Journey Through Utopia - an extract
Our age is an age of compromises, of half-measures, of the lesser evil. Visionaries are derided or despised, and "practical men” rule our lives. We no longer seek radical solutions to the evils of society, but reforms; we no longer try to abolish war, but to avoid it for a period of a few years; we do not try to abolish crime, but are contented with criminal reforms; we do not try to abolish starvation, but to set up world-wide charitable organisations. At a time when man is so concerned with what is practicable and capable of immediate realisation, it might be a salutary exercise to turn to men who have dreamt of Utopias, who have rejected everything which did not comply with their ideal of perfection.
We shall often feel humble as we read of these ideal states and cities, for we shall realise the modesty of our claims, and the poverty of our vision. Zeno advocated internationalism, Plato recognised the equality of men and women, Thomas More saw clearly the relationship between poverty and crime which is denied by men even to-day. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Campanella advocated a working day of four hours, and the German scholar Andreae talked of attractive work and put forward a system of education which could still serve as a model today.
We shall find private property condemned, money and wages considered immoral or irrational, human solidarity admitted as an obvious fact. All the ideas which could be considered daring to-day were then put forward with a confidence which shows that though they were not generally accepted, they must have been nevertheless readily understood. In the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century we find even more startling and bold ideas concerning religion, sexual relations, the nature of government and of the law. We are so accustomed to thinking that progressive movements begin in the nineteenth century that we shall be surprised to find that the degeneration of utopian thought begins then. Utopias, as a rule, become timid; private property and money are often judged necessary; men must consider themselves happy if they work eight hours a day, and there is rarely any question of their work being attractive. Women are placed under the tutelage of their husbands, and their children under that of the father. But before utopias became contaminated by the "realist” spirit of our time, they flourished with a variety and richness which may well make us doubt the validity of our claim to have achieved some measure of social progress.
That is not to say that all utopias have been revolutionary and progressive: the majority of them have been both, but few have been entirely revolutionary. Utopian writers were revolutionary when they advocated a community of goods at a time when private property was held to be sacred, the right of every individual to eat when beggars were hanged, the equality of women when these were considered little better than slaves, the dignity of manual work when it was regarded and made a degrading occupation, the right of every child to a happy childhood and good education when this was reserved for the sons of the noble and the rich. All this has contributed to make the word 'Utopia' synonymous with a happy, desirable form of society. Utopia, in this respect, represents mankind's dream of happiness, its secret longing for the Golden Age, or, as others saw it, for its lost Paradise.
But that dream often had its dark places. There were slaves in Plato's Republic and in More's Utopia; there were mass murders of Helots in the Sparta of Lycurgus; and wars, executions, strict discipline, religious intolerance, are often found beside the most enlightened institutions. These aspects, which have often been overlooked by the apologists of utopias, result from the authoritarian conception on which many utopias were built, and are absent from those which aim at achieving complete freedom.
Two main trends manifest themselves in utopian thought throughout the ages. One seeks the happiness of mankind through material well-being, the sinking of man's individuality into the group, and the greatness of the State. The other, while demanding a certain degree of material comfort, considers that happiness is the result of the free expression of man's personality and must not be sacrificed to an arbitrary moral code or to the interests of the state.
When the utopia points to an ideal life without becoming a plan, that is, a lifeless machine applied to living matter, it truly becomes the realisation of progress.*