utopianism

also n.
The ideals or principles of a utopian; idealistic and impractical social theory.

A disposition to embrace the vision of an alternative society from which present social evils have been eradicated and in which there is complete human fulfilment. Thomas More gave the name Utopia to the imaginary island in his book of the same name (1516): an island whose social, economic, and political arrangements were marked by a high degree of communism, undoubtedly inspired by More's own religious (Catholic) convictions and his monastic ideals. The imaginary society described by More was both a ‘good place’ (from the Greek eutopia) and a no-place (or outopia) in the sense that it did not actually exist.

Before More there had been a long tradition of speculation on the form and nature of an ideal human community: a tradition going back to Greek political thought (especially in Plato) and further developed in Christian doctrine (see, for example, Augustine's neo-Platonic City of God). From Plato to More the literary utopia served essentially as a way of articulating a moral sense of the ideal, and in this way the failings of real human societies and their political arrangements could be put into perspective. Often descriptions of utopia deliberately ‘inverted’ the real (e.g. private ownership of property) by putting forward an opposing principle (e.g. economic communism). In literary terms the effect of such contrasts was often highly satirical, as in More's celebrated description of gold and silver being used for the making of Utopian chamber pots.

The Renaissance gave renewed impetus to utopian thought, and authors such as Campanella (The City of the Sun, 1602) and Bacon (New Atlantis, 1627) began to inject a new spirit of modernity into political theory by describing societies transformed by the application of knowledge and economic-technological development. The utopian impulse found its way into movements of social protest, revolutionary sects and parties, and into the new all-embracing political ideologies of the age of the industrial and democratic revolutions. In particular, the new socialist doctrines of the early nineteenth century—articulated by Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Cabet, and others—were widely received as gospels of salvation by the industrial working classes in their struggle for liberation from the dehumanizing and exploitative effects of capitalist industrialism. The utopian socialists often described in considerable detail how such a society would be organized, whether on the level of a small-scale community (Fourier, Owen) or at a national and even international level (Saint-Simon and his disciples, and Cabet).

Marx and Engels sought to draw a strict distinction between utopian socialism and their own scientific socialism. They clearly believed that their utopian predecessors had put too much faith in reason and enlightenment as instruments of change in the direction of socialism, and stressed the importance of understanding the dynamics of class conflict in society and the need for revolutionary struggle as a means of overthrowing the existing social order. However, in terms of their own vision of a future socialist, and eventually communist, society, Marx and Engels, and indeed the whole tradition of modern Marxism, can be seen to have embraced a strong (?utopian) conviction that the future would see the full realization of ideals of human liberation and equality.

Not only socialists and communists have produced utopias in modern times. Following Karl Mannheim's analysis (in Ideology and Utopia) both liberal and conservative thought have found expression in utopian aspirations and (often) fully-fledged blueprints for the future. And today we must add the strongly utopian thrust of much contemporary environmentalist thought (Green utopianism), feminism (which has produced a rich literature of fictional utopias), and some social-scientific theories of post-industrial society. At the same time the strongly progressivist assumptions behind much utopian thinking in the nineteenth century have encountered widespread opposition in the twentieth century, and utopian blueprints and ideals have been widely rejected by their critics in a spirit of anti-utopian reaction. The literary dystopia—that is, a work deliberately seeking to reveal the awful consequences of trying to implement a rational blueprint for utopia—has exercised great persuasive power in the last half-century or so. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are two of the most widely read accounts of possible ‘nightmare’ worlds of the future in which utopian ideas and principles have been put into effect through all-powerful dictatorial states.

However, utopianism does not necessarily lead to an advocacy of the all-powerful state and extreme forms of collectivism. As Robert Nozick demonstrated in his Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), it is possible to justify a minimalist state and extreme libertarian individualism on the basis of utopian arguments.

— Keith Taylor

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the political orientation of a utopian who believes in impossibly idealistic schemes social perfection

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