<nettime> The False Defences of Utopian Thought.

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>]

'There is a strange paradox in Marx's approach to revolution. Generally 
speaking, when Marx speaks of material creativity, he speaks of 
'production', and here he insists, as I've mentioned, that the 
defining feature of humanity is that we first imagine things, and then try 
to bring them into being. When he speaks of social creativity it is almost 
always in terms of revolution, but here, he insists that imagining 
something and then trying to bring it into being is precisely what we 
should never do. That would be utopianism, and for utopianism, he had 
only withering contempt.' -- David Graeber, The Revolution In Reverse

In this example David Graeber is suggesting that it is Utopian to 
imagine a better world in the future, before achieving it.

In 'A Discussion on "Listen, Marxist!"' Bookchin writes of Marx: '

'No less serious is the rejection of Utopian thought'the imaginative 
forays of Charles Fourier and William Morris. What Martin Buber called 
the "utopian element in socialism" is rejected for a "hardheaded" and 
"objective" treatment of "reality." '

Bookchin is suggesting, citing Buber, that to be Utopian is to be 
overly imaginative and lacking hard-headedness and "objectivity."

Now clearly, lacking objectivity could be drawback, but could Marx 
really have objected to imagination and for-sight? I don't claim to 
match the scholarship of Graeber or Bookchin, so I wont hazard to prove 
what Marx really believed about Utopian thinking, but for me, both the 
above defences, which are unfortunately common ones, are completely 
missing the point.

The issue is not so much objectivity, vision, nor imagination, it is 
the belief that society can be changed without conflict, that oppressed 
classes can end their oppression without overcoming the ruling classes, 
often just by merely suggesting another system is possible. I have 
complete confidence that  Graeber and Bookchin also reject such 
socialism, simply using other words.

Perhaps the most of famous of Marx and Engels' rejection of Utopianism 
comes from this passage of the Communist Manifesto:

"The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own 
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far 
superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of 
every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they 
habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; 
nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once 
they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan 
of the best possible state of society?. Hence, they reject all 
political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain 
their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, 
necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the 
way for the new social Gospel." -- Marx & Engels, The Communist 
Manifesto

It seems plain that what is being rejected here is not a vision for the 
future, nor imagination. Although 'their own surroundings' is mentioned 
as a cause, there is hardly a strong argument being made on the basis of 
a lack of objectivity. The criticism of the rejection of Utopian thought 
presented by Graeber and Bookchin seems to miss the mark.

Utopians are those activists who deny class struggle, who reject all 
political and revolutionary action, who, appeal to the oppressors 
themselves, instead of placing their hope in the revolutionary potential 
of the oppressed masses; "they habitually appeal to society at large, 
without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. 
For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see 
it in the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?"

That is Utopian thinking.

Class society does not exist simply because nobody has been clever 
enough to think-up a better system. Class society evolved over time, 
under force, to serve the interests of the most powerful. Who, as a 
predatory class require a productive class to exist and serve them. The 
control and oppression of the productive classes is not an accident, it 
is the purpose of the system.

The representatives of the predatory class will not abandon their 
privilege, they will fight to the death to keep it, and even bring down 
the whole society, if they can, to prevent losing their privilege.

Rulers would rather see everything they have lost, their own children 
slaughtered, and the greatest works of their society destroyed and 
undone, sooner than fall into the lower classes and accept their 
servants as their equals.

What makes certain thinking Utopian is denying conflict, imagining the 
economic and social structure of society can be overturned without 
conflict, thinking that we can go from a society of class stratification 
to a society without classes without conflict among the contesting 
classes. Such thinking is rightfully to be rejected.

Thinking is Utopian when it has no political program, no revolutionary 
theory, when it doesn't address how the balance of power will be changed 
so that a new society is possible, when this issue of power is in fact 
the primary issue we must address to achieve a society where "In place 
of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we 
shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the 
condition for the free development of all."

A social theory is not Utopian because the future society it envisions 
is unrealistic, but rather because it fails to answer, or often even 
consider, the issue of how we could possible get there and achieve such 
a society, how we can overcome the resistance of those who would lose 
privilege and power in such a society. This lack makes such work not so 
much political thought, but better filed under Speculative Fiction.



-- 
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist




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