Introduction/Prospectus: To Reconsider the Relationship of Marxism to Utopian Thought

SP€CIAL SUPPL€M€W : MARXISM AND UTOPIA 52 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW THIS SPECIAL SECTION ON MARXISM AND UTOPIA HAS BEEN PREPARED BY THE MARXIST LITERARY GROUP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO, ESPECIALLY WITH THE HELP OF THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE: MICHAEL HOLZMAN, FRED JAMESON, TOM LEWIS, PRISCILLA LORE. JAMESON 53 FREDRIC JAMESON INTRODUCTION/PROSPECTUS : TO RECONSIDER THE RELATIONSHIP OF MARXISM TO UTOPIAN THOUGHT Everyone is familiar with the classical polemic waged by the founders of Marxism (e.g., Engels, "Socialism Utopian and Scientific") against the so-called Utopian socialisms of their day (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, etc.). The spirit of the polemic can only be properly grasped if it is remembered that Engels numbered Utopian socialism among the three fundamental currents of thought whose confluence, in the mid-nineteenth century, furnished the necessary preconditions for the emergence of Marxism itself (the other two currents were, of course, British political economy and the Hegelian dialectic). But this means that for Engels Utopian socialism was a good deal more complicated than mere doctrinal error to be combatted; rather, it amounted to a kind of truth unavaUable elsewhere, yet politically and intellectually harmful in its present ("utopian") form, and thus subject to more urgent and vigilant correction than other more obviously antagonistic forms of thought. Of the two main traditions of Utopian socialism-what we wUl call the technological or organizational tradition (Saint-Simon, and later Bellamy) and the libidinal or aesthetic one (Fourier, and later Morris and indeed a vital ingredient in the thinking of the New Left)—we wUl say little here, save for observing that the indispensable feature supplied by the Utopian socialists to the Marxism-to-be of Marx's and Engels' time was simply their vision of the future itself (the British economists, meanwhUe, supplied the analysis of the present, whUe Hegel provided the basic mechanism ofhistorical change, the dialectic, or in other words, the pathway that led from Ricardo's present to Fourier's future). What Engels objected to in these thinkers was something Marxists have since that time become accustomed to detecting in the various species of revisionism and liberal reformism, namely the absence of any mechanism for implementing their vision. This must be understood in a two-fold way in accordance with its correction in Marxism. For, on the one hand, the latter understands the future to be structurally inherent in the present (the essential features of a socialist economy are gradually developed within the capitalist system itself); on the other, the analysis of class conflict suggests that a monumental 54 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW transformation of this type can only be achieved by revolutionary means, at the same time that it designates the historical agent (the classical proletariat ) required to effectuate such a change. Now the urgency of Engels' strictures on the Utopian socialists becomes clear: without the first of these convictions (the structural relationship of socialism to capitalism) there can be no effective social engineering, no trustworthy guarantee that what emerges from the collapse of capitalism will be anything like a socialist vision of the future. Without the second feature of the Marxian view of the transition—not simply the insistence on social revolution but also on the concrete presence of the appropriate revolutionary actors and classes— the will to change society is deflected into wishful thinking about gradual reforms, appeals to reason and to education (both of the ruling class and of the public at large), and a misplaced confidence in parliamentary democracy . This is the sense in which Engels' attack on Utopian socialism today seems more appropriately addressed to the various non-Marxist or "liberal" critics of the system, such as groups like those of Ralph Nader, the ecologists , Common Cause, and the like. This is perhaps simply to recognize that in our day and age Utopian socialism as such no longer exists. But that would not be quite true either. Consider the following reflection of Georg Lukács, a few years before his death: "We must essentially compare our [that of Marxists] situation today with that in which people like Fourier or Sismondi found themselves at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We can only achieve effective action when...