Political Theories for Students

U t o p i a n i s m

of Thélème” from the larger French comic masterpiece Gargantua (1532), described a utopia built on natural law with a populace of noble savages:

These people are wild in the sense in which we call wild the fruits that nature has produced by herself and in her ordinary progress; whereas in truth it is those we have altered artificially and diverted from the common order that we should rather call wild. In the first we still see, in full life and vigor, the genuine and most natural and useful virtues and properties, which we have bastardized in the latter, and only adapted to please our corrupt taste. . . . Those nations, then, appear to me so far barbarous in this sense, that their minds have been formed to a very slight degree, and that they are still very close to their original simplicity. They are still ruled by the laws of Nature and very little corrupted by ours.

Like a Garden of Eden, Rabelais’ Abbey was pristine, peaceful, and well ordered. Civilization could not better it, only corrupt it. Rabelais’ “Abbey” offered one of the most visible utopias to be built on natural law theory. In contrast, Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1623) reflected another trait in utopian literature of the era: the influence of the Scientific Revolution. The momentum of scientific thought inspired centrally planned and organized paradises built with almost mathematical precision. Campanella’s utopia was no exception:

The greater part of the city is built upon a high hill . . .

It is divided into seven rings or huge circles named from the seven planets, and the way from one to the other of these is by four streets and through four gates, that look toward the four points of the compass. Furthermore, it is so built that if the first circle were stormed, it would of necessity entail a double amount of energy to storm the second; still more to storm the third; and in each succeeding case the strength and energy would have to be doubled; so that he who wishes to capture that city must, as it were, storm it seven times.

The repetition of significant numbers, as well as the vision of concentric circles and evidence of careful planning in this passage marks the City of the Sun as a product of the Scientific Revolution. Otherwise, Campanella’s book read like something of an Italian version of Plato’s Republic, making this key example of Italian utopianism also proof of the durability of Plato’s vision.

Edward Bellamy If James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana influenced the politics of its time, Edward Bellamy hoped his Looking Backward (1888), one of the most popular utopias of its era, would also change the world he knew. The American Bellamy feared the trends toward industrialization that he witnessed and wondered how mechanization, urbanization, and competition would affect human lives. His utopia included a government–controlled economy and a socialist state. In a postscript to his work, Bellamy not only explained why he designed his ideal state the way he did, but captured the optimistic spirit of utopianism in general:

As an iceberg, floating southward from the frozen north, is gradually undermined by warmer seas, and, become at last unstable, churns the sea to yeast for miles around by the mighty rockings that portend its overturn, so the barbaric industrial and social system, which has come down to us from savage antiquity, undermined by the modern humane spirit, riddled by the criticism of economic science, is shaking the world with convulsions that presage its collapse. All thoughtful men agree that the present aspect of society is portentous of great changes. The only question is, whether they will be for the better or worse. . . . Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us, and is not far away. Our children will surely see it . . .

Huxley’s Brave New World Interestingly enough, Bellamy wrote his utopia as a tale of time travel through the eyes of a contemporary viewing the world of the future. In this sense, Bellamy anticipated the rise of the science fiction utopia and dystopia. The groundbreaking pioneer of the science fiction dystopia was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Huxley drew a dark picture of what would happen if the government grew in power and exercised increasing control over the lives of individuals—ironically, much the way Bellamy would have liked—and that system evolved to its ultimate conclusion: totalitarian tyranny. Chillingly, Huxley, through the character of the Controller, explained that the architects of subjugation

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would believe they were acting for the greater good of all.

Rather than describing the ideal state, Huxley made his point about the importance of limited government and individual liberty by describing the worst state possible and noting how the contemporary system might devolve into something like it. Instead of suggesting what to do to become like a utopia, Huxley implied what not to do to become like a dystopia. Huxley’s highly successful work ushered in the era of the dystopia.

Although many of the twentieth–century works dealing with utopian themes have been dystopias, many from the genre of science fiction, one book reintroduced the idea of utopianism to the political theory community: Roberty Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1986.

Robert Nozick Born in Brooklyn in 1938, Robert Nozick was appointed to Harvard in 1965. His 1974

Anarchy, State and Utopia sent shock waves through the political theory community. In part his work answered the thesis of John Rawl’s A Theory of Justice (1971), which outlined a concept of a just society. Rawls defended a kind of mixed economy socialism, with social policies/rules chosen behind a “veil of ignorance.” Behind this veil, Rawls suggested, policy makers would act as if they were ignorant of their status in the community as they created policy, so that goods would be distributed fairly across race, gender, and class lines in a manner that always benefited the least advantaged group.

Nozick criticized the redistribution inherent in Rawls’ proposals, defending each person’s claim to his or her own using a natural rights argument reminiscent of early utopians. In fact, Nozick began his work in a state of nature, then asked whether there should be a state at all. In the end, Nozick argued for a “minarchist” state, a minimalist government for protection only. He argued completely from individual consent–based morality; according to his rules, for example, a state could not tax, because that would be analogous to forced labor. In his words, “[The minarchist state] allows us, individually or with whom we choose, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.”

According to John Gray in Liberalism (1986), Nozick was successful in “reclaiming for the liberal tradition the utopian vision which virtually all liberals (except [Friedrich] Hayek) had rejected as uncon-

genial to the pluralism demanded by the liberal ideal.” Nozick asserted that the minimal state would provide the framework for a meta–utopia in which individuals might join together to form communities of free entry and exit, competing for members. Within these smaller associations, members might choose to contract away certain rights in favor of receiving certain services. Thus a communist association, a cooperative community, and an anarchist colony all might coexist. With the option of exit ever–present, however, each association would be forced to remain true to its contract and accountable to its members. Nozick pioneered the exodus of other minarchists into public view—for example, John Hospers, chairman of the University of Southern California Philosophy Department and 1972 National Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. presidency, and Tibor Machan, philosophy professor and author—and brought the serious philosophical discussion of utopia back into fashion.

In his book, Nozick imagines a world of competing states with different systems and only one coordinating principle: free entry and free exit. In this utopian vision, Nozick imagined individuals choosing what amount of state authority, what form of government, they liked best. No one state could abuse the rights of its people, because citizens would leave for a more palatable alternative. Just as Nozick offers a view of a world free from totalitarian regimes, others imagine worlds free of bigotry, sexism, violence, and environmental crisis.

In his work, Nozick imagined utopia to be not a specific community, but rather an overarching, minimal state that offered “playing rules”—free entry, free exit—that would allow smaller experimental communities to evolve and compete for members. The diversity of possibilities available in this model over time has since inspired a new dialogue among political theorists.

In a sense, the open–endedness of Nozick’s view of utopia, and his willingness to abandon central control in favor of spontaneous order, added a new dimension to the view of utopia. He raised the bar from static, complete notions of “the perfect state” by arguing that the perfect state would be many ever–changing societies impossible to predict. As the twenty–first century begins, the hopefulness of utopian political theory endures, but remains overshadowed by the dystopian vision of filmmakers and genre authors. Television, in the guise of science fiction hits such as Dark Angel (2000), has continued this trend.

Of course other utopias have shaped the course of the political theory as well. From Plato to Huxley

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and beyond, from Greece and Italy to France and the United States and elsewhere, all of the great utopias and dystopias have shared an underlying optimism that their suggestions or warnings might change the world for the better.

The one resounding commonality among all of the approaches to the ideal world is that of optimism. By discussing, illustrating, and even experimenting with their visions of paradise, the utopian thinkers not only criticized what they found to be wrong with their contemporary political systems, but also believed those systems could be changed. Whether motivated by the doom they saw ahead or the paradise they dreamed of, these theorists were dedicated to the proposition that things could be better than they were. Some believed the world would improve if individuals embraced a particular faith. Others believed equality of property or opportunities in personal relationships were necessary for positive change. Still others believed that paradise meant the solution to one problem, the righting of an historical wrong. Their conclusions remain as different as the eras in which they originated. Utopianism is less about the ends, however, than the means of achieving them. What unites utopian thinkers is not the detail of a given system, but the optimism and imagination to envision that system in place, working as planned, successful and enduring.

THEORY IN ACTION

Utopia, the ideal “nowhere” sought by writers and revolutionaries and reformers, has meant different things to different people, and thus has been acted upon in very different ways. The ancient Greek legends of Atlantis, a continent of advanced, peaceful, enlightened people who had achieved their own utopia before a natural disaster submerged their land beneath the sea, so inspired seekers and scientists that searches for the physical remains of the place continue to this day, as if pinpointing the ruins on a map might make the possibility of achieving a new paradise on earth more possible. Likewise, the stories of El Dorado, a utopian city built of gold somewhere in South America, spawned exploration of the continent by colonizing European nations beginning in the sixteenth century. The goal of discovering an ideal community motivated nations in a way that simple internal re- form—building a more ideal community—could not.

Others seemed to know that paradise had no earthly address. Plato nursed anger and resentment toward the government of Greece that had executed his

beloved teacher Socrates, and Thomas More watched with wariness the state of England that eventually executed him. Neither philosopher expected to find Atlantis or El Dorado on earth. To them and others like them, utopianism in practice meant using the motif of an ideal community as a foil, a literary device, to contrast the way things should be with the way things were. The ultimate goal was not the discovery or creation of the described paradise, but the betterment of the current system and the attitudes and values that supported it. Dystopians such as Huxley and Orwell represented the other side of this impulse, using negative examples of how a terrible state might behave to warn readers and promote reform. This literary— and today, also cinematic—form of utopianism stretches from the fourth century B.C. to the twenty–first century, and continues to produce political critique for our systems.

Other utopian thinkers found the need for reform much too urgent to write works of fiction and theory and hope that their messages eventually touched sympathetic readers. For them, change had to come immediately. These utopians became fervent, and sometimes violent, revolutionaries. For example, Babeuf had a vision of equality for all citizens of France. Though he supported the French Revolution, he did not believe that the first wave of change it brought to the nation beginning in 1789 went far enough to create this quality. He published criticisms of the government, was imprisoned, and emerged even more dissatisfied with the state. He therefore created the Conspiracy of the Equals, a secret organization focused on overthrowing the fledgling new French government and instituting a utopian communist regime in which all people would share the economy’s products equally. Babeuf’s plans required violent upheaval, and he was eventually captured and executed for his plots before they became reality. His method of devising revolutionary cells for the distribution of information became the blueprint for the organization of revolutionary, freedom fighter, and terrorist groups even today. For Babeuf and others, achieving utopia meant not only reform, but also revolution.

The Shakers

The Shakers, led by Ann Lee (known as Mother Ann), took up residence near Albany, New York in September, 1776, and began creating the first Shaker community. The people benefited from the revivalistic interest created by the phenomenon of the Great Awakening. These protracted revivals, which occurred widely in the Middle and New England colonies, commonly exhibited the same dramatic characteristics that were seen among the Shakers. Thus, people on the

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Shakers dancing during a prayer meeting. (Corbis Corporation)

frontier were less likely to be scandalized by religious emotionalism. As the revival fires cooled, the Shaker community continued to attract those who ardently looked for signs of the Second Coming.

Shaker villages consisted of separate buildings for eating, working, and sleeping. Everything was separated by gender—the buildings even had different stairways for men and women. This was probably done so men and women would have as little contact as possible, which would make it easier to honor to rules of celibacy. Schools and shops were shared among the people, while some “families” controlled their own small money–making ventures, such as crops.

Though their unusual religious practices were always a curiosity (their name comes from the way they jumped and shook during prayer and worship), it was Shaker doctrines, such as the condemnation of marriage, and Ann Lee’s messianic claims, which caused the greatest controversy. As the Americans fought England for independence, the Shakers’ pacifism was misunderstood, resulting in imprisonment for several members of the community. Events gradually improved when local citizens began to object to the mistreatment of the Shakers, believing that such actions betrayed the ideals of the new republic. (Generations later, during the Civil War, Shakers would provide food and relief to both Union and Confederate troops.)

The six months following the release of the jailed Shakers was a period in which the Shakers were allowed to practice their faith unmolested. Mother Ann and two disciples set out on horseback on a preaching mission that would last more than two years. This mission was of tremendous importance to Shaker his- tory—several new communites were established in New England.

Unfortunately, the mission was marred by repeated acts of mob violence in which several Shaker leaders were horsewhipped. Ann herself was dragged out of a dwelling and thrown into a carriage where she was mocked by abusive citizens.

When Mother Ann and her company finally returned home, the violence of the New England mission left her in a weakened condition, and she never fully regained health. She died on September 8, 1874.

Before her death, Ann passed the reins of leadership to James Whittaker. Unlike Lee, Whittaker had a great gift for organization and, under his leadership, the movement prospered. He urged all the Shaker communities to implement communal living and common ownership of property as demonstrated in the New Testament.

In spite of her convictions concerning celibacy, which doomed the Shakers to eventual extinction, Anne Lee was in many ways a progressive eigh-

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teenth–century women who made a significant impact on the world. She was a pioneer for justice and equality. The Shakers were among the first in America to advocate pacifism, abolition of slavery, equality of the sexes, and communal ownership of goods. The Shakers also made contributions to American culture beyond that of ideology—they were the first people in the United States to produce commercial seed, and invented the circular saw, metal pen points, and the first commercially successful washing machine.

Robert Owen and Cooperative Utopia

For the pioneer of a social movement, Robert Owen had very inauspicious beginnings. With little formal education to his credit, Owen began working in the textile business at age ten. But by the time he was 23, Owen had worked his way up to be a successful cotton manufacturer in Manchester, England, and read widely enough to compensate for his lack of schooling. In 1800, he moved to New Lanark, Scotland, where he became a co–owner of the mills once owned by his father–in–law.

Owen used the opportunity afforded by the mill town to put his fledgling theories into practice; he reorganized the community—which included profit stores, competitive schools, and organized sanita- tion—into a model of a self–sufficient, cooperative agricultural–industrial community, in which enterprises were owned and operated for the benefit of those using their services. As working conditions bettered, profits increased. Owen’s influence spread and even instigated the Factory Act of 1819, a reform bill targeting the conditions of businesses like the one in which Owen worked as a child.

With the success of his community in Scotland, Owen suggested that other similar utopian experiments be conducted elsewhere. In 1825, followers organized New Harmony in Indiana after Owen’s model—coincidentally, New Harmony had been founded ten years earlier as another kind of utopian experiment by German Separatists who practiced communism and celibacy. The overhauled, Owenite experimental colony gained widespread attention when it became a cultural and educational center, boasting some of the era’s leading intellectuals as residents. The town boasted the nation’s first kindergarten, public school, free library, and equal instruction for boys and girls. The experiment ended in 1828 because of internal conflict.

Owen’s base of support shifted from the upper class to the working class as he published various works such as New View of Society; or, Essays on the Formation of Character (three volumes from 1813 to

1814) and Report to the County of Lanark (1821), which revealed his disinterest in religion and his desire to transform society and its institutionalized system of privilege. For a time he worked with labor unions and suggested that they join forces with cooperative societies, but the union movement proved too disposed toward violence for Owen, who wanted change to come through peaceful means. For the last decades of his life, Owen wrote and lectured about his belief that environment shaped individuals and cooperative societies, in particular, improved character. His life’s work, in his writings and in the communities such as New Lanark and New Harmony, secured Owen’s place as the father of cooperative utopian thought.

The Oneida Community

Many explorers, writers, and revolutionaries can be considered utopians. The groups seem to share little in common, but all are united by the idea that the government could be bettered. The most visual example of utopianism in action is that of the experimental communities, colonies created as experimental tests of utopian theory. Even among this subset of utopianism, however, many differences arise. Some communities came together due to faith. Others united over interests in property, personal relationships, or historical wrongs associated with issues of race, gender, the environment, and/or individual liberty. Groups such as the Oneida Community, founded in 1841, and The Farm, founded in 1971, reflect different sides of the experimental utopian community.

The Oneida community existed from 1847 to 1881 in New York. This faith–based group evolved from the religious teachings of John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), a Christian preacher who believed in the ultimate perfectibility of humanity. His theology of Perfectionism brought him ridicule from other mainstream Protestants, but also drew a faithful band of followers that eventually agreed to set up a colony apart from nonbelievers. After being forced to flee other areas due to the controversial nature of their faith, Noyes and his adherents finally established the Oneida community. The practices of the Perfection- ists—including group marriage, a form of polygamy, and economic communism—followed from Noyes’s teaching of how to attain communion with Christ and, ultimately, sinlessness.

The Oneida experience exemplifies the pattern of many religious utopian experiments. The first year’s population was a mere 87, but it increased to 205 at the height of the colony’s popularity. All members met nightly for community business meetings and worked

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and reared children in common. Women attained rights equal to those of men. But the society was exclusive, closed to the outside, and the community’s practices didn’t spread to the surrounding area.

Eventually, internal dissension forced Noyes to leave the United States for Canada. In the absence of the community’s governmental and theological cornerstone, the community disintegrated. What was left of the group abandoned any utopian pretense and became a joint stock company. Factories producing paper products, plastic goods, and the famous Oneida silverware are the lasting legacy of the community. The formula of an iconoclastic, charismatic religious leader and followers who join together apart from the mainstream, maintain their faith and its corresponding practices for a while, but eventually lose interest seems the standard pattern for religious utopian experiments in action.

The Farm

Other utopian communities are not tied so directly to their founders as leaders or focused on attaining a single end—in the case of Noyes and Oneida, human perfection—but, instead, are developed as responses to certain concerns and dedicated to the journey as well as the end goal. For example, Stephen Gaskin (1935– ) and 320 self–described San Francisco “hippies” created The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, in 1971. They agreed on certain principles—nonvio- lence and environmentalism, for example—but shared no common vision regarding religion or economics. The community developed organically, meeting challenges as they arose. The adaptiveness of this approach allowed the colony to survive. Membership skyrocketed to 1,200 by 1980, but now remains a steady 250.

Some members earn money outside of the community in nearby towns; others work with internal community businesses, now reaching a global audience through the Internet. Some members live a vegetarian lifestyle; others eat meat. Some members take part in a communal economic experiment known as The Second Foundation; others maintain private property ownership. The anti–violence, pro–environment atmosphere of The Farm remains intact, however, and the fact that members interact with the outside world allows The Farm’s experiment to affect life outside the utopia. In fact, The Farm’s use of solar power, organic farming, and spiritual midwifery, among other things, has brought international attention. Nonetheless, the world has not changed to look like The Farm. The experiment may be considered successful by many criteria, but The Farm remains an exception to the rule of contemporary society.

Utopian thinkers in turn have sought to socialize the economy and free it of government involvement, give power to all equally and reserve it for a chosen few, honor one gender over another and give both genders the same authority. Just as there are as many utopias as there are utopian thinkers, there is no satisfactory way to categorize utopianism in practice. Historically, however, a pattern does emerge of when certain kinds of utopian action became more prevalent than others, especially in the West. The eighth century B.C., for example, contained mostly religious utopian thinkers who relied on oration to communicate their messages. The sixteenth century offered many literary utopias presented as travel narratives to contrast with current systems. The eighteenth century brought revolutionaries who longed to see immediate change. The nineteenth century yielded experimental communities that put theory into practice, at least for a time. The twentieth century brought dystopias that warned what might happen if systems did not reform. Of course in each era, overlap exists. But even within each era of utopian action, the utopias themselves, the blueprints for a better world, remained as unique as the individuals who conceived of them.

ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL RESPONSE

In many ways it is difficult to analyze utopianism, for it has been many things to many people across the ages. How can Plato’s Republic, a staple of Western literature for more than 2,000 years, be considered a failure? How can François Noel Babeuf’s abortive attempt to overthrow the French government be considered a success? And how can these two examples of utopianism in action be considered comparable at all? Nonetheless, the open–endedness of the theory aside, there can be legitimate criticisms and compliments made with regard to utopianism.

Perhaps the most obvious criticism of utopianism is the underlying uncertainty of whether the ideal community is, in fact, real. The most visual illustration of this uncertainty is the image of Spanish conquistadors searching South America for El Dorado, or contemporary oceanographers trying to pinpoint the lost city of Atlantis. Does paradise exist? Though it seems that the legends of beautiful societies of learning, peace, and eternal health were but a foil for the current day’s problems, a device to critique existing governments and peoples, some continue to experience the urge to tie utopia to a geographical location. If utopias cannot be mapped, seen, and touched, does this make the idea of them

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BIOGRAPHY:

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley was born in 1894 in Surrey, England, and grew up in London. His family was well–known for scientific and intellectual achieve- ments—Huxley’s half–brother won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his work in physiology—and as a youth Aldous was considered something of a prodigy. He was highly intellegent and very creative.

Eton and Oxford–educated Huxley left his native England to live in the United States, where he became one of the most famous novelists of the twentieth century. Though nearly blind since his late teens, Huxley was remarkably prolific and produced a number of works, many of which set the standard for the modern dystopia. Huxley’s dark humor and natural cynicism grew with age and his increasing pessimism with the direction the world was taking. His Brave New World (1932) served as perhaps the best example of his dystopian thought and opened the door for George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) and the era of the dystopia.

Huxley’s novels displayed his deep background in utopian literature. In Brave New World, for example, he describes “soma,” a psychedelic drug used to control citizens—a term lifted from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). His dystopias like Brave New World and Ape and Essence (1948) satirized earlier science fiction utopias as well—such as H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923)—by turning their premises upside down, showing how societies based on scientific principles alone develop into sterile, empty worlds of many means but no ends. Brave New World explored a caste society in which

emotions are repressed, relationships are hollow, and humans are genetically altered to fit preexisting classes while the totalitarian 10 World Controllers serve the stability of the citizens while protecting their own self–interest. Ape and Essence painted a devastating picture of a depraved humanity in a United States after atomic and bacteriological warfare.

His one attempt at a true utopia, 1962’s Island, described a peaceful community in the Indian Ocean whose peace rested on the dual pillars of Tantric Buddhism and drugs. Island did not reflect the passion of Huxley’s other works, however, and did not bring similar attention to the author. Huxley met the greatest success commercially and intellectually when he explained the terror of the world that might be created— the antithesis of paradise—if society did not change. Mechanization, materialism, violence, sexism, and, above all, the willingness to surrender individual liberty and responsibility for stability and efficiency, according to Huxley, led in the opposite direction of true utopia. His body of work became one of the foundational currents in contemporary science fiction and the model for twentieth–century dystopian literature.

In the last years of his life, Huxley experimented with mysticism and drugs such as LSD. He died on November 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His influence is felt in the world of literature and beyond. The rock group The Doors took its name from Huxley’s novel The Doors of Perception.

and their systems less viable? Many sixteenth–cen- tury writers described their utopias in the form of travel narratives, as if the authors themselves had visited concrete, three–dimensional locations and then simply reported on their findings. Yet these places were fiction only. The uneasy tension between literal and metaphorical readings of utopian works remains a difficulty of the theory. If the fabled utopias don’t really exist, then what does that mean for those who would institute the reforms suggested by them?

This question leads to a second problem with utopianism: its abstract nature. Especially in the case of

utopian prophets and writers, who discussed the ideal society and its attributes in a vacuum, utopias remained in the realm of ideas only. Few utopian thinkers of this sort explained how to move current systems toward attaining the attributes of paradise. Communities that enjoyed enlightened leaders and no poverty sounded wonderful, but how could people get there from where they were with their fallible, unsatisfactory states? By relying on the image of a utopia, thinkers did not have to explain what reforms needed to be made or how they could be achieved. This means that many of the potential changes utopian thinkers might have brought never found their way to actual practice.

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The Problems of Utopias

Even when some utopian thinkers experimented with actual communities and tried to implement their ideas, members often proved to be the theories’ own worst enemies. By making utopian communities exclusive, cut off from the larger world around them, community members ensured that their reforms never influenced mainstream culture. To be fair, some groups, such as the Shakers, remained apart for reasons of self–defense; their practices inflamed outsiders and sometimes led to acts of animosity and even violence. Others remained separate for fear of contamination from the outside world. Regardless of the reasons, though, insularity meant that any reforms the communities made lived and died within the community walls and never had the opportunity to affect the larger world. While open communities still exist, exclusivity was a tenet of many utopian experiments.

These communities often revolved around a central figure—an Ann Lee or a John Humphrey Noyes— especially if religion provided the foundation for the utopia and the leader held specific theological authority. The first problem with this is that, in some communities, the life span of the experiment paralleled the life span of the leader. When the leader died, so, too, did the utopia. This meant that the experiment did not last long enough to experience growth and maturity, and its message rarely had any lasting impact. Surely in the ideal world the truth the members sought would be more permanent, less transient than the life of a man or a woman.

The power of these experimental community leaders, coupled with the isolation of the colonies, also leads to another potential downfall of utopian thinking: the cult of personality. One contemporary example illustrates this well. Jim Jones (1931–1978) was a Protestant minister in the United States, preaching particularly in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Ukiah and San Francisco, California. After officials began to investigate his alleged misuse of church money, Jones convinced a thousand of his followers to go to Guyana with him and create an experimental utopian community named Jonestown, after its leader. At one level, the community did seem Eden–like; its members came from different races, classes, and age groups to form a cooperative, faith–based, self–sufficient community in the wilds of an exotic land. But if the charismatic Jones had power before, it was doubled after his followers left the larger world behind in favor of the insulated settlement. Eventually, the paranoid Jones convinced his followers to commit mass suicide in 1978, and he followed by taking his own life. Many members went to Guyana in the hopes of developing

an alternative community that would serve as an example to the rest of the world; the experimental paradise devolved into a cult of personality that ended up costing more than 900 lives. Certain utopian visions can lead to dangerous cults of personality with the potential for violence.

A Vision of Hope

The impact of these tragic utopias is the exception, however, and not the rule. In fact, the chief criticism of utopian thought is not that it has dangerous outcomes, but rather that it is rarely acted upon. If no society recreates Plato’s Republic or More’s Utopia, does this mean that the authors failed in their utopian quest? The saving grace of the utopian impulse is not in the details, but in the big picture. The one thing that unites all forms of utopianism, from sermons to literature to communities, is hope. None of the utopian theorists would have bothered with lengthy books or dangerous revolutions or challenging community experiments if they believed that the system in which they found themselves could not be changed for the better. Some might not have given their audience blueprints for how to implement their ideas, but all assumed that criticizing the status quo and/or suggesting what kind of better world could exist was a worthy use of their time. Even the dystopians with their gloomy and even frightening predictions of the future voiced their concerns so individuals had the time to make things better. The utopians believed ideas mattered and progress was possible. The question of what those ideas were, and what was meant by progress, pales in comparison to the realization that all utopians were and are, at heart, optimists. Over 2,000 years of unbroken optimism about the political process in all its forms and functions is a remarkable legacy for any theory.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

•Consider several of the utopian works. How did women’s roles change from Plato’s Republic to later works such as Bellamy’s Looking Backward?

•What about the United States made it the most successful launching ground for experimental utopian communities?

•Which utopian theorists were most associated with the American and French revolutions? How did the revolutions affect their ideas of the perfect society?

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•Consider recent books and films. In what ways has science fiction influenced utopianism in the twentieth and twenty–first century?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources

Andrews, Charles M., comp. Famous Utopias: Being the Complete Text of Rousseau’s Social Contract, More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s City of the Sun. New York: Tudor, 1901.

Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward: 2000–1887. New York: Hendricks House, n.d.

Clute, John, ed. Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia.

New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1995.

Clute, John, and Peter Nicholls, eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995.

Eliav–Feldon, Miriam. Realistic Utopias: The Ideal Imaginary Societies of the Renaissance, 1516–1630. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.

The Farm. Available at http://www.thefarm.org/.

Gray, John. Liberalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1986.

Guarneri, Carl J. The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nine- teenth–Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Harrington, James. The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics. J. G. A. Pocock, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Hayden, Dolores. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1975. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976.

Holloway, Mark. Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America, 1680–1880. 2nd edition. New York, Dover, 1966.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Reprint edition. New York: HarperPerennial Library, 1998.

Kraut, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Kumar, Krishan. Utopianism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

Laidler, Harry W. Social–Economic Movements: An Historical and Comparative Survey of Socialism, Communism, Co–oper- ation, Utopiansm; and Other Systems of Reform and Reconstruction. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1947.

Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979.

Miller, David, ed. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Cambridge, Blackwell, 1991.

Moment, Gairdner B. and Otto F. Kraushaar, eds., Utopias: The American Experience. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1980.

More, Thomas. Utopia. Ralph Robinson, trans. London: A. Constable, 1906.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.

Plato, The Republic. B. Jowett, trans. New York: Tudor Publishing, 1892.

White, Frederic R., ed. Famous Utopias of the Renaissance.

New York: Hendricks House, Inc, 1955.

Wiener, Philip P., ed. Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas. Volume IV. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.

Further Readings

Andrews, Edward D. People Called Shakers: A Search for the Perfect Society. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1994. This work looks at the origin and ideology of the Shakers, as well as examining the everyday life of Shaker society.

Baker, Robert S. Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia. New York: Twayne Publishing, 1989. This book analyzes the key points and ideas of Huxley’s classic novel.

Horrox, Rosemary, and Sarah Rees Jones, ed. Pragmatic Utopianism: Ideals and Communities, 1200–1630. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. This book examines the meaning and practice of Utopia in the medieval and early Renaissance world.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Revisited. Reprint edition. New York: HarperPerennial Library, 2000. One of the most brilliant minds of the century analyzes the issues related to his landmark novel two decades after its publication.

Royle, Edward. Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium: A Study of the Harmony Community. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. A look at the life of Robert Owen and his New Harmony utopian vision.

SEE ALSO

Communism, Pacifism, Socialism

P o l i t i c a l

T h e o r i e s

f o r

S t u d e n t s

4 0 5

Glossary &

Master Index