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p What path of action still lay open to the New Left in the world as they found it?—to become "radical critics", that is to attempt actively to intervene in the course of events, so as, if not to change the world, then at least to pave the way for such change and give the signal for action to those who, from their point of view, would be able to exert a real influence on the shaping of history.

p Yet along what channel were they to direct their action and how were they to act? The answer to these questions had been predetermined both by the overall principles of "negative dialectics" and the Great Refusal, and by the radicals’ concrete picture of modern bourgeois society. To them it was a society both “integrated” and “disintegrating” which deserved no other fate than "total negation", and which, in its turn, demanded that the forces of negation used methods and levers, which from the point of view of the establishment guided by a spirit of "irrational rationality" (and at the same time from the point of view of all-pervading "common sense"), looked unreasonable and unrealistic, i.e., Utopian.

p This meant that Utopianism became not only a synonym of true realism opening up scope for free creativity in the context of the prevailing system of social relations, but also provided a universal methodological principle of "active criticism" and "critical action”.

p Attempts at such a formulation of the question of action are to be found as early on as Wright Mills’ "Letter to the New Left", in which he wrote: "But must we not ask: What 133 now is really meant by Utopian? And: Is not our utopianism a major source of our strength? ‘Utopian’ nowadays I think refers to any criticism or proposal that transcends the upclose milieux of a scatter of individuals: the milieux which men and women can understand directly and which they can reasonably hope directly to change.”  [133•* 

p Earlier still this question was raised from the general methodological angle by Theodor Adorno, who saw the disappearance of Utopian thought and the emphasis on the metaphysically interpreted unity of practice and theory as the cause of the latter’s loss of its critical power and the domination of the pragmatic conformist spirit.

p The idea of the artificial obstruction of real possibilities opened up by the "affluent society" and the perpetuation of the dividing line between the “possible” and the “ impossible”, of the need for a forceful separation of theory and practice, that have become interlinked in that society, and the utilisation of levers not yet integrated by the society in question found spontaneous expression also at the level of mass consciousness. This made itself felt most clearly at all phases in the evolution of the New Left and in particular during the late sixties, when slogans such as "the-end- ofUtopia" and "Demand the impossible!" became widely popular among the students in revolt. Marcuse wrote at that time: "Today any form of the concrete world, of human life, any transformation of the technical and natural environment is a possibility, and the locus of this possibility is historical. Today we have the capacity to turn the world into hell, and we are well on the way to doing so. We also have the capacity to turn it into the opposite of hell.”  [133•**  Society is thus confronted with scope for movement in all manner of directions, even opposite ones (“Hell”—“Heaven”). Historical determinism is losing its objective meaning and the only connecting link between the past (history) and the future is the historical subject. The knell of social history is ringing out  [133•***  134 and Utopia’s hours are also numbered, i.e., man is confronted by the "refutation of those ideas and theories that use the concept of utopia to denounce certain socio-historical possibilities.”  [134•* 

p For the radical Left today the concept of “Utopia” acquires a highly specific meaning and is seen to embody socio- political realism as an adequate expression of revolutionary (non-conformist) consciousness. This reinterpretation of the very concept of “Utopia” and the social function of “ Utopian” consciousness and action provides the basis for the radicals’ conception of revolutionary creativity.

p The New Left reproaches “traditional” social sciences (which they see as embracing both bourgeois positivist theories and scientific socialism) with excessive theoretical and practical purism: anxious to possess a firm basis of "sound realism" these theories, they assure us, are too pedantic in their contrasting of science with Utopia, the immanent with the transcendental, the possible with the impossible and as a result, according to the New Left, the critical character of these theories is open to question.

p The New Left regards the rejection of this contrasting of science with Utopia as a task of the first urgency. Marcuse writes: "I believe that this restrictive conception must be revised, and that the revision is suggested, and even necessitated by the actual evolution of contemporary societies. The dynamic of their productivity deprives ‘utopia’ of its traditional unreal content: what is denounced as ‘utopian’ is no longer that which has ’no place’ and cannot have any place in the historical universe but rather that which is blocked from coming about by the power of the established societies.”  [134•**  Marcuse is thus intending to restore to the concept of “ Utopia” its original meaning: that which exists ‘nowhere’, that which can be brought about but which still remains to be brought about.

135

p In actual fact the fathers of Utopian socialism were often little preoccupied with the question as to whether it were possible or impossible to build the ideal society they had devised in their abstract speculations: they simply declined to plot their ideal in space or time. The possibility of building such a society was a problem that could be formulated and solved only by a more developed social science based on the idea of reason and demonstrating the implausibility of Utopias. The concept of Utopia was now being used not simply to mean that which "has not taken place", but also that which could not take place, in so far as it defied reason and the laws of history which reason revealed. Radical critics dismiss this interpretation of Utopia: in their view, that which is commonly regarded as “Utopia”, namely impracticable projects for social reorganisation, is what the establishment artificially obstructs but which could quite easily take place "here and now", for “Utopian” possibilities, immanently intrinsic to developed society, can be discovered by the subject in search of knowledge equipped with “transcending” imaginative powers.

p The paradoxical nature of Marcuse’s conception of Utopia comes out quite clearly: to be a “realist” according to Marcuse, one must be a “Utopian” in the eyes of the “ integrated” majority. Such is the kind of “Utopianism” to which Marcuse rallies his readers, regarding it as a true criterion of the revolutionary spirit, as a means of radically negating modern bourgeois society.

p Behind the categorical assertions made by the ideologists of the radical Left in connection with "the end of Utopia" as "the possibility of the impossible" it is of course far from difficult to discern the infinitely real and highly topical problem of the flexibility of those borderlines, which divide the “possible” from the “impossible”, just as in the radicals’ Utopian pathos there is no mistaking the spontaneous reaction to the absolutisation of social reality typical of the apologetic outlook.

p Indeed, in our times when growth rates in material production, that is stimulated by the technological revolution, are much higher than they were in preceding historical epochs, while the time-gap between scientific discoveries and their practical implementation is steadily narrowing, when 136 the “Utopia” of yesterday is already acquiring an air of reality, it is becoming more and more difficult to define a definite watershed between the “possible” and “impossible”, between Imagination that leads man off at a tangent and Imagination that leads man forward. There is yet another factor which is also capable of engendering a concept of the "end of Utopia" bound up with certain specific features of the march of history in modern times. At a time when the last strongholds of colonial empires are tottering, and many new states are entering the historical arena, as they strive to attain the "realm of freedom" as quickly as possible, and when non-proletarian forces are being drawn into the world revolutionary process on a mass scale, there has been no end of attempts to "push forward" or “outwit” history, attempts, which sometimes assume tremendous proportions and give rise to the idea that arbitrary change in the logic of the historical process can be brought about. However, does all this really signify the "end of Utopia”?

p It should be remembered that in the history of culture Utopia, as the image of ideal social organisation, and the Utopian spirit as a type of consciousness and method of socio-political activity have played an ambivalent role.

p Mankind has always felt the need for a mechanism which might regulate its historical activity and, ensuring economy of social time, might direct its action into such a channel where it might prove as expedient and effective as possible. For this a symbol was necessary, the symbol of a dividing line, the crossing of which would have meant a betrayal of faith or reason, depending upon which of the two societies might accord first place.

p In the middle ages it was “heresy” that fulfilled this function. “Heresy” symbolised abandonment of faith, violation of "divine law" and the danger of forgetting the "way of truth". In the period that followed when faith was replaced by reason and Utopia acquired the meaning which it has retained in the main up until the present day, the abovementioned function was attributed to it.

p Plotting the historically evolving dividing lines between the “possible” and “impossible”, the “reasonable” and " unreasonable," “knowledge” and “faith”, “natural” and “ supernatural”, Utopian writing has focussed attention on a 137 specific type of action, action in one particular direction, namely that which is regarded as “possible” or “reasonable”. At the same time while performing an undeniably ideological function Utopia proved to be not merely the dividing line between the “possible” and “impossible”, but also between the “desirable” and “undesirable”, the “advantageous” and “disadvantageous”, in brief between that which embodied official interests and that which did not. This meant that Utopia came to represent the dividing line between those interests which serve to consolidate the basis of existing society and the social interests of the opposition, between the “permissible” and the “impermissible”.

p From this point of view the reproach levelled by Marcuse and other radicals at bourgeois social theorists is not without foundation. The idea of reason, on which the contrasting of Utopia and science is based, once lent a positivist interpretation is used by the bourgeoisie to substantiate and justify the existing order, which has long since become unreasonable: that which is “unreasonable” is “Utopian”, while only that which is reasonable is real; in so far as reality is identified with existing social being, which is becoming essentially unreasonable, the contrasting of reality and Utopia and the advocacy of “realism” as a gnoseological and socio- methodological principle comes to acquire a reactionary conservative character. Going out of its way to perpetuate the dividing line between “Utopia” and “reality”, the bourgeoisie is inclined to proclaim as “Utopian” those tendencies which, being possessed of the essential prerequisites for their implementation, are “disadvantageous” for it and are therefore deliberately held in check by the bourgeoisie. Relying on means of mass manipulation, the bourgeoisie endeavours to mould the consciousness of the working people in a positivist spirit so as to concentrate their attention on existing reality as the only reasonable variety, on the “sober” approach excluding the possibility of any “risky” search for socio- political alternatives. It warns against Don Quixotes, declaring them to be madmen, and extols the wily Sancho Panzas skilled in adapting themselves to all manner of adversity and convinced that in time everything will "work out”.

p In the context of state-monopoly capitalism the bourgeoisie, with the help of the cultural machine geared to its 138 needs does everything possible to banish from the minds of the masses the idea of revolution as a real possibility, branding it as a dangerous “Utopia”.

p More !\than half a century ago Lenin pointed out with every justification that "the aim of reaction is ... to represent the revolution as ’elemental madness’. ... The aim of reaction is to make the people forget the forms of struggle, the forms of organisation, and the ideas and slogans which the revolutionary period begot in such profusion and variety.”  [138•* 

p This task is the same as that which the present-day reactionaries set themselves,  [138•**  with perhaps this one difference, that while proclaiming the "Utopian quality" of democratic or socialist revolution they are attempting to make capital out of those very concessions which the working people succeeded in wresting from the bourgeoisie in the course of their class battles in the developed capitalist countries.

p In these conditions the demand that the realism inherent in various social trends and projects dismissed by bourgeois social thinkers as “Utopian”, be singled out is a very relevant one.

p However while maintaining that social Utopias no longer exist nowadays and that to dismiss this or that untenable socio-political project as “Utopian” is to fail to exploit real possibilities, radical critics ignore all difference between abstract and real possibilities and thereby introduce into the outlook of the New Left the idea of “absolute” freedom and rob the movement of clear guiding lines abandoning them to chance.

p In the twentieth century in view of changes brought about 139 by the development of material production, science and technology and social relations, and also as a result of political change and the intensification of the part played by politics in the life of society, an increase took place in the relative independence of man’s consciousness of objective reality, and the need to reappraise the limits of real possibilities opening up before mankind acquired especial urgency. Yet all this does not free man’s activity from its dependence on natural and social reality, does not turn "upside down" the correlation between the subjective and objective, between social consciousness and social being, and does not strip certain socio-political projects of their Utopian essence. Today as well, the attempt to "push forward" history may end up as a loss rather than an acquisition of material and ideological preconditions for social progress actually existing within society. If the subjective desire to bring about change is not backed up by adequate objective preconditions it cannot make any Utopian project realistic. Attempts to “outwit” history are doomed to failure from the start. For instance the transition from pre-capitalist relations to socialism while by-passing capitalism has now become possible not as a result of voluntaristic decisions, but because on a world scale the objective preconditions for the transition to socialism have already taken shape and this very transition has come to embody the essence of the modern epoch. The presence of these conditions helps individual countries to accelerate their advance considerably and to bypass certain stages of historical development, but this does not mean that this or that country is able arbitrarily to "leap across" any historical stages. Arbitrary leaping of this kind over specific historical stages turns out on closer examination to be nothing more than the overall acceleration of rates of social progress, the pace of which is being telescoped as the sequence and arrangement of these stages are changed, although it does not rob the latter of their historical inevitability. “ Utopian” aims meanwhile prove practicable only when the material basis for their implementation already exists. In the final analysis Utopias can be brought into being, but only when they have already ceased to be Utopian.

p On the other hand, the presence of material conditions for the formation of new social relations, when the will to 140 accomplish change is missing—a situation typical of the advanced capitalist countries according to Marcuse—again does not prevent the social projects he has put forward being Utopian.

p Deliberating in the spirit of the Enlightenment, Marcuse tends to regard the process of the recognition of the existence of material and economic preconditions for change as a process determined by the actual will, the actual consciousness of the individual. In the meantime he overlooks the fact that the cognition of a given situation and action in accordance with that situation is not after all determined by the subject’s free will, that success in enlightenment of the masses also requires preconditions which are not directly dependent on consciousness. The lack of subjective will to achieve change thus comes to constitute an objective feature. If that is the case, then the thesis linking the "end of Utopia" only with the material preconditions of their implementation, while the will for change is lacking or if present is not based on those preconditions turns out to be bereft of a practically effective character.  [140•* 

p Marcuse places on the same level Marxism and bourgeois social theories, failing to notice the fundamental difference between them. Marxism grew up and developed in a struggle against Utopias and Utopianism. However the “ antiUtopianism” of Marxism manifests itself not where Marcuse sees it, that is, not in the positivist approach to social reality typical of bourgeois conceptions. When comparing Utopian and scientific socialism Frederick Engels noted that the task of the latter "was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico- economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialistic conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The socialism of earlier days certainly 141 criticised the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad.”  [141•* 

p Scientific socialism demands that men base their activity not on a priori constructed ideal schemes nor on being in its existing form, but on dialectically interpreted historical necessity and this, according to Engels, constitutes the main difference between scientific and Utopian socialism. The question as to what comes under the term Utopian should be approached concretely at each stage of social development starting out from an analysis of the trends and a definition of the concrete content of the historical necessity being shaped in the process of man’s activity.

p This Marxist approach to Utopia determined the Marxist approach to the Utopian principle of action. Marxists see the only correct approach to the differentiation between “Utopian” and “realistic” schemes and action to lie in a rejection of "a priori", “eternal” recipes and advocate dialectical analysis of the situation that has taken shape as a key to the solution of the relevant problems. This approach is very distant from the superficial mechanistic description of social “reality”, for realism as a method of social analysis and socio-political creativity is not measured by the degree to which it corresponds to this “reality” as the internally divided whole—otherwise it degenerates into historical naturalism. Social reality is only one of the many dimensions of reality, beyond which the scholar and revolutionary are bound to probe since they see their task to lie in unearthing concealed trends and analyse these as possible paths for moving beyond the confines of “existing” social reality.

p As many critics of the New Left have aptly pointed out, absolute negation of Utopia and emphasis tin "anti- Utopianism" as an absolute principle of revolutionary action can themselves end up as Utopian, a fact which gives us adequate grounds for qualifying Marcuse and other ideologists of the radical Left as modern Utopians. "We find Marcuse’s 142 conception ... to be a Utopian “programme” of action directly connected with speculative constructions of an idealist outlook and altogether out of touch with objective scientific information on the contradictory dialectical processes characteristic of the concrete stage in the development of modern society.”  [142•* 

p The Utopian orientation is not an accidental element in radical ideology: it constitutes an organic part of the latter for it serves to manifest the specific nature of radical consciousness as such.

p The consciousness of the radical Left today as it ascertains the contradictions in existing society is itself contradictory, fragmented “vacillating” consciousness, vacillating as it is between acceptance of the establishment and negation of the same, between optimism and pessimism. As it assimilates the idea of man’s omnipotence (as an embodiment of technology’s omnipotence) the radical consciousness tends—under the influence of the "ideology of integration"—to approach technology as the blind tool of suppression which is capable of ruling out all social alternatives. However, when in the process of social collisions this ideology is jolted, the unstable equilibrium of consciousness is again disturbed, its centre shifting to the opposite pole and it starts defining and absolutising the other opposite.  [142•**  Yesterday’s scepticism gives way to the idea that immediate, instantaneous change of existing reality is possible, total "dropping out of the game" and the building of a “brave”, “new” world. The only imperative is completely to ignore imperatives: "everything goes!", " everything’s possible!". "In a situation like this which took shape in May and June," commented Guy Bess, "we saw teachers and students who had never taken part in political struggle suddenly aroused to action. Carried away by an enthusiasm which brought together and shuffled those who yesterday had felt themselves ‘alone’, these people suddenly thought that 143 the ’final struggle’ was upon them and that everything was possible___"  [143•* 

p Here we are up against a manifestation of the consciousness of a representative of those social strata thrown out of their traditional niche, robbed of their once firm social status (or who have never enjoyed it at all) and secure (or relatively so) position in society. To the minds of such men social reality appears not as an integral system whose elements are linked together by laws of their functioning and development (and only in that historically determined connection are they possessed of definite value), but as the sum of “free” “factors”, the value of each being incorporated within it or like a set of toy bricks, which if shuffled and reassembled can be used to erect a more or less (depending upon the perspicacity and skill of the Utopian) perfect picture of society. If approached from this angle the history of mankind emerges not as a process in which one concrete historical system grows out of another, but a process in which one set of “ factors” emerges and increases while another wanes and disappears.  [143•** 

p This connection between Utopian consciousness and the “factor” approach was noted many years ago by Karl Mannheim. In his Ideology and Utopia he pointed out that certain oppressed groups have such a strong vested interest, of 144 the intellectual variety, in the destruction and transformation of given social conditions, that despite themselves they see only those elements in a situation which tend to negate it: for this reason they are incapable of making a correct diagnosis of existing social conditions. Mannheim goes so far ’as to say that these groups do not touch upon that which actually exists, but rather attempt to change the existing situation. He reproaches them with always failing to diagnose situations and instead using them merely as a guide for action. Finally he concludes: in Utopian thinking the collective subconsciousness, guided by the desired concept and urge for action contains certain real aspects, but turns away from everything which might make its faith waver or paralyse its desire to change the existing state of affairs.  [144•* 

The radical Left’s assessment of Utopia and Utopianism thus reveals a reflection of the existential situation, in which the New Left found itself and which it endeavours to resolve. This comes to the fore particularly clearly in its view of Utopianism as a principle of historical creativity.