18

p For all their differences, utopias inevitably share certain common functions-above all, no doubt, the critical function. While it does not exhaust, as Mannheim maintains, the essence of Utopia, it is nevertheless important. A Utopian is always a critic, a rebel, sometimes a heretic who refuses to even theoretically accept his destiny, the destiny of his society or even of all mankind.

p But criticism can be different in its objectives, intensity and form. It can be passive and contemplative; it can be active, aimed at radically transforming society. This was the criterion the U.S. sociologist and historian Lewis Mumford used to divide all the Utopias he knew into two large groups, each with a distinctly expressed critical function. "One of these functions," he wrote in his Story of Utopias, 19 “is escape or compensation, it seeks an immediate release from the difficulties or frustrations of our lot. The other attempts to provide a condition for our release in the future. The utopias that correspond to these two functions I shall call the Utopias of escape and the utopias of reconstruction. The first leaves the external world the way it is, the second seeks to change it so that one may have intercourse with it on one’s own terms.”  [19•1 

p Obviously, the division Mumford suggests is relative, all the more so since many Utopias combine both a trend toward escape and a desire of reconstruction. Generally, however, this pattern does describe the simplest ways of rejecting actual reality.

p Utopian criticism may be conducted from different positions. A Utopian may criticize the existing social order as a “perversion” or “profanation” of past ideals dear to his heart and cherish the hope that the past, symbolically embodied in his concept of the Golden Age, would return. In other words, he may build the image of the desired reality according to ideals of the past, thus operating from historically reactionary positions.

p Utopian rejection may also be aimed at the shape of things to come, at a future threatening to destroy the status quo so dear to the heart of the conservative. In this case the Utopia is the somewhat improved and preserved present. Plato’s position is a classic example of a combination of reactionary and conservative utopianism. As the Soviet philosopher Aleksei Losey aptly remarked, "Plato’s Utopia combined elements of different social and government forms which had already existed in the past... Plato was an ideologue advocating the revival of obsolete forms of government based on slaveowning relations, although in his Utopia these once real sociopolitical forms were subjected to a peculiar and complex transformation. His revivalist plans were largely vague. The only thing that mattered was to fall out of step with the decaying Greek society of his time.”  [19•2 

p Utopian criticism can also be progressive, that is, aimed 20 at the destruction of the institutions, relations and values which have outlived their creative usefulness and become a dead weight hampering social development. This was the stand taken by the Utopian socialists of the first half of the 19th century who rejected bourgeois civilization and planned a new social system in their imagination.

p A Utopia’s critical thrust may be directed at different objects. A Utopian may rebel not only against social and political precepts or the dominant morals but also against laws of nature and against death itself. This rebellion is expressed poetically in many religious doctrines and folk Utopias. In time, the idea of mastering nature and attaining immortality assumes the form of projects-for example, in the so-called cosmic Utopia of Nikolai Fedorov, a 19th- century Russian philosopher. This author of a peculiar sociocosmic Utopia dreamed of a world in which man had conquered death and extended his power beyond Earth (see N. F. Fedorov, Works, Moscow, 1982). And, while Fedorov did not directly attack the existing social order the way Owen or Bellamy did (Looking Backward was the subject of Fedorov’s critical remarks), it is clear from his principal work entitled The Philosophy of the Common Cause that he saw victory over death as possible only after a radical—patriarchic—transformation of the society he lived in.

p Naturally, a Utopia’s mission is not confined to criticism of the existing sociopolitical structures or laws of nature. As a rule, Utopian criticism is indirect or even covert; it serves merely as a sort of background against which the Utopian projects his picture of an alternative world based on his concepts of the social, political, moral or aesthetic ideal. In constructing the ideal, Utopia discharges a normative function.

p Since human activity postulates and is oriented on an object, man invariably looks for an ideal as the perfect image of the object at which his activity is aimed. In this respect, ideals differ not only from era to era but also within individual eras, reflecting the interests of different social classes and groups.

p The social utopia postulates the main parameters of the ideal which are finite in the Utopian’s consciousness. However, history tells us that these limits may be situated at different distances from the boundaries of the existing society.

p Immanuel Kant was the first to formulate and try to 21 substantiate an orientation on a Utopian ideal as a limit situated as far as possible from the boundaries of the existing society. "The Platonic Republic," he wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason, "has become proverbial as an example—and a striking one—of imaginary perfection, such as can exist only in the brain of the idle thinker; and Brucker ridicules the philosopher for maintaining that a prince can never govern well, unless he is participant in the ideas. But we should do better to follow up this thought and, where this admirable thinker leaves us without assistance, employ new efforts to place it in clearer light, rather than carelessly fling it aside as useless, under the very miserable and pernicious pretext of impracticability.... Now although a perfect state may never exist, the idea is not on that account the less just, which holds up this maximum as the archetype or standard of a constitution, in order to bring legislative government always nearer and nearer to the greatest possible perfection. For at what precise degree human nature must stop in its progress, and how wide must be the chasm which must necessarily exist between the idea and its realization, are problems which no one can or ought to determine—and for this reason, that it is the destination of freedom to overstep all assigned limits between itself and the idea.”  [21•1 

p Therefore, the more impractical a Utopian ideal appears and the closer it is to the conceivable maximum, to the absolute, the higher its degree of possible practical effect. In other words, according to the Kantian logic, the closer a Utopia’s ideal is to the maximum, the more valuable it is in practical terms and the better it serves social progress.

p One must, however, note that this was precisely what intuitively motivated many Utopians, including the authors of folk Utopias, as well as Plato, More, Campanella, Cabet, Fourier, Bellamy, Morris and many others. They dreamed of a Golden Age, of an earthly paradise, of a perfect society.

p Still, history demonstrates that the limit recorded in a utopia can be transcendental to different degrees, that is, it can be positioned at different distances from the boundaries of the actual society. Depending on the historical situation, this limit alternates between approaching the 22 near reaches of the existing world (one might call this the "minimum ideal") and moving infinitely far away from it (the "maximum ideal"). And so, always involving a limit from the viewpoint of the Utopian, that is, embodying the specific limit of his sociological imagination, the Utopian ideal is relative in its actual content. Here, a distinct regularity is present. The maximum utopia is usually born in a period dominated by historical optimism and ideas of social progress. When optimism and the faith of the given class (or of society as a whole) in social progress give way to skepticism and pessimism, more modest (and at the same time closer to reality) and essentially reformist Utopian ideals emerge, pushing the maximum ideal to the background.

p This type of situation is often described as a “decline” or “end” of utopia; but this is hardly adequate to reflect the essence of the matter. Naturally, orientation on the minimum ideal, readiness to be content with little can be seen as an indication that the civilization which produced it and the social class whose expectations it expresses are decaying. Nevertheless, Utopia as such does not disappear; it continues to exist as the fruit and embodiment of a certain type of consciousness, of a certain form of perceiving reality and shaping a social alternative.

p As a result, in each historical era a nation’s social consciousness comprises a more or less broad range of Utopian ideals embodied in different forms and situated at different distances from the boundaries of the existing society.

p The advancement of science inevitably restricts Utopia’s normative function: the scientifically substantiated ideal is pushing the Utopian ideal aside. Still, the latter persists and continues to be reproduced both in the consciousness of professional intellectuals and in mass consciousness too.

p The reproduction of the Utopian ideal in mass and theoretical consciousness is also stimulated, as will be demonstrated later, by man’s urge to gain knowledge. This urge, coupled with practical interests, prompts man to go beyond the field mastered by science and to intellectually turn to frontiers which are still closed to precise science and can therefore be mastered only in extrascientific forms, in particular by building Utopian constructs. Yet, to avoid misunderstanding, one should note that “extrascientific”, that is, outside the realm of science, does not equal “ antiscientific”, that is, antagonistically opposed to science, 23 denying its legitimate rights and actual capabilities. Extrascientific forms of mastering the world may lack an antiscientific content if they complement scientific forms the way, say, art organically complements science.

p The turning to utopia is also connected with the fact that consciousness needs a future-oriented system of social, aesthetic and moral values not limited by the achievements and possibilities of science. Usually, as man acts, he mentally reproduces himself and the world around him in different spatial and temporal coordinates, that is, he lives, as it were, in the past, present and future simultaneously, picturing them in different “versions”. This means that it is not enough for man to imagine what the existing world may be like in the future. He feels the urge to imagine what he himself would like to become and what he would like society, the world and the universe to become today, tomorrow or in three hundred years. In other words, in order to act successfully in today’s world, he has to form a picture of the imaginary limit which different nations in different ages expressed in concepts of the "Golden Age", "earthly paradise", "great millenium", "harmonious society" and the like. Nikolai Konrad, an eminent Soviet historian, wrote that "whatever shape the concept of that limit took, it never left mankind and inspired it in the struggle against that which hampers the attainment of the ideal state of society worthy of man. The Russian author Dostoyevsky put it brilliantly and forcefully: ’The Golden Age is the most impossible of all dreams that ever existed but for which people gave their entire Kves and all their efforts, for which prophets died and were killed, without which nations do not want to live and cannot even die.’"  [23•1  This is where utopia comes in.

p And so, man always lives in a world of ideals which differ not only in their social content and political thrust but also in their genesis. Some ideals take form within the mainstream of scientific knowledge and, “cleansed” of value elements, record the parameters of the images of a possible future world in this or that aspect. Others appear within the mainstream of utopia and record the subject’s value orientation, needs and wishes in their arbitrary and often 24 extremist expression. And, while at each new spiral of social development science wins more and more ground from utopia and ensures the implementation of newer Utopian ideals, it not only refrains from blocking Utopian endeavors but even stimulates them, as it were, by setting new and great tasks for mankind, and “crazy” ideas become an imperative for the success of science itself.

p Here we approach another, cognitive function of Utopia. The fact is that what is not true in a given sociohistorical context may prove true as a “moment” in the dialectical process of knowledge. As Engels noted, "what formally may be economically incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history.”  [24•1  This “ transformation” is expressed above all in the fact that as history progresses, the implausibility of Utopias proves to be relative, and projects impracticable at a given stage of social development become feasible within a broader historical framework. Functioning as a delusion, as a manifestation of “inadequate” consciousness, Utopia nevertheless distinctively records both the contradictory nature of the very social development which gave birth to the Utopia in question and the actual fact of its ideal, intellectual perception. One might recall in this connection that Hegel was the first modern European philosopher to found the tradition of rejecting a crudely metaphysical opposition of delusion to truth. (Since "error is a Positive as an opinion affirming that which is not in and for itself, an opinion which knows itself and asserts itself’,  [24•2  that is, since error traces the outlines of positive knowledge, it is therefore an organic integral part, in a canceled form, of truth.)

p As science advances, extrascientific forms of the ideal perception of the world, including Utopia, retain their practical usefulness. At each specific stage of scientific development the possibilities of scientific knowledge and scientific methods are limited; meanwhile, the increasing role of the "factor of the future" virtually in every sphere of human activity and the exacerbation of ideological struggle over the issue of the prospects facing man and society call 25 for a more vigorous search of forms and methods of " mastering the future". Assuming the function of tentatively probing the limits of the possible (as applied to the cosmos, to society as a whole or to its individual institutions) and forming value attitudes, Utopia complements scientific knowledge about the world with extrascientific hypotheses and ideas which pave the way for future scientific advances and anticipate truths which science may discover and substantiate tomorrow.

p It is apparently no accident that the twentieth century, and especially its latter half, is the period in which social science fiction, this sublimated form of Utopia, has risen to unprecedented heights and become extremely popular. Nor is it an accident that while remaining firmly anchored in science proper, many scientists nevertheless turn simultaneously to Utopia and science fiction, fields which remove obstacles from the path of their fertile imagination. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the founder of the theory of space flight, wrote several Utopian  [25•1  and science fiction  [25•2  works. Today this tradition is upheld by Dennis Gabor, Burrhus Skinner and other recognized experts in natural sciences and technology. Another notable fact is that many science fiction authors have had a science education and important scientific works to their credit—people like Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov or Ivan Yefremov.

p Of course, relations between science and Utopia are not always smooth, especially since the latter lacks proper critical selfreflection and, unconscious (or insufficiently conscious) of its Utopian nature, sometimes tends to claim the role of a social and political imperative. Nevertheless, it would be naive to suggest, on these grounds, that our knowledge (and consciousness) be “cleansed” once and for all of Utopian elements or of every value-oriented element. A student of knowledge has noted that "the complex 26 relations between theoretical and practical knowledge produce intermediate forms of perceiving social reality, where elements of a theoretical approach may be combined with the assertion of certain value-oriented components. Apparently, the task is not to try and eliminate these forms from contemporary social knowledge but to take a clear-cut reflective stand which makes it possible to tell scientific elements from myth-making, Utopian and similar elements.”  [26•1 

p Obviously, a "clear-cut reflective" position vis-a-vis Utopias is not always easy to take, especially if, for some external reasons, theoretical elements in a system of knowledge are ousted by value-oriented elements and Utopian constructs are elevated to the level of official ideology. However, since “intermediate” (including Utopian) forms of perceiving reality are independent of our will, the task is to try and correctly assess the cognitive value of this or that specific Utopia.

p The cognitive value of Utopia is not confined to the fact that it helps to delve into the essence of the objective world. Utopia also contains certain information about the subject himself who expresses his concept of the desired world in a Utopian ideal. This ideal (though sometimes coded) is especially valuable to the historian and the sociologist who, by examining it in a sociohistorical context, can glean additional information about the values on which the subject is oriented, the degree to which his class consciousness is developed, his attitude to official culture and a number of other parameters which, in turn, shed light on the consciousness of his time.

p The role of Utopia in learning about social phenomena is also determined by the fact that throughout its history, it has played the part of a distinctive form of social forecasting. To a certain degree, utopia retains this role even today, when futurology exists-a discipline claiming to shape, in consciousness, images of things to come.

p Strictly speaking, there is a substantial difference between forecast and Utopia. The direct purpose of forecasting is to identify the actual possibilities of a society 27 (or of a given particular system inherent in it) at a certain stage of its evolution, depending on the time range of the forecast, and to assess the probability of each of these possibilities. Here, the more a forecast relies on objective laws of social development and the better it is cleansed of any subjective, value-oriented elements, the more accurate and effective it is. On the contrary, a utopia draws the picture of a desired, not possible or probable, society. Naturally, this desired and ideal (perfect, in the eyes of the Utopian) social order may coincide with the possible and even the most probable in a given historical situation. But the need for such a coincidence is not inherent in utopia: the Utopian acts not as a scholar but rather as an artistic free agent who, even if he does see through the screen concealing the future from the present, does it mostly by intuition.

p Still, frequently the desired order pictured by a Utopian coincides both with the possible and with the probable, that is, fulfills the role of a spontaneous social forecast (which becomes clear after the fact). This prompted Lenin to say that great Utopians "anticipated innumerable things, the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us"  [27•1 .

p Modern social theory firmly believes that the images of the future which take shape in social consciousness are far from neutral in relation to this future, especially when these images are consciously used as a basis for programs of action. According to A. Bauer, a German Marxist philosopher, "the decisive point of forecasting is its active feedback impact on social practice. The decisive function of social forecasts should be viewed within the framework of their feedback function.”  [27•2 

p Obviously, one cannot consider all conceivable images of an alternative world equally feasible (and effective in their feedback) simply because they are equally conceivable. Still, history tells us that many Utopian projects have proved to be an active and effective constructive social force. Apparently, the explanation is above all that history 28 is made not by an abstract rational subject who is above emotion and to whom the dialectics of history presents no mysteries, but by real people with their hopes, illusions, errors and determination to make the world a better place to live in, with their faith or conviction that this is possible. Since historical necessity does not exist as something posited a priori but emerges from a clash of different historical trends and since the subject of a historical creative effort is free in his social choice, the very act of choosing a historical alternative and turning it into a direct objective of practical action (be that alternative scientifically valid or Utopian) determines, to a certain degree, the direction and nature of social change.

p The Utopian nature of an alternative which has become a program of action will, of course, make itself felt sooner or later: in all probability, this program will not be implemented fully, definitively or adequately. But even in this case, it may make a noticeable impact on the course of the sociohistorical process. A Utopian project may, for instance, be implemented in part or temporarily, the end result, as it has happened many times, being either a restoration of the status quo or the emergence of a hybrid structure. And finally, attempts at making a utopia a reality may produce results which neither the masses nor their leaders have expected. For example, this is what happened to the European Utopian movements of the 16th and 17th centuries: instead of helping build a just social order, the dream of their participants, they aided in the emergence of capitalist society.

p Utopia affects the sociohistorical process in different ways. It may be a direct impact, when a Utopian project serves as a program or even plan of action for large and small groups. For example, Owen and Cabet tried, together with their followers, to reshape existing society according to the principles of their doctrines. There is another, indirect way, when a Utopian ideal inspires or stimulates the subject of history to action. Many mass movements of modern history were rooted in the desire to either find the "promised land" which allegedly existed but was hidden, or transform the world in accordance with the principles of “justice”, “truth”, “good” and so on. As Lewis Mumford said aptly in this connection, "the Icarians who lived only in the mind of Etienne Cabet, or the Freelanders who 29 dwelt within the imagination of a dry little Austrian economist [Theodor Hertzka, the author of Freeland], have had more influence upon the lives of our contemporaries than the Etruscan people who once dwelt in Italy, although the Etruscans belong to what we call the real world, and the Freelanders and Icarians inhabited—Nowhere.”  [29•1 

p Utopian ideas exert particular influence on public and political figures involved in the drafting of history-making documents. The impact of James Harrington’s Oceana on the American Founding Fathers’ concepts of the best possible political organization of society is a typical example. "No one who has studied Harrington’s writings," the U.S. historian Ivan Doig wrote, "can help being struck by the resemblance between the political ideas expressed there and those that have been successfully put into practice in America. Again and again one is tempted to substitute the name America for Oceana and spell his new England with a capital N.”  [29•2 

p Some researchers single out yet another function of Utopia; it can be described as compensatory or, if you will, psychotherapeutic. To a man who faces an unjust, evil and grim world and finds it impossible to actually transform it, utopia offers perhaps the only consolation, a buttress in an unequal struggle. To this man, the Golden Age described in a utopia is the only light of hope. When this light goes out, life becomes unbearable.

p Maxim Gorky repeatedly tackled the question of the place an ideal held in man’s life. His famous play The Lower Depths features a monologue in which the idea of the consolatory nature of the ideal underlying utopia is especially pronounced:

p "Luka: Once, for instance, there was a case like this: a certain man I knew believed in a true-righteous land.

p ’"There ought to be,’ says he, ’a true-righteous land in this world....’ He was a poor man and had a hard life. Sometimes things got so bad it looked as if there was nothing left for him to do but lie down and die. But he didn’t give up. He would just smile to himself and say: ’That’s all right, I can bear it. I’ll wait just a little longer and then I’ll quit 30 this life and go to the true-righteous land.’ That was his only joy in life—his faith in the true-righteous land.

p “...And then to the village ... they exiled a very learned man.... And this poor man says to the man of learning, he says: ’Be so kind as to tell me where this true-righteous land lies and how to get there.’ Then and there the learned one gets out his books and opens up his charts and looks and looks, but he can’t find the true-righteous land anywhere. Everything is in its place, all the lands are on the charts, but the true-righteous land is nowhere to be found!

p “The man can’t believe it. ’It must be somewhere,’ says he. ’Take a better look, because if there’s no true-righteous land, then all your charts and books are of no account.’ The learned one doesn’t like this. ’My charts,’ says he, ’are the very best, but there’s no such ’place as your truerighteous land.’ That makes the poor one furious. ’What’s that?’ says he. ’Here I’ve gone on living and bearing it all these years just because I was sure there was such a place, and now according to the charts it turns out there isn’t any such place! A swindle, that’s what it is!’ And he says to the learned one: ’You wretch! It’s a rascal you are, and not a man of learning!’ And he gives him a whack over the earbang! Then another one-bang! And after that he goes home and hangs himself.”  [30•1 

p However, this function is not confined to pure consolation. A Utopia fills out, as it were, the gaps which exist in an imperfect world by making it possible to imagine that which cannot be acquired or done in real life. A. L. Morton illustrates this very well by citing the example of a 17 thcentury British Utopia—The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, in which she described how quickly she won the hearts of the inhabitants of the Blazing World and became their Empress-that is, how she attained everything she failed to achieve in real life. "Just because of its complete simplicity," Morton writes, "the role of fantasy as compensation for defeat is seen at its clearest. Margaret Cavendish, in exile, consumed with pride in her and her husband’s family, her wealth vanished, contemptuous of the victorious Commonwealth, ridiculed by the raffish bankrupt 31 Court that surrounded Charles abroad as an eccentric, frumpish bluestocking, crowned herself Empress of a Never- Never World, covered herself with a blaze of diamonds and mocked or exiled all those whom she hated or could not understand. Here, but for the Grace of Genius, goes Jonathan Swift! "  [31•1  One can add many more such examples. A. L. Morton recalls that William Morris wrote his News from Nowhere "to hearten and inspire his comrades by a reminder of the positive goal towards which their efforts were leading.”  [31•2  One can cite the examples of today’s authors resorting to Utopia in order to soothe the alarmed man in the street and convince him (and themselves too) that the future promises to be bright, that the existing civilization opens boundless vistas, that eventually, a "happy end" is guaranteed. Active in the comforting business are also some futurologists and artists. Hollywood used to be called a "dreams factory" for a reason. And in his analysis of the "semifantastic and completely fantastic" cities of the future discussed in the West in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet architect Andrei Ikonnikov says that their images "have become a sort of social tranquilizer, a source of vague but somehow comforting hopes for the mystical and mysterious year 2000.”  [31•3 

The critical, normative, cognitive, constructive and compensatory functions of Utopia hardly represent all of its potential. But I believe that they determine the role of the Utopian ideal in social and political developments. I shall only add that although these functions are manifest in close interrelationship and interaction with one another, their order of priority and hierarchy are not constant. Depending on specific conditions and on priority tasks, one function assumes temporary primacy, only to surrender it later to another.