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The Never-Ending Game of Utopian Action
Abstract
Definitions of utopia areframed through the power relations of a particular society. More often than not, the dominant parties dictate the accepted meaning in a particular culture. In contrast, an anarchist approach to utopia is presented as a non-linear event, with unexpected results. It appears when unexpected events temporarily open up new possibilities to expand the social achievements of past generations in areas such as individual liberties, equality and solidarity. It is compatible with but different from the anarchist project of radical social change.
This presentation examines how this utopian approach might translate into a social practice in the event of a catastrophe. It will be argued that the main contemporary political systems inevitably engender a growing number of calamities. It is therefore urgent to resort to utopian resources to deal with such tragedies.This may be illustrated for instance by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or Tahir square in Cairo, Egypt. In conclusion, utopia is not seen as a state of perfection, nor even as a game that ends with a winner, but as a never-ending game.
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Picture 1 “As long as you say there is no hope, then there will be no hope,”
Asmaa Mahfouz, co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt[1]
How can we talk today about utopia?The last ten years have witnessed a succession of tragicevents: ecological catastrophes, international warfare, and popular insurrections. And yet, these strikingdevastating upheavals also revealed some extraordinary stories. Let me select two of such events:1) Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005, killing almost 2000 people; 2) the January 25, 2011 Egyptian insurrection, in which almost a thousand participants were killed and over 6,000 were injured through police brutality.
But that is not the whole story. One month after the Louisiana events, John Clark wrote: Picture 2
«I have found a great deal of this spirit of voluntary cooperation and concern for people’s real needs (in short, the spirit of the gift) in New Orleans over the past month. The most inspiring aspect of the recovery from the disaster has been this grassroots, cooperative effort to practice mutual aid and community self-help. A vast spectrum of local and outside grassroots organizations have been at work in the recovery effort. These include the Rainbow Family, Food Not Bombs volunteers from several states, the Common Ground Collective in Algiers, the Bywater neighborhood collective, the Soul Patrol in the 7th Ward neighborhood, the Family Farm Defenders from Wisconsin, the Pagan Cluster, and groups of students from Prescott College in Arizona, Appalachian State in North Carolina and other colleges and universities. Individual volunteers have come from throughout the US, from Canada, and from other countries, often linking up with local community groups or groups of volunteers from outside the state who are working with local groups. I felt great satisfaction when one young volunteer from a distant state said to me explicitly, “We came here to practice mutual aid.” The Idea is still very much alive![2]»
When we now have a look at the2011 revolution in Egypt, we can only agree with Mark and Paul Engler’s comment: “If anyone should have spearheaded a successful revolt against Mubarak’s rule, it was the Muslim Brotherhood.” Their estimated membership could be as high as a million. They had gained a foothold in Parliament and they were by far the best-organized opposition group in Egypt.
Picture 3
Yet a march on Feb 1st, 2011, in which participated at least one million peoplewas called for by the April 6 Youth Movement. That group, founded in 2008, included probably only 12 members; one year later, it was exchanging information and ideas through the Internet with about 70,000 members[3].
1.How can we have access to utopia?
Can we think of these events as utopian moments?We must bear in mind that they occurred in terrible situations. In Louisiana, people lost their loved ones, saw their homes destroyed and endured a series of traumatic situations. In Egypt, there was terrible fighting, women were raped, activists were killed or imprisoned and the country was on the verge of a civil war. However, in both situations we see the appearance of the 4th dimension, that is to say:time. Now we must remember that in Western society today everyone is a prisoner of a different timetable. A baby, a teenager, a mother, a fireman, a hairdresser, a plumber or a public servant has each his or her particular schedule. It becomes more and more difficult to share moments together, to maintain long term friendships; neighborhood relations are often inexistent and it’s only when you meet a salesperson that you enjoy some form of pseudo conviviality. But catastrophes and big events suddenly break the chains of time and bring everybody together, the rich and the poor, the young and the old. In our capitalist societies, these are often the only possible moments for utopia. Utopia is linked with time; it may be the 4th dimension in our life.
But how do we define utopia?Like many other words it may be understood in various ways:it may be treatedas an illusion, described as a work of fiction; it can also be identified with a social system like communism, democracy, neo-liberalism, and so on. If you look at your definition, you may notice that you have adopted adefinition that is in accordance with your views on life, natureand world history. Let us have a look at some of its uses.
Utopia is frequently used as a rhetorical device to discredit some idea or some society. In the 1980s, the French “nouveaux philosophes” associated fascism and the gulag and presented them as genuine results of utopian thinking. There is also a common theme in the Western collective imagination according to which man will always be a wolf to man, “human nature” is a reality that will never change; utopia is then seen as impossible. Going one step further, the present world is then presented by ideologues as the best of all possible worlds. Winston Churchill famously declared: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.[4] ” And neo-liberals who believe in the “selfish gene” place their utopia in the invisible hand of the market, competition, and temporary asymmetries. There are fatalist views of history:the French philosopher Denis Diderot ironically introduced a novel by quoting a servant’s description of his master’s philosophy: “Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high[5].” There are also teleological views of history. A person may consider heaven in the afterlife as the only existent utopia: s/he may strive to improve the world, but will never consider the result as utopian. Another example is the Marxist grand narrative. Karl Marxopposed what he called “utopian socialism” as being an illusory planning of the future: everything was totally predetermined and the results were not necessarily what humans wanted them to be. In the end, each person adopts a definition that conforms to his beliefs about human nature and his interpretation of human events.
There is an interesting tradition of anarchist discussions about utopia, from Bakunin to Landauer to Paul Goodman and Colin Ward and many others, some rejecting it, others trying to define it in other ways. Indeed, the utopian approach may be part of the anarchist project but the two pursuits are not identical. The anarchist project aims to radically change the entire social system. It strives to create a permanent mode of life based on sharing, as a political affirmation of autonomy and equality instead of a society based on capitalism, hierarchical relations and structures of domination [6]. Anarchist interpretations of utopiasneed not beanthropocentric: they are not just a mental production but also a collective combination of all the forces of emancipation present at a certain moment.
2.Utopia as turbulence
One must remember George Orwell’s comment:
“NearlyallcreatorsofUtopiahaveresembledthemanwhohastoothache,andthereforethinkshappinessconsistsinnothavingtoothache.They wantedtoproduceaperfectsocietybyanendless continuationofsomethingthathadonlybeenvaluablebecauseitwastemporary.Thewidercoursewouldbetosaythattherearecertainlinesalongwhichhumanitymustmove,thegrandstrategyismapped out,butdetailed prophecyisnotourbusiness.Whoevertriestoimagineperfectionsimplyrevealshisownemptiness.”[7]
Utopia is impermanent; it could be what Hakim Bey calls TAZ, Temporary Autonomous Zones. Utopian anarchists need not be prophets of a perfect world. Given those premises, one cannot simply reject utopia because no one can say that what is impossible today will be impossible forever. We have to look at the evolution of all social trends to discover the continuing emergence of possibilities. Building utopia is confronting human and non-humanevents; searching for the opportunities they provide in order to invent new autonomous zones. This perspective may be adopted in one’s personal life and in collectivities, but I will insist here on the worst situation, that of major catastrophes such as nuclear disasters, recurrent warfare, climate change, etc.
We are now facing extreme cases of disasters and we must expect an increasing number of catastrophes that will be more and more challenging. The reason is that, in our times, the management of society never deals with the causes of social inequality, wars, crisis and so on. This is too dangerous because it might jeopardize the status quo. Politics consist therefore in managing the most visible results of those human tragedies with cosmetics: sending offenders to prison, dispatching armies abroad for humanitarian purposes and so on. Such a rejection of any structural change of the social system, such a defense of capitalism and of a hierarchical structure of society will inevitably prompt “unexpected” catastrophes: nuclear disasters, climate change, epidemics etc. Furthermore, a globalization that now intends to manage billions of individuals and tomorrow billions of intelligent objects can only rely on algorithms. What can one expect then?
If we don’t want to fall into doomsday rhetoric we may choose to consider the world in which we are now living with a utopian mind. But we must first abandon a linear dimension of tim and stop looking at history as a continuous progress or a fateful series of catastrophes, even though the latter perspective is the more plausible today. Being is inseparable from movement and from becoming, as Ernst Bloch insisted.
But what is movement? It is distinct from the ideas of progress or regress which depend on subjective criteria:for instance, we may understand progress as the possibility for our President to go and visit the moon or we may consider that true progress means more compassion and solidarity between every generation.In fact, when we consider a social change that has occurred, we tend to chart a number of linear changes. But then we should also notice that the combination of this plurality of determinisms might bring unexpected and therefore non-linear changes. And since utopian thought is inseparable from the historical and dialectic process, there is no predefined utopian ideal,no wonderful society that may be achieved once and forever. Utopia is not preordained: there is no teleology. We must therefore look at the unexpected, at what is defined as turbulence and this may be seen as an opportunity for utopian moments. But then we should also refine our analysis, we must exclude a black and white simplisticview, see thatall human tragedies have the potential for differences, diversity, opportunities and choices. Indeed, utopian thought and experiment must be self-eco-managed because there is a complex relation between the whole and the parts, between the environment and the beings within each ecological niche. And let us listen to an important remark of another philosopher, Walter Benjamin:
“These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed".[8]
But improvisation must be carefully prepared. As we see, utopia is no longer a discourse or a dream; it is not constructed as an abstraction, a timeless discourse, but as a moment during which appears a collective opportunity to interpret the motivations of the social body, to discuss those motivations and look forthe concrete historical opportunities. Utopia changes into a social practice[9]. It can be described by what Deleuze calls “formation” (“agencement”). It occurs in a particular situation when all the forces push people to get together, take tall contingencies into account, rethink their vision of society at a given time,choose their tools, elaborate their actions and so on, so as to produce new desires for emancipation and therefore new subjectivities
Of course, utopias are totally unstable. What happens in New Orleans or in Cairo, at a particular moment, does not last. Nevertheless, for those who have lived that experience, it has changed their lives forever.
“Given the developments of the past three years, one might think that the revolution has been discredited in Egypt, that the Tahrir uprising might be denigrated or forgotten in the popular imagination. That is not the case. Instead, the revolution stands as a celebrated cultural touchstone. Rather than attacking it, each of the groups vying for power in the country tries to claim credit for ousting Mubarak and presents itself as the force that is carrying forward the true spirit of the revolution.”[10]
So, here we are in a discussion of big events. But what about everyday life? Let us remember Proudhon’s words: “Every human being is a group.” [11] Each of us is the unstable result of a combination of forces: physical, organic, psychological, ethical.[12]Collectivities and environments are also combination of forces. We all live like a football team, on the verge of chaos. This is why utopia is always at hand, in the 4th dimension of time. Chaos theory explains how turbulence may bring complexity and excellence, but therefore also fragility.
Picture 3 And now, finally, we know that utopia is not a purely mental object. It floated over the streets of New Orleans, on the asphalt of Tahir square, Cairo, it was both a physical and a social event.Ahmed Salah, one of the co-founders of the youth movement, was struck by the enormity of what had happened: “we Egyptians were able to bring down three regimes: Mubarak, the Supreme Council and the Muslim Brotherhood.”[13]
Picture 4 As we see, utopia is not a state of perfection, nor even a game that ends with a winner. It is a never-ending game.
Ronald Creagh
[1] < (consulted on March 2, 2015).
[2] John Clark, «A Letter from New Orleans. [Reclusian Reflections on an Unnatural Disaster. October 11, 2005» in <
[3] This was not a miraculous effect of Facebook but the outcome of a historical process.
[4]House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947.
[5] Dennis Diderot, Jacques le fataliste. 1796.
[6] Charles J.-H. Macdonald, «Cooperation, Sharing and Reciprocity1 (Sharing withoutgiving, Receiving without owing)» Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Such a society is not based on gifts, because the giving of gift supposes property, creates a debt and destroys equality, neither on generosity, because there is “a giving without a giver”.
[7] George Orwell, «Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun,» Tribune, (Dec. 20, 1943). Reprinted: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, 1968. .
[8] Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings (1978).
[9] 1994. Gérard Raulet, Chronique de l’espace public. Utopie et culture politique (1978-1993), p. 129.
[10] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, «Did nonviolence fail in Egypt?» Waging Nonviolence. People-Powered News & Analysis, Feb.21, 2014 < (consulted on March 2, 2015).
[11] Proudhon, Philosophie du progrès. Rivière, p. 63.
[12] Daniel Colson, Petit lexique philosophique de l’anarchisme. De Proudhon à Deleuze. Librairie générale française, 201,Picture 4 p. 121.
[13] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, art. cit.