias have been more significant and influential in their critical or iconoclastic functions than as blueprints and models. They upheld imagined societies with which readers inevitably compared and judged their own. They also served as debunkers of the existent systems and status quo. The traditional approach to utopias as models, plans, or blueprints often distracts readers and critics from their central critical function. “The blueprints not only appear repressive, but they also rapidly become dated. Even with the best of wills, the blue printers tether the future to the past. In outfitting utopia, they order from the catalog of their day” (Jacoby 2, 32). Thus, reformers of utopia turn to the “iconoclastic utopians.” These thinkers “longed, waited, or worked for utopia but did not visualize it” (Jacoby 2, 33). The leading figure of this non-traditional approach to utopia is German Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch. Modern utopists like Jacoby consider the visualization and diagramming of utopia to be a betrayal of utopias true transformative potential. Even extensive and visionary blueprints are too narrow and historically dated to sustain the “soul” of utopia. Treating utopias as blueprints for action opens the way for anti-utopians to draw connections between utopia and totalitarianism, and launch their relentless attacks upon utopianism is general. A person “can listen for utopia, approach it through hints and parables but to give its precise measurements would be a betrayal” (Jacoby 3). In addition, defending the political theories and social plans in blueprint utopias diverts intellectual energy away from exploring and studying alternative utopian traditions. Utopianism no longer requires blueprints. Here, “the protest of anti-utopian liberals like Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin may be on the mark. The blueprinters have had their day” (Jacoby 2, 143-144).


A Losing Struggle

The attractive arguments against blueprint utopias posed by anti-utopian thinkers, liberal and conservative, coupled with the lack of support for the dated literary tradition indicates a clear consensus against blueprint utopian literature. In order to reform and resuscitate the utopian tradition, blueprinters must be sacrificed and scapegoated. Scholar, academics, and intellectuals of utopia would be better fighting for the blueprint tradition, exhausted or not. True, as previously discussed, utopian social planning is flawed and its promotion is a liability to the legitimacy of utopian thought. Surrendering the exhausted tradition and refocusing on iconoclastic utopia may be the only means to reform. But by admitting that the blueprints laid out in utopian works are unimportant, undesirable, or impossible, the power of the utopian message is irreversibly damaged. Utopian ideals are stripped of their intellectual strength.

Russell Jacoby laments that, “once students dreamt of healing the ills of society; now based on the students I have – they dream of going to good law schools” (Jacoby 2, 148). This observation will only be affirmed in the future as the bulk of the utopian tradition is left defenseless. How can future generations apply their time and energy to the study and perpetuation of utopian thought and belief when the majority of accessible works on utopia have all been rejected by their intellectual mentors and teachers? Today, the complete lack of interest among students which greets the study of utopia is disturbing. They are characterized as “boring”, “unrealistic”, or “unattractive.” Focusing on the work of iconoclastic utopians is not a solution. Ernst Bloch brings “a high theoretical sophistication to the thematisation of utopia”, but “understandably, social scientists and historians of utopia have found Bloch’s approach hard to follow” (Hudson, 20). Furthermore, the complexities of his ideas are sometimes lost in inadequate translations. Obviously, undergraduate and even graduate students would have difficulties appreciating and comprehending the text.

Blueprint plans are a necessary component to utopianism, because defending them preserves utopia for the layman. Even faulty, clichéd defenses which simply claim that “the ends justify the means” or observe that the blueprint society “would put to shame our modern ones,” serve to bolster the endangered tradition. Utopists now believe that “what we learn from [iconoclastic] utopians is that a reluctance to depict utopia does not diminish but exalts it” (Jacoby 3). But by surrendering blueprint utopias to its enemies, utopists may have created an audience which has no desire to hear the exaltations, or even worse, is unable to appreciate it.




Works Cited

1.) Berlin, Isaiah. The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: Fontana Press, 1991.

2.) Goodwin, Barbara. The Philosophy of Utopia. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001.

3.) Goodwin, Barbara (2). The Politics of Utopia. London: Hutchinson Press, 1982.

4.) Kumar, Krishan. Utopianism. Great Britain: Open University Press, 1991.

5.) Kateb, George. Utopia and Its Enemies. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.

6.) Richter, Peyton. Utopia/Dystopia, Utopia?/Dystopia?. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1975.

7.) Hudson, Wayne. The Reform of Utopia. Great Britain: Ashgate Publishing, 2003.

8.) Parker, Martin. Utopia and Organization. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002.

9.) Jacoby, Russell. The End of Utopia. USA: Basic Books, 1999.

10.) Jacoby, Russell (2). Picture Imperfect. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

11.) Jacoby, Russell (3). Glenn, Joshua. “The Last Utopian”. Boston Globe; May 15, 2005.

12.) Kolakowski, Leszek. The Death of Utopia Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

13.) Spann, E.K. Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for a Cooperative Society in America, 1820-1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.