[P2P-F] Fwd: The False Defences Of Utopian Thought

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Greco <thg at mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 9:49 AM
Subject: Re: The False Defences Of Utopian Thought
To: "Dmytri Kleiner/ Friends." <dk at telekommunisten.net>
Cc: John Zube <jzube at acenet.com.au>


 Dmytri,

Your essay should begin with:

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.

 Everything before that, all references to Marx and Bookchin are confusing
and superfluous.

You say, "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."

I would like to see your answers to those questions:
What is your political program?
What is your revolutionary theory?
How would you change the balance of power?

Thomas

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.thg at mindspring.com
Mobile phone (USA): 520-820-0575
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On 11/01/2011 10:23 AM, Dmytri Kleiner/ Friends. wrote:

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'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, 1848.

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 mis 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 destroyed, 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
love privilege and power in such a society. This lack makes such work
not so much political thought, but better filed under Speculative
Fiction.








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