The Utopian Vision of the Future (Then and Now): A Marxist Critique by Bertell Ollman
1.
Oscar Wilde said that any map that doesn’t have utopia on it is not worth looking at. There are few quotes I’ve cited as often or with as much pleasure as this one. Yet, there is something in the sweeping nature of the claim that has always left me unsatisfied. In examining utopian thinking, I will also try to distinguish what is valid and useful in Wilde’s claim from what is not.
Before starting on our meta-journey to utopia, however, there are a few ambiguities in the meaning of “utopia” that need to be clarified. The term comes from Thomas More’s famous work, Utopia, where it is used to mean both an ideal society and also one that doesn’t exist anywhere. Later, utopia also came to be used to refer to a society that did not exist because it could not exist; it depicted an impossible dream. An ideal as yet unrealizable, or unrealizable because impossible? This ambiguity in the term’s meaning has teased but no doubt also stimulated writers on the subject from More’s day (early sixteenth century) to our own, and also accounts for the delight or dismay with which different people have reacted to the charge of being a utopian.
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