Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism

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In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today’s thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. In what way is utopianism distinct from the broader categories of hope, wishful thinking and the imagination? The excision of science fiction leads to an overly narrow account of the development of the utopian tradition in the twentieth century. It means that much of the most innovative and influential writing on imagined futures is sidelined or redescribed as if it didn’t form part of the genre which helped to shape it. Indeed, I would suggest that during the twentieth century, and especially its second half, utopianism and science fiction became largely inseparable. The utopian tradition, in other words, was reconfigured. Science fiction was and remains the dominant register in which visions of the future, or of alternative worlds, whether utopian, dystopian, or something else, are imagined. It is where the “futurological function” has found its most widespread and powerful expression. The massive expansion in the popularity of science fiction, in literature, film, television, and computer gaming, was itself a reflection of the ever-growing dominance of technoscience in societies throughout the world. Science fiction is the principal reflective literature of twentieth century technological modernity – its most authentic literature, as J. G. Ballard often commented. Of course, there were utopian texts – Huxley’s Island (1962) is a famous example – that challenged the value of technoscientific visions of society. But like William Morris’s classic News from Nowhere (1890), they form part of a minority tradition, a counterpoint to the dominant trends in twentieth century techno-utopian thought.

Luxury, Sociability, and Progress in Literary Projections of Utopia: from Thomas more to the eighteenth century This blog post is based on book, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism (Princeton University Press, 2022) and first appeared at the LSE EUROPP blog. Gregory Claeys is Professor of History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. His main research interests lie in the fields of social and political reform movements from the 1790s to the early twentieth century, with a special focus on utopianism and early socialism. Professor Claeys’s book, Utopianism for a Dying Planet, seeks to elaborate a utopian theory that can help us respond to the climate crisis. Thirdly, we need to reduce the impact of fashion on consumption, again perhaps by legislating against advertising, impossible though this sounds. Fourthly, we need to shift towards a concept of public luxury, shared by all in museums, festivals, including free public transport and the like, and away from private luxury, and at the same time shift our values towards ‘consuming’ experience shared with others (or alone, as in some computer games) and away from consuming unsustainable commodities. This will require remodelling cities to give a feeling of neighbourhood and ‘belongingness’, a sense of place with which we can identify, and which is in my view also a central goal of utopianism historically.When self-styled ‘realists’ respond to looming environmental collapse by defending business as usual, utopian thinking becomes itself a form of realism. Dispelling the illusions of those who have not understood the magnitude of the social and personal changes needed to confront our current crisis, Claeys presents a forceful account of the twenty-first-century utopia we must embrace as a condition of planetary survival.”—Kate Soper, emeritus professor of philosophy, London Metropolitan University This schematic division of utopian phases doesn’t do justice to the richness and subtlety of Claeys’s historical analysis. He effectively synthesizes huge swathes of work produced by historians of political thought and literary scholars during the last half century or more, while approaching the material from his own distinctive vantage point. He traverses the literatures on humanism, commercial society, political economy, the emergence of liberalism and socialism, and the evolution of Marxism, with clarity and formidable erudition, all the while framing them in relation to his overarching concerns with enhanced sociability and sustainability. This part of the book is a tour de force of historical exposition.

For more information, see the author’s new book, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism (Princeton University Press, 2022) Introducing a world defined by these qualities is of course vastly different from merely imagining their presence. The transition to sustainability will involve many sacrifices, not least by the wealthy who will have to fund most of it. I have in mind a world where the cities where most of us live are made vastly more pleasant places; where a universal basic income ensures the means of life; where public pleasures provide the means of greater sociability; where free public transport alleviates the pain of temporary loss of some long-distance travel; where local communities and local identity become the means of overcoming that creeping alienation which has done so much to define modernity; and where an overwhelming sense of having averted catastrophe unites us as never before. Gregory discusses the role of utopian and dystopian narratives as useful mechanisms for imagining meaningful social and political change. He explains how utopia can help in preparing us for climate change. Ninthly, we require a vibrant feminism which results in equalising gender opportunities across society. Women, who possess considerably more power than men in disposing of household budgets, need full choice over their reproductive capacities, which will reduce family sizes. Utopia is often wrongly identified with “perfection”, although we find crime, war, slavery and divorce in More’s paradigmatic text. To my mind “perfection” is a concept inherited from theology which ought not to be identified with utopianism, though we do occasionally encounter it in Christian utopianism. (Think of John Humphrey Noyes “Perfectionism” or “Bible Communism” and the Oneida community.) There are some secular equivalents: Condorcet writes of “true perfection of mankind” being achieved when all humanity had achieved a high level of civilisation. But utopias typically take human fallibility into account, and attempt to regulate behaviour without expecting that anyone can ever be “perfect”. They may be “perfectibilist” in the sense of striving for much better societies. But they never end in “perfection”. The psychology of the small group is central here to regulating behaviour without requiring stringent policing and physical punishment. We consent voluntarily to join groups and maintain their norms where we see benefit in so doing. We do not seek to evade the rules or become free riders where we accept that when everyone keeps to the rules the society functions much better. At the same time, our education systems must attempt to foster more co-operative behaviour. Competition has its place, but we must have a much stronger sense of communal ethos if we are to make the sacrifices necessary to creating a sustainable planet.This is a large book on a monumental topic. In recent decades, Gregory Claeys has established himself as one of the leading scholars of the utopian tradition. Across numerous works, from articles and monographs to edited collections and anthologies of primary texts, he has helped to map the complex history of utopianism in European political thought from the early modern world into our own age. This book is a milestone in his career-long quest to make sense of utopianism, its past and its future, its dangers and its possibilities. Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth century before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities.

You discuss the concern that utopia’s alleged drive towards perfection makes it totalitarian. How do you respond to other arguments that utopia is authoritarian because it requires or enforces a certain type of participation from individuals, e.g., that their behaviour is somehow improved, that they are more community-minded, kinder to one another, etc? Do you think that there is anything to the accusation that utopia is illiberal in this sense? In the context of the climate crisis, do we have the time to be worried about this type of concern? My book commences from the premise that the state of the earth’s environment has passed from the critical to the catastrophic stage. Accordingly, if we do not act dramatically swiftly, we are unlikely to save the human species and much of the natural world from complete destruction. Christian Høgsbjerglaunched his new publication for the Socialist History Society on March 27th at 7pm Published by Princeton University Press 2022 6 The Triumph of Unsocial Sociability? luxury in the eighteenth century From the book As a matter of principle we cannot understand utopia without confronting dystopia, for they are intimately interrelated. Much greater social equality is upheld in nearly all utopian visions, whilst extreme inequality is typically associated with dystopia, and with current neoliberal societies like Britain and the US, and kleptocracies like Russia. So we will need a Universal Basic Income, a four-day work-week, the guarantee of universal health care and so on. Right-wing “utopias” typically rely on the labour of the many to support the ideal lifestyle of the few — think of Nazi Germany, but also white supremacy racism generally. Enslavement, pervasive fear, widespread disinformation, and oppression of minority groups typifies these “utopias”, which are dystopias for the minority. So if we accept a modified version of the Morean paradigm of utopian republicanism, greater equality and widespread consent must define any future utopian vision.An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.

There can now be no viable political theory which does not centrally offer an analysis of humanity’s long-term future. And all forms of existing social and political theory which rely on ideas of an indefinite expansion of production, consumption, and population growth, which include most forms of both liberalism and Marxism, are no longer relevant and must be superseded. So we are at a real turning-point in history. What do you believe is the connection between utopia and action? Does utopia help motivate and mobilize in ways that other kinds of messaging do not? Should we, with Marx, be worried that utopia can be counter-revolutionary? Twelfth, and perhaps most obviously, we must drastically restrict carbon consumption to reduce C0 2 and other emissions. This will entail an immediate move to renewable forms of energy, reforestation, a drastic reduction in the most dangerous forms of consumption, and many other measures. A timely rethinking of the usefulness of the utopian tradition in the light of climate change and the consequent necessity to add in sustainability as one of its essential components.” —Gareth Stedman Jones, author of Karl Marx: Greatness and IllusionEnding fossil fuel extraction within this decade, while warming would still continue for some time, could enable us to avoid its worst effects, and to level off global temperatures before the earth burns up. A transition to renewable energy sources, to wind and solar and wave power, is viable and realistic even within slightly more than a single decade. Around 80% of Europe’s energy could be renewable by 2025, for instance, eliminating virtually all coal and gas. To the doomers, in one corner of the ring, despair freezes action, and a sense of chilling remorse is supplanted by numbness which denies the possibility of any reprieve. To the denialists, in the other, none of this is real, and abundant profits await those willing to continue the exploitation of nature.