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p Three factors shaped America’s postwar Utopian consciousness and Utopian tradition.

p First and foremost it was the state of U.S. capitalism, its problems and contradictions which made themselves felt amid changes in the roles played by the state and the market as instruments for regulating social affairs. The stronger role of the bourgeois state appropriating, step by step, the functions which used to belong to the free market transformed not only the reproduction mechanism of social consciousness, including Utopian consciousness. It also contributed to the change in the attitude to the state (the government) and the market on the part of all social strata and groups. It destroyed the old concepts relating to the limits of the individual’s freedom, to his rights and duties and his relations with the state. All this eventually affected concepts of the social ideal and of the ways to attain it. The emergence of the liberal "welfare state" was a phenomenon deserving special mention. Its social policy, aimed at maintaining the necessary social stability by providing the masses with some of the benefits which had been the subject of Utopian dreams only recently, inevitably influenced both the content of Utopian ideals and the understanding of the ways to achieve them and their limits.

p The second factor in the evolution of Utopian consciousness in postwar America was the scientific and technological revolution and its social, political and cultural consequences.

p It appeared that the advances of science and technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries gave one every reason to question the future viability of the Utopian 111 tradition—at least in scientifically and technologically advanced countries. Technocratic illusions, widespread even beyond the academic and technical communities, gave rise to the belief that, in time, science would make it possible to “cleanse” both theoretical and mass consciousness of all sorts of “metaphysics”, including Utopian deposits, and to impart to it the clarity of mathematical equations. However, subsequent developments demonstrated that scientific and technological progress not only failed to end the Utopian tradition and to prevent the formation of Utopian consciousness but also gave them a new creative impetus.

p First, advances in science and technology contributed to an inflated evaluation of the powers of modern man and of his ability to restructure the world according to arbitrarily set goals.

p Second, the scientific and technological revolution broadened the synchronization gap between the rhythm and dynamics of different sociotemporal flows. Generally, scientific and technological changes often move faster than socioeconomic changes. Today, the gap between these two flows has increased greatly in industrialized capitalist nations—naturally, including the United States. This contributes to the disintegration of the relatively stable and traditional links which took shape at earlier sociohistorical stages and connect individuals, institutions or groups. As a result, social consciousnesss develops the illusory opinion that there are gaps in the sociotemporal continuum and that the subject of a historical process can free himself from the “tyranny” of time and history; this is fertile ground for Utopian consciousness and Utopian experiments.

p And finally, the third and very important factor in the evolution of Utopian consciousness was the change in the sociopolitical structure of the world, in the place the United States held in the international community. The emergence of the world socialist system which consolidated its international positions considerably over the postwar decades; the rise of developing nations, many of them militarily and politically nonaligned; the internationalization of social developments and the growing interdependence of nations—all this changed not only the overall objective image of the world but also the picture the Americans had of themselves as a nation, of other nations and of America’s future. The notion of "American 112 exceptionalism", deeply ingrained in the nation’s political mentality, was undermined. "Today," Daniel Bell wrote in 1975, "the belief in American exceptionalism has vanished with the end of empire, the weakening of power, the loss of faith in the nation’s future.”  [112•1  Old concepts were to be replaced by new ones; the search for them stimulated the sociological imagination and also Utopian consciousness.

p American scholars and politicians worked vigorously on models of an alternative world order, an effort sponsored by the Club of Rome in the 1970s. Designed by the organizers and leaders of the club to prevent global conflicts and solve global problems,  [112•2  these models often comprised Utopian qualities and could—in the opinion of Ian Clark, for example—be viewed as a new wave of global Utopias. Clark maintains that these projects are Utopian not because they are impracticable but because of the way in which their reforms are substantiated. He singles out "four interrelated distinguishing marks of utopianism" more or less typical of new world order projects. These are "belief in progress"; a "nondeterministic view of the world", i.e., the faith that man can “push” the historical process in the desired direction; a pervasive rationalism, i.e., the conviction that as soon as decision-makers realize the irrationality of this or that phenomenon, they, guided by the demands of reason, will put an end to them; and "the assumption of a natural harmony of interests" of various nations.  [112•3  While some of Clark’s points appear debatable—for example, his interpretation of a "belief in progress" as exclusively utopian- generally, he has correctly grasped the main Utopian aspects of the social projects in question.

p All the three factors—the state of U.S. capitalism and the exacerbation of its contradictions, the scientific and technological revolution and its social consequences, and the new alignment of world forces and the change in the international position of the United States—were not only 113 a powerful impetus to the development of Utopian consciousness in the postwar United States. They contributed to a realignment of spheres in which Utopian consciousness is formed and to a change in their priorities. They also induced changes in the structure, content and forms of Utopian ideals.

p In the United States, as in other countries, fiction and social theory, along with art and architecture, long remained the major spheres in which Utopian consciousness took shape and socioutopian projects were constructed; authors and thinkers trained in the humanities were particularly active as creators of social Utopias. And finally, a distinctly American feature, social Utopias were also shaped in the sphere of practical politics and social endeavor. As to science (“science” meaning the natural sciences and technology), for a long time it laid no claim to such a role, just as the natural scientists to the role of creator of social Utopias. Of course, scientists could and did author Utopias, but they did that as writers, philosophers or politicians. However, as the status of science in the system of knowledge and social production changed, its claims to the construction of a Utopian ideal became a well-established trend especially pronounced in the postwar period. This factor considerably changed the composition and the order of priority of the spheres in which Utopian consciousness took shape both in the United States and in some other developed capitalist countries.

p Suffice it to turn to the Utopian novels and short stories current in the United States (many of them are also part of science fiction) to see what prominence their authors accord to science and technology in their Utopian constructs and how many of these authors are scientists, engineers or writers with a scientific or technical background. But that is not the most important aspect. The period after World War II highlighted, with much greater clarity than before, the close relationship the Utopian approach bore to certain modes of scientific thinking and research. According to Robert Boguslaw, an American sociologist and author of The New Utopians, his study of "problems in the analysis and design of contemporary large-scale computer-based command and control systems" has led him to conclude that "modern system designers" are treading well-worn Utopian paths. "There is a new breed of Utopians afoot, threatening 114 to rush down all the exciting pathways and blind alleys frequented by Utopians since the days of Plato. These are the people who are known by such titles as system engineer, computer manufacturer, operations researcher, computer programmer, data processing specialist, or, more simply, system designer.”  [114•1 

p What brings the "new Utopians" close to their forerunners is, first and foremost, the very approach to the solution of their tasks, and also their principal objective. "Utopians are builders," Boguslaw explains, "who reject their contemporary status quos and reach out for new forms within which to shape their wished-for worlds". They are striving to intellectually overcome the limits of the real world and design a perfect system functioning according to a given program. On this both the traditional Utopian trained in the humanities and the systems analyst agree. And if so, why cannot the analyst try and assume the role of a social engineer? Why not try and restructure society according to the methods which guide him in the design of "perfect systems"? Such is the logic which today leads many scientists and engineers into the field of the socioutopian quest and underlies the sociomessianic claims of science and technology. Such is the objective basis enabling today’s science to function as a major sphere in which social consciousness takes shape and Utopian ideals are constructed.

p One must, however, note an important difference between the traditional and the new Utopians. With regard to building a society free from the flaws and suffering caused by man’s imperfection, "the classical Utopians tried to achieve this end by populating their social systems with perfect human beings, perfect social structures, perfect situations, or perfect principles". But the new Utopians proceed from a different principle. They attempt to perfect their systems not by introducing an improved subject into them but by radically removing this subject (as essentially incapable of attaining the level of perfection necessary for utopia) from the system. "The theoretical and practical solutions they seek," Boguslaw says, "call increasingly for decreases in the number and in the scope of responsibility of human beings within the operating structures of their new 115 machined systems.”  [115•1 

p Since "machined systems" are the object, this approach appears perfectly justified; it does not give rise to any fears with regard to the social consequences which can result from the use of this type of the designing effort. But the social engineering sphere is a different matter. After all, the rationale of the "new utopianism" inevitably arrives at its logical but paradoxical conclusion that there would be no place for man in the world of Utopia. It is this paradox, even though not always fully perceived or clearly articulated, which underlies (more about this later) some versions of the contemporary American technocratic Utopia. This same paradox, even though perceived at the level of aesthetic intuition, motivates the creation of antiutopias (negative Utopias).

p Another important change affecting the spheres in which Utopian consciousness takes shape and Utopian ideals are constructed is the increasing prominence of futurology. As a distinct sphere of activity and of knowledge it lays claim to, futurology differs from utopia above all in the definite nature of the object it seeks to develop and in the way it is developed. The very word “futurology” means that it is oriented on constructing the image of the future, while social Utopia aims at producing the image of a desired world the Utopian considers to be perfect, a world which can be projected not only into the future but also into the past or into the present, the way it was in More’s utopia.

p However, the actual status of futurology in the system of spiritual production far from coincides with the status it formally claims. Many futurological forecasts display the typically Utopian norm- and value-oriented approach: the projected image is not of the world as it should most probably appear in the future but of a world the futurologist would like to see. This is acknowledged by some of America’s foremost futurologists. "Unfortunately," Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Briggs say in their Things to Come, "the field of future studies is thick with normative forecasting masquerading as descriptive. Many prognostications of many distinguished American thinkers are statements of what the author wants to happen, not necessarily what he thinks will happen, and frequently they are a bald pitch for 116 some express policy or program. If done openly and honestly this is a perfectly valid method of political advocacy, with many honorable precedents (such as Bellamy’s Looking Backward), but it tells us very little about what the future will be, except insofar as it is influenced by the ideas and desires of important men today.”  [116•1 

p In this case futurology not only acts as an external stimulus to the development of Utopian consciousness but also becomes the field in which it actually takes shape, while the futurological scenario turns into something like an authorized form of social Utopia.

p Naturally, the prominence of futurology and science as spheres in which Utopian consciousness takes shape does not mean that fiction is losing its traditional role. Many works of fiction published in the United States after the war (including books by brilliant authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, J. D. Salinger, Ray Bradbury, Saul Bellow or John Gardner) have been either wholly Utopian or contained built-in Utopian fragments and expressed more or less clearly articulated Utopian ideals. Nevertheless, one cannot disagree with those experts who maintain that on the whole, modern American—and not only American—fiction plays a secondary role to science, futurology or social theory in the formation of the Utopian ideal. Perhaps there is a connection here with the fact that science and futurology have taken over some of the functions which used to be performed by fiction when it introduced the reader to an imagined world, imparting a wealth of data to him in the process.

p Things are different with social theory, a traditional sphere for the formation of Utopian consciousness. In 1959 Ralf Dahrendorf, a West German sociologist, published his article "Out of Utopia: Toward a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis" in the American Journal of Sociology. In it, citing specific examples, he showed that a type of consciousness characteristic of the classical social Utopia (for example, of Plato’s Republic) became widespread in postwar American sociology. "If the immobility of Utopia, its isolation in time and space, the absence of conflict and disruptive processes, is a product of poetic imagination divorced from the commonplaces of reality," was 117 Dahrendorf s rhetorical question, "how is it that so much of recent sociological theory has been based on exactly these assumptions and has, in fact, consistently operated with a Utopian model of society.”  [117•1 

p The peculiarity of sociological theory Dahrendorf classified as social Utopia was that it did not construct any new social ideals which would lead beyond the existing society because the latter was itself described as the limit. This was what enabled Dahrendorf to charge Talcott Parsons and his structural functionalist followers with utopianism.

p Indeed, when a living, evolving and therefore conflicting society is described as free of contradictions or conflicts, as based on a universal consensus with regard to the fundamental values of life and culture, as the epitome of sociopolitical harmony and the preordained development goal attained, it essentially turns into a realized Utopian ideal and sociological theory, into a sphere in which such ideals are constructed.

p The subsequent development of American sociology proved that the phenomenon described by Dahrendorf was not something accidental. Dahrendorf recorded the trend (which later proved to be quite enduring) toward increased integration of value-oriented elements into sociological theory and toward a greater role of sociology and political science in the shaping of the socioutopian ideal.

p This does not at all mean that all modern American sociological theories can be invariably classified as Utopias in the strict sense of the world. As a rule, such theories present a variety of dimensions—both in terms of the way the existing society is described and in terms of how the social ideal is posited. They can be compared to a layer cake, each layer expressing a different approach, a different attitude of the author to social reality, each serving the solution of different tasks. On the one hand, these theories record certain actual phenomena and trends in the evolution of American society. But on the other, their authors very often introduce into them, whether consciously or not, arbitrary constructs (running counter to the objective trends of social development) and arbitrarily posited Utopian ideals. 118 As a result, some theories combine the scientific approach with the Utopian, the two “layers” are so closely intertwined as to make it difficult to tell them apart.

p Finally, there is one more sphere in which, as before, Utopian consciousness takes form and Utopian ideals are constructed, and that sphere is everyday life and sociopolitcal practice.

p The average American  [118•1  is not as simple a figure as he might appear at first glance, especially to an outside observer. The man in the street cannot be pictured as a “ onedimensional”, rational individual guided exclusively by considerations of practical gain and devoid of romantic impulses or Utopian yearnings. For all their practicality, Americans have always tended to entertain exaggerated expectations and to lay exaggerated claims which contribute to the emergence of a Utopian world view. Postwar developments only enhanced these qualities. The increasing complexity of the social fabric, the covert and therefore largely mysterious nature of the new social relations, the deliberate efforts of the ruling class to arrange mass consciousness in a certain way with the help of the ramified mass media network, the comparatively favorable economic situation which existed in the United States at least up to the mid1970s—all this was fertile soil for the spread of Utopian consciousness on a mass scale. One might add that the comparatively rapid rise in the prosperity of a large part of "white America" in the 1950s and 1960s, the relative leveling-out of the structure of requirements, the consumption and the value orientations of many middleclass Americans led the masses to the illusion that the ideals of democracy, freedom, equality, abundance and the like, sanctified by the official Utopia, were actually attainable.

p Discussing the typically American Utopian notions, the sociologist Irving Kristol traces them, among other things, to the generous promises politicians and ideologists freely offer to the public—promises which this very public realizes to be demagogic but which have become part of the 119 sociopolitical decorum the average man considers indispensable for “normal” politics.

p Here one should note, however, that Utopian illusions which capture the imagination of the masses are like a delayed-action fuse. American history has proved repeatedly that they can stimulate mass movements, whether secular or religious, social or political, “white” or “Black”. This was what happened in the 1960s and 1970s, when mass movements in which the New Left played an important part swept the country. In turn, these movements gave a powerful impetus to the development of the Utopian imagination and generated numerous Utopian notions.

p The postwar changes in the American Utopian tradition were by no means confined to the composition and order of priority of the spheres in which Utopian consciousness germinated. They also affected the content of Utopian ideals and the types of Utopia the latter encouraged. But a direct analysis of these types should be preceded by a few words about certain features which all these types shared and which recorded the new situation postwar American society found itself in.

p Today, few American authors would be prepared to offer a Utopia aimed at a radical transformation of the existing society and setting radically new goals and tasks for it. Of course, this does not mean that the Utopian ideal is now deduced from the actual trends of historical development. But, remaining in an arbitrary position vis-a-vis these trends, it is becoming more down-to-earth and moderate. Several Western sociologists have noted this. "Utopia," Daniel Bell wrote in The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, "has always been conceived as a design of harmony and perfection in the relations between men. In the wisdom of the ancients, Utopia was a fruitful impossibility, a conception of the desirable which, man should always strive to attain but which, in the nature of things, could not be achieved. And yet, by its very idea, Utopia would serve as a standard of judgement on men, an ideal by which to measure the real. The modern hubris has sought to cross that gap and embody the ideal in the real; and in the effort the perspective of the ideal has become diminished and the idea of Utopia has become tarnished.”  [119•1 

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p Returning to this question in his book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Bell seeks to establish a connection between, on the one hand, Utopia’s loss of its transcendental nature and, on the other, the weakening in the positions of religion and the positivist approach to social reality. "Modern societies have substituted Utopia for religion—Utopia not as a transcendental ideal, but one to be realized through history (progress, rationality, science) with the nutrients of technology and the midwifery of revolution.”  [120•1 

p The trend toward a more down-to-earth (no longer absolute) Utopian ideal has been caused by several factors simultaneously. These include the influence of positivist philosophy and the fear that orientation on transcendental values poses a real threat of a "tyranny of the idea", i.e., an overriding passion to implement a Utopian idea with the logic of a computer and the dedication of a grand inquisitor, no matter what obstacles objective conditions place in the path of the effort. But to my mind, the prime cause behind the trend making the ideal of the modern American Utopia no longer absolute is that its creators lack a maximum ideal. In most Utopias it has been replaced by what might be called a preference ideal, since it is aimed at the best of what is possible within the framework of existing civilization. This sort of Utopia posits the parameters of the imagined society in accordance with the Utopian’s views of the problems contemporary capitalism is to solve to ensure its improvement and survival. And, contrary to what Bell asserts, most modern American Utopians reject social revolution as a means of practical realization of the proclaimed Utopian ideal.

p Another feature many modern Utopias share is that they are open to alternative. Past Utopias were usually dominated by principles which completely ruled out any alternative solutions. A Utopian project used to describe literally every single aspect of life in a perfect society, subject, as a rule, to constant petty regulation. Suffice it to recall Charles Fourier who considered it his duty to envisage, pedantically describe and, if possible, also substantiate metaphysically all aspects of life in a Utopian community. Viewed against 121 this background, many modern Utopias—naturally, not allappear as some sort of fragmentary essays since they present merely a general outline and general principles of human activity and contain no detailed regulation, rigid order or gradation. In other words, modern Utopia provides its citizens with a greater degree of free will and greater opportunities for their personal initiative.

p It is interesting to note that H. G. Wells stressed the need for such Utopias as far back as the early 1900s. "The Modern Utopia," he wrote in 1905, "must be not static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages.... We build now not citadels but ships of state.”  [121•1 

p However, it took some time for Utopians to begin switching from citadels to ships. And this step, like the trend to deprive the Utopian ideal of its absolute nature, was not so much a consequence of pure speculation as a practical reaction—whether conscious or unconscious—to the lessons of 20th-century social history.

p Clearly, historical experience is not the only factor shaping the distinct image of modern Utopia. If one traces the evolution of Utopian thought over several centuries, it becomes obvious that Utopia has always responded to developments in the sphere of scientific knowledge. Influenced, directly or indirectly, by the more advanced or fashionable sciences of its time, Utopia reflected that influence in the structure of its own values, images, language-in short, in the content of the social ideal and in the views of how it should be attained. Several students of the problem (in particular, Fred Manuel) have noted that while Utopian consciousness in the 18th and early 19th centuries was influenced by the then rapidly advancing physical sciences, and the Newtonian view of the world was a model for Saint- Simon and Fourier, with the advent of the Darwinian theory, the 20th-century progress of psychology and especially the emergence of Freudianism, Utopia underwent a more or less thorough restructuring. As a result, modern Utopia lays a much greater emphasis than its forerunners on man’s inner world and psychology because it maintains that a society in which people feel happy and not one in which there are 122 objective conditions for happiness is the desired (and perfect) society.

p Besides, the interest modern Utopia display sin man’sinner world and socially determined feelings is subjectively linked to those complex processes which occurred in American culture over the postwar decades-from the intellectuals’ penchant for oversimplified interpretations of existentialism to the emergence of a counterculture in the 1960s.

Obviously, the American Utopia’s new features which reflected the spirit of the times and the changes in human needs, could not fail to alter the systems and major parameters of its types. But they were also unable to destroy its age-old traditional aspects. All the types of Utopia described above either continue to exist in modern American society, albeit in modified form, or, having lost their independent status, become an important integral part of other types.