I’ve been enjoying a series of articles by my friend, Winton Bates, in which he has discussed my work (see here and here). In his latest essay, Winton asks: “Can Utopian Thinking Be Dialectical?” Winton raises important questions about the nature and role of utopia in political philosophy.
As Winton explains: “The word utopia was coined by [Thomas] More to mean ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’, but More suggested that it could also have the same meaning as eutopia, meaning good place or happy place. Modern dictionaries … hedge their bets. They define utopia as ‘a place of ideal perfection’ or ‘a perfect society in which people work well with each other and are happy’ and also as ‘an impractical scheme’, or ‘an imaginary or infinitely remote place’.”
Drawing from my work and the work of philosopher Fred Miller, Winton compares these two senses of the word ‘utopia’ and comes to a worthwhile conclusion that those who are “opposed to utopian thinking don’t necessarily consider ideals and principles to be irrelevant to consideration of public policy issues,” and that those “who defend utopian thinking may nevertheless be mindful of the need to consider real world context in considering public policy issues.”
Some of these issues are explored in “Therapy for Radicals,” my recently coauthored essay with Ryan Neugebauer, which draws lessons from both Friedrich Hayek and Saul Alinksy. Those seeking radical social change can learn much from Hayek’s emphasis on the limitations of our knowledge and from Alinsky’s emphasis on approaching the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. By “embracing constructive alternatives, even those that seem unrealistic or ‘utopian’ given the conditions that exist,” genuine political radicals—those who seek to change society fundamentally—can only move forward with “non-totalizing strategies that avoid the pitfalls of top-down ‘totalizing utopian frameworks’. … We must be open to acting simultaneously within systems and outside them if our goal is to affect a shift in the culture and in social, political, and economic policies.”
Despite his criticisms of utopianism, Hayek saw an important and honorable role for the notion of “utopia”. As I write in Marx, Hayek, and Utopia:
“For Hayek, political inspiration is the sole, legitimate function of utopianism. Utopia ‘is a bad word today,’ in Hayek’s view, because most utopian models are beset by ‘internal contradictions.’ Anchored in social reality and cognizant of existential conditions, a critical, ‘internally consistent’ ideal can offer a ‘guiding conception’ for political change. Such an ideal is an ‘indispensable precondition’ of any rational social policy. Thus, according to Hayek, the realization of radical, progressive goals will ultimately depend on the achievement of ‘an effective framework’ within which there can emerge a fully ‘functioning spontaneous order’.”
Hayek writes:
We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty . .. which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principle and to fight for their full realization however remote . … The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and thereby an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote …. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.
I conclude Marx, Hayek, and Utopia with the following observation:
As a genuinely dialectical theorist, Hayek grasps that every critical moment of inquiry must contain within it a positive anticipation of a revolutionary alternative. … Hayek’s greatest contribution to the radical cause lies in his recognition of epistemic strictures. On this basis, Hayek challenges the new radicals to promote a more realistic vision of social change. If utopian ideals are to have any useful function in social theory, they must inspire people to reach for all that is within their grasp by stretching the limits of the human potential…. By gaining a deeper understanding of the dialectical relationship between goals and context, future generations of radical thinkers might pave the way for progressive alternatives to the status quo, alternatives that are rooted in viable, if distant, possibilities, and that uplift the human imagination without endangering the survival of the species.
Notablog 