Utopias Are Dangerous, Here’s How to Fix Them

Improving Politics With Philosophy

There have always been flaws in the way societies are structured, ever since societies were first structured. As a result of these pervasive imperfections, discontentment is common and from it arises ideas on how to fix the imperfections. Politics can be defined as the invention and consideration of these ideas in order to find the ones most likely to improve society, and the implementation of those that are accepted.

One method of politics is Utopianism: imagining a perfect society and then acting to try and achieve it. At first glance, this seems like an appealing type of politics as it is simple and provides a sense of moral righteousness and purpose; anyone who knows what the perfect society looks like would be justified in trying to achieve it, right? However, ever since Thomas More wrote about this method in his book Utopia, philosophers have offered counter-arguments to it.

This essay will examine Karl Popper’s analysis of Utopianism, which concludes that it is self-defeating as it will always lead to a worse state, as well as a counter-argument to this position by Herbert Marcuse, who thinks that it is actually possible for the final state to be an improvement, and determine philosophically that Utopianism is indeed no way to go about bettering society. It will also look at Fredrick Jameson’s alternative definition of Utopianism that has a better chance of success as it doesn’t require any specific actions to be taken.

The term “Utopia” was first coined by More in 1516 and while it has now come to take on more of the meaning of its implication in the book, the idea of a perfect society, the literal definition is somewhat different as More actually came up with it as a pun. His inspiration was the Greek words eu-topos, meaning “a good place,” and ou-topos, meaning “nowhere” (The British Library).

In his book, More has his characters discuss the merits and potential implementation of policies used on the fictional island of Utopia in British society. One character who has been there believes that this island society functions much better than Britain, therefore Britain should try and be more like it. Thus, Utopianism henceforth meant striving to improve one’s society based on the concept of a better society. However, due to the pun in the name, it could be that More actually believed such a perfect society was impossible.

Since More’s time, other philosophers have expanded on this belief that Utopia is “nowhere,” most famously, Popper in 1947 in his essay “Utopia and Violence.”

Popper begins by laying out two forms of rationalism, one he sees as right and the other wrong. The right kind of rationalism he describes with this characterization:

I think I am right, but I may be wrong and you may be right, and in any case let us discuss it, for in this way we are likely to get nearer to a true understanding than if we merely insist that we are right. (Popper 2)

Whereas the wrong kind he outlines as:

An action, it may be argued, is rational if it makes the best use of the available means in order to achieve a certain end. The end, admittedly, may be incapable of being determined rationally. However this may be, we can judge an action rationally, and describe it as rational or adequate, only relative to some given end. (3)

Utopianism, Popper says, is a result of this second kind of thinking. (From here on out I will use rationalism to mean the right sort and “rationalism” to mean the wrong sort.) What makes “rationalism” flawed is that it ends up being self-defeating, specifically within Utopianism, because people need an end goal in order to take “rational” action, but people can’t agree on an end goal without rationalism.

Put more clearly, if someone has a vision of a perfect world then they must take action to achieve it in order to be “rational.” However, someone else with a different vision must also take action to achieve their goal, thus conflict will ensue. The only way for either person to continue to act “rationally” would be to suppress or eliminate the other.

With so many people in a society, each with their own ideas on how to improve it — not to mention the fact that the actions of the Utopianist will constantly change society and therefore change people’s ideas as well — each person must be contained in a way that prevents them from interfering with the Utopianist’s plan. A world of oppression is inherently anti-Utopian, but it is also the only possible outcome of Utopianism.

Popper concludes that instead of Utopianism, people ought to use rational debate and mutual respect to “work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries” (5). After all, it is much easier to agree with others and be correct about what is wrong now than about what could be right later because the present is experienceable and the future is not.

A qualifier for Popper’s philosophy is that he begins with the premise that violence is evil and should be prevented whenever possible; this is how he resolves that a Utopian world of oppression is also evil. He holds that it is justified to use violence to defend against violence, but using it as a tool to change society is inherently wrong.

However, Marcuse takes issue with this premise about violence; while he naturally agrees that violence is terrible and should generally be avoided, he thinks that it can also be justified if “the use of revolutionary violence will, rather than the available alternatives, make for less misery and human degradation all round” (Nielson 14).

This sort of thinking is Utopian because it looks to the ends or consequences of a decision to determine if they are “rational” or moral. Even with this difference, in general, I think Popper and Marcuse would take the same side in violent historical revolutions because, as Nielson states in his essay comparing Popper and Marcuse:

if there is a demand prior to a revolution for fundamental reforms which will substantially increase equality and alleviate misery and degradation through a substantial redistribution of wealth and privileges, then this peaceful demand for fundamental reforms, if it shows promise of gaining momentum, will be met by the privileged classes with violence and attempted suppression. But without persistent advocacy and pressure for such basic reforms, we still have the day-to-day and year-to-year rather unspectacular yet extensive and persistent violence of any exploitative and repressive society. (14)

In such situations, violence would have first been used against citizens by those in power, either simply due to the oppressive nature of their society or out of an attempt to suppress a reformist ideology, and those citizens would then be justified in fighting back against violence. But after the simple matter of self-defense, these two philosophers diverge where the chance to form a new society is present, and Marcuse’s Utopianism still falls into the same issue that Popper details.

Violence is power. By using violence to design a better society, those using violence gain not only the power to make that better society, but also to decide what that better society looks like. For example, according to Marcuse, the people of, say, North Korea would be justified in violently overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a society more like Britain because it would “make for less misery and human degradation all round” (Nielson 14); and I think Popper would agree, because the North Korean government is violently oppressive, up until the part where people start looking to Britain.

After the revolution, when it comes time to build something new, Popper would argue that to look to Britain and try and emulate it would be Utopian and would lead those who are acting “rationally” according to Utopianism to become the perpetrators of violence against those who don’t think Britain should be the model. At that point, as Popper says, “there is no scientific way of choosing between two ends” (Popper 3), between, say, Britain or France. Those who believe either is the perfect model society must act to achieve it, and when they come into conflict with each other, only one can prevail.

Everyone should have the right to decide for themselves what their ideal life is, but Utopianism concentrates that power and silences anyone who believes differently than the Utopian ideal. A society like that is one that Marcuse would also despise, so his stance “that the underlying rationale for political action is to seek a society which will most likely enable all men to achieve the fullest ‘possible satisfaction of needs under the priority of vital needs and with a minimum of toil, misery and injustice’” (Nielson 14–15) itself prevents that stance from being realized.

Now, while this sort of “rational” Utopianism that judges actions based on ends doesn’t work, Jameson believes this actually isn’t what Utopianism is in the first place. Sean Homer writes in a summary of Jameson’s philosophy that “Utopia is not a positive vision of the future so much as it is a negative judgment of the present” (Homer 5), so it avoids the problem of being coercive by being “simply the commitment to imagining alternatives” (5).

In this way, I think Jameson’s concept of Utopianism could be paired with Popper’s rationalism and proposal for political action, “[working] for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods” (Popper 5), to form a new type of politics, Neo-Utopianism.

To begin, instead of conceptualizing an ideal society, the Neo-Utopianist would first look for discernible and relevant flaws in society; let’s say poverty, for this example. Once identified, the imagination will be implemented to identify possible solutions to poverty; looking into a conceptual future simply to assess different scenarios where poverty has been solved.

Because the Neo-Utopianist will recognize that these imagined societies don’t, and likely can’t exist, that they are “nowhere,” they won’t be required to act on them; the only purpose of them is to come up with more potential solutions than would be possible by simply looking at the past and present. With these new ideas, the Neo-Utopianist can go to other rationalists and consider the merits of everyone’s ideas together as to “get nearer to a true understanding than if we merely insist that we are right” (Popper 2).

Political conflict these days seems to be full of arguments over what future will produce the most good. Not only is that an impossible question to answer, but it is also an incredibly dangerous question to ask. Instead, we should all at least adopt the principle of rationality where we admit to not knowing who is right, and preferably the ideology of Neo-Utopianism as well because, as long as the future stays far away from the present, it can be valuable to consider it and its many possibilities.

Utopias come to us, as Jameson rather wonderfully puts it, as barely audible messages from a future that may never come into being. (Homer 5)

There’s wisdom in admitting that no one knows what the best destiny for humanity is, but there’s also beauty in imagining it anyway, and we can have both beauty and wisdom in the present if we pursue them carefully; for these are delicate values, and to lose either one would create a future that is surely inferior to humanity’s potential.

Works Cited:

• Homer, Sean. “Anti Anti-Utopianism: Imagining Alternative Spaces.” Playgrounds and Battlefields: Critical Perspectives of Social Engagement, by Martínez Francisco and Klemen Slabina, TLU Press, 2014, pp. 469–480. https://www.academia.edu/15670474/Anti_Anti_Utopianism_Imagining_Alternative_Spaces.
• More, Thomas, and Dominic Baker-Smith. Utopia. Penguin Classics, 2020.
• Nielsen, Kai. “On the Choice Between Reform and Revolution.” Revolutions, Systems and Theories, XIV, 1979, pp. 155–176., doi:10.1007/978–94–009–9894–0_12. https://www.kainielsen.org/uploads/1/1/9/0/119098149/on_the_choice_between_reform_and_revolution.pdf.
• Popper, Karl R. “Utopia and Violence.” World Affairs, vol. 149, no. 1, 1986, pp. 3–9. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20672078.
• “Utopia.” The British Library — The British Library, 3 Apr. 2006, www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html.

More on similar topics:

…violating rights is inexcusable to utilitarianism because what good it could produce can never outweigh the bad it will produce…

…I will first examine a number of works on the philosophy of education that claim the purpose of education should be to produce social change…

…The abundance of information put out into the world has led to a form of tribalization based on agreement about certain information…