Both the colloquial definitions and the anti-utopian position illustrate the fact that the concept itself is an ideological battleground. The elision between perfection and impossibility can serve to invalidate all attempts at change, reinforcing the claim that there is no alternative, and sustaining the status quo. Perhaps, as Khayyám suggests, we would do better to forget the future and drown our sorrows. But even among different groups committed to change, the derogatory meaning attaching to utopia is what dominates. People rarely claim that their own aspirations are utopian but even dream- ers may hurl the epithet at others. The rejection of other people’s projects as utopian and unrealistic is part of the process of promoting the merits of one’s own plans, and is thus an intrinsic part of the political process. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.4

Utopia is the expression of the desire for a better way of being. This includes both the objective, institutional approach to utopia, and the subjective, experiential concern of disalienation. It allows for this desire to be realistic or unrealistic. It allows for the form, function and content to change over time. And it reminds us that, whatever we think of particular utopias, we learn a lot about the experience of living under any set of conditions by reflecting upon the desires which those conditions generate and yet leave unfulfilled. For that is the space which utopia occupies. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.9

Colloquial usage thus tends to dismiss speculation about the good society as intrinsically impractical. This dismissal may be tolerantly good-humoured, seeing utopia as an interesting if esoteric byway of culture and the utopian as a well-meaning dreamer. It may, on the other hand, be extremely hostile, seeing attempts at instituting utopia as highly dangerous and leading to totalitarianism. This anti-utopian position is typified by Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.3

Sometimes utopia embodies more than an image of what the good life would be and becomes a claim about what it could and should be: the wish that things might be otherwise becomes a conviction that it does not have to be like this. Utopia is then not just a dream to be enjoyed, but a vision to be pursued. Yet the very term utopia suggests to most people that this dream of the good life is an impossible dream – an escapist fantasy, at best a pleasant but pointless entertainment. Those utopians who seek to make their dreams come true are deemed to be hopelessly unrealistic, or worse, actively dangerous. The view that utopia is not escapist nonsense but a significant part of human culture is a fundamental assumption of the expanding field of utopian studies. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.1

This book sets out to clarify the meaning of the term utopia and provide a new definition. Such a project could be undertaken from many points of view: definitions are tools, not ends in themselves. The aim here is to address some of the problems that arise in the field of utopian studies from the absence of a clear and agreed definition. The purpose is firstly one of clarification, to show the basis of the current variation in usage of the concept of utopia. Since this variety arises only in part from a lack of conceptual rigour on the part of commentators and more fundamentally from the range of questions and approaches that are involved, it is important that any common definition which is proposed takes account of this variety. The object is not to impose an orthodoxy, but to encourage communication about issues which are already being addressed and to suggest new ones. Above all, it is to encourage a greater degree of conceptual clarity in discussions of utopia. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.2

In exploring existing definitions of utopia we can consider three different aspects: content, form and function. Firstly, there is content. There is a common assumption that utopia should be a portrayal of the good society. It is however obvious that this will vary, being a matter not just of personal taste, but of the issues which appear to be important to different social groups, either in the same society or in different historical circumstances. […] The variation in content, however, makes it particularly difficult to use this as part of the definition of utopia. Definitions in terms of content tend to be evaluative and normative, specifying what the good society would be, rather than reflecting on how it may be differently perceived. The issue of possibility also relates directly to the content of a utopia, and again judgements differ. Secondly, one can attempt to define utopia descriptively, in terms of form. The common sense equation of utopia with a description of a good society (leaving aside the question of possibility) is one version of such a definition. Another is the equation of utopia with an ideal commonwealth. Some commentators take the form of More’s Utopia as a model and argue that utopia is a literary genre, involving the fictional depiction of an alternative society in some detail. However, as we have already suggested, depictions of the good society do not necessarily take the form of literary fictions – and indeed this form is only available under certain very specific historical conditions; is it then to be assumed that when these conditions do not exist, there are no utopias? Broader historical comparisons require more inclusive definitions, to accommodate changes in the way in which aspirations for a better life may be expressed. Thirdly, one may define utopia in terms of its function. This is less obvious; to focus on the function of utopia is already to move away from colloquial usage, which says nothing about what utopia is for, but implies that it is useless. […] utopia is seen as presenting some kind of goal, even if commentators as opposed to the authors of utopias do not see them as necessarily realisable in all their details. At the very least, utopias raise questions about what the goal should be. Many commentators, however, go further and use the function of utopia as a defining characteristic – although that function is differently represented by different authors. […] Broadly, one may divide approaches to utopian studies into two streams. The liberal-humanist tradition tends to focus on definitions in terms of form. In contrast a largely, but not exclusively, Marxist tradition has defined utopia in terms of its function – either a negative function of preventing social change or a positive function of facilitating it, either directly or through the process of the ‘education of desire’. Contemporary utopian studies draws on both these traditions, and definitions of both kinds may be found, although those in terms of form tend to predominate. […] It is argued that all definitions in terms of form, function or content are problematic. Not only do they place limits upon what may properly be regarded as utopian and thus upon the field of enquiry itself, they also obscure variations in the utopian genre. In order to make such a claim, one must of course be able to locate something which remains constant while content, form and function vary. This element, I would argue, is that of desire – desire for a better way of being and living. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.5-8

There is an ambivalence here: utopia fascinates as an expression of the felt problems and solutions of particular historical situations; it inspires as a response to the recurrent problems across history; yet it provokes fear that the revolutionary may make the mistake of taking it literally. There is an implied model of the process of social change, as well as its direction: ideas are the motive force in social progress, so that utopia must be taken seriously as a contribution to this – but not too seriously, or evolution and progress may turn to revolution and disaster. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.9

The Marxist tradition has for the most part been strongly antipathetic to utopianism, which it has understood as the construction of blueprints of a future society that are incapable of realisation; the charge of utopianism has also been levelled at Marxism by its opponents, using a similar definition. Throughout the twentieth century there have been notable exceptions to the dominant unpopularity of utopianism (including the views of Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse and Edward Thompson, discussed in subsequent chapters) but the idea that utopia can be valuable for Marxists has always been a minority view. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.41

The roots of Marxist objections to utopia can be found in the writings of Marx and Engels; however, their criticisms of utopian socialism have been used illegitimately as justification of a general rejection of descriptions of the future socialist society. The concept of utopia deployed in this rejection, besides being a political weapon in a process of ‘annihilation by labels’, conflates two issues: speculation about the future, and the possibility and means of transition to socialism. The real dispute between Marx and Engels and the utopian socialists is not about the merit of goals or of images of the future but about the process of transformation, and particularly about the belief that propaganda alone would result in the realisation of socialism. The general orientation to utopia that has developed not only misrepresents the views of both Marx and Engels, but has had thoroughly deleterious effects on the socialist project in the past hundred years. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.41

Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e. human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equal naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 3, p. 296. (Cited in Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.47)

Marx’s suggestions as to the nature of communist society range from very abstract principles put forward in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to the more specific statements in the Grundrisse. In Marx’s early writings the goal of communism is the transcendence of alienation, the overcoming of the estrangement of human beings from themselves which results from the institution of private property. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.47

although it [communism] is in one sense a goal, it is not very specific about the precise institutional arrangements which will prevail. There are two reasons for this. The more fundamental objection to describing communist society is that the needs, wants and capacities that will develop within it are neither static nor predictable from within the constraints of capitalism. In addition there is a strategic reason for silence: the criticism of utopian socialism in terms of its supposition that its schemes would be self-realising would be undermined by appearing to offer a competing plan of the good society. Hence Marx’s reluctance to identify communism as a state rather than a process: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.” (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 5, p. 49) Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.50

The abolition of private property through social ownership transforms the nature of work. It is alienated labour which is the root of alienation; hence it is only through the transformation of the work process and its place in communist society that human estrangement can be overcome. A key issue here is the division of labour, which turns people into extensions of the productive process and prevents the full development of each individual’s broad potential. Hence the familiar statement in The German Ideology that “in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.47-48

Finally this new society entails the production of a different kind of person, not just in the sense of increasing their powers as atomised individuals but (and in fact this is how the increase of individual powers is possible) as the production of fully social human beings. Alienation affects not just the relationship of people to themselves and to their work, but to one another. The recognition of interdependence and of the social nature of production and of human existence in general leads not only to a transformation of work, but also means that the relationships between individuals both within and outside the work process cease to have the instrumental and competitive nature they assume in capitalist society. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.50

Similarly, ‘in a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities’. The division between mental and manual labour is abolished, and the division between town and country. On this point, the utopian socialists were commended by Engels in Anti-Dühring: "The utopians were already perfectly clear as to the effects of the division of labour, the stunting on the one hand of the labourer, and on the other of the labour function, which is restricted to the life-long uniform mechanical repetition of one and the same operation. The abolition of the antithesis between town and country was demanded by Fourier, as by Owen, as the first prerequisite for the abolition of the old division of labour altogether ... abolition of the antithesis between town and country ... has become a direct necessity of industrial production itself ... . The abolition of the separation between town and country is therefore not utopian.” Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.48

In the Grundrisse it is made clear that the new human being who develops with communist society does so through the expansion of ‘free time which is both leisure and time for higher activity’, which transforms ‘its possessor into another subject’. Work remains a realm of necessity in contrast with the realm of freedom outside work, where human development is an end in itself. This does not mean, however, as one commentator has suggested, that the problem of freedom is in the Grundrisse reduced to the problem of free time, nor does it mean that the realm of work consists of alienated labour. Work does not become ‘pure fun, pure amusement, as in Fourier’s ... childishly naive conception’, since ‘really free work ... is also the most damnably difficult, demanding the most intensive effort’. But if ‘labour cannot become a game, as desired by Fourier’, it remains to his great credit that he ‘stated that the ULTIMATE OBJECT is the raising of the mode of production itself, not [that] of distribution, to a higher form’. And the nature and conditions of work are to be transformed so that work, while necessary, is nevertheless free: "Work involved in material production can achieve this character only if (1) its social character is posited; (2) if it is of a scientific character and simultaneously general [in its application], and not the exertion of the worker as a natural force drilled in a particular way, as a subject, which appears in the production process not in a merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity controlling all natural forces.” (Marx, Grundrisse, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 28, p. 530; Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 29, p. 97) Work in communist society is both greatly reduced and transformed in character. These features depend upon the expansion of productive powers, made possible in the first instance by capitalism but then exponentially so by its demise. Abundance is a necessary condition for communism. These four key features – the abolition of the division of labour, the development of individual potential, the transformation of work and the increase in material prosperity (made possible by the social ownership of the means of production) – are summed up in the Critique of the Gotha Programme: "In a higher phase of a communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!“ (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 24, p. 87.) Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.49-50

Whether the sexual division of labour is also to be entirely abolished is less clear. There is certainly support for communal living arrangements as a new productive force, involving the development of new machinery and the abolition of the family, in The German Ideology, which is entirely congruent with Engels’s praise for the saving in labour power implied in Owen’s planned communities. Ollman argues that the communal raising of children is implied by the need that parents be prevented from exercising a destructive influence over their children without forcibly separating them from each other. He does concede, however, that this is never made explicit in Marx’s writing, and that Marx never deals with the limitations child-rearing imposes upon the self-development of adults, in practice usually their mothers, although Ollman asserts that ‘he was surely aware of it’. Although it is clearly intended that the all-round development of the individual in communist society should apply to women as well as to men, the means by which this is to be made possible have to be inferred or invented. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.48

The difference between Marxism and utopian socialism does not, then, rest on the existence or otherwise of an image of the socialist society to be attained, nor even on the content of that image. It rests upon disagreements about the process of transition. Even here the question of who is most utopian in the sense of unrealistic is a matter of dispute. Martin Buber, in Paths in Utopia, defends the orientation of utopian socialism (including not just Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, but Proudhon, Kropotkin and Landauer) to this problem. Buber’s argument is that a ‘society is naturally composed not of disparate individuals but of associative units’, and that the health of a society depends on the density of voluntary associations that constitute it; capitalist society is thus ‘a society inherently poor in structure and growing visibly poorer every day’. The strength of utopian socialism is that it addressed itself to the issue of ‘a renewal of society through a renewal of its cell-tissue’, and aimed to ‘substitute society for State to the greatest degree possible’.23 Buber argues that neither Marx nor Engels gave sufficient attention to the process of social restructuring, in spite of the assertion that the new society matures in the womb of the old. Organic restructuring necessitates the development of a network of cooperative settlements which go beyond simple consumer or producer cooperatives – as in the Israeli kibbutzim. […] His arguments in favour of cooperative settlements rest upon a recognition that the social relations of production lie at the root of the character of society. His claim, however, is that the post-revolutionary leap and the dictatorship of the proletariat involve a contradiction between means and ends which is not present in utopian socialism. The so-called utopian does not believe in this post-revolutionary leap, but in ‘continuity within which revolution is only the accomplishment, the setting free and extension of a reality that has already grown to its true possibilities’. In Buber’s view the ‘utopian’ approach to the problem is more realistic, since it is difficult to see how the centralisation of the first phase of socialism will give way to full communism. In other words, the expectation that the state will somehow wither away is itself utopian, i.e. unrealistic. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.53-54

Early in 1852 Marx observed that one response to political defeat was for the working class to retreat into essentially utopian schemes: "In part [the proletariat] throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers’ associations, hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionising of the old world by means of the latter’s own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society’s back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck.” [Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 11, pp. 110–11.] Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.61

It is clear that the basis of Marx’s and Engels’s criticisms of utopian socialism is not an objection to speculation about the future, but a difference of view about the process of transformation. As Vincent Geoghegan puts it, ‘what is under attack here is not anticipation as such, but rather the failure to root this anticipation in a theoretical framework cognizant of the essential dynamics of capitalism’. […] Utopian socialism draws up schemes for the future. Its main fault however is not that it does this, or that the schemes themselves outline the wrong sort of future, but that it entails an idealist model of social change, suggesting that the mere propagation of such schemes will have a transformative effect. Utopia here is effectively defined in terms of its function, which is seen as a negative, counter-revolutionary, one: "The chief offence does not lie in having inscribed [a] specific nostrum in [a] programme, but in taking a retrograde step at all from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movement.” [Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 24, p. 93] In their terms the key question is whether movements foster a deeper understanding of the class struggle, or whether they disguise it behind plans to persuade all classes to combine in the construction of a society based on harmony. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 64, 66

“The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism ... bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social utopias, of founding isolated ‘phalanstères’, of establishing ‘Home Colonies’, of setting up a ‘Little Icaria’ ... and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois.” [Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence & Wishart: London), Vol. 6, pp. 515–16.] The fundamental error of the utopian socialists which gives rise to this unacceptable political position is the expectation that society can be changed by the appeal to all classes on the basis of reason and justice, and the belief that their blueprints of the good society will be the cause of social transformation. It is this idealist, as opposed to materialist, concept of social change which is the real problem. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p.60

It is abundantly clear that in their hands the term is indeed used in a way which emphasises the unrealistic nature of utopia, More’s ‘no place’. However, the imputed lack of realism applies less to the content of the Utopian systems in question than to the models of social change associated with them. Since the primary concern of both Marx and Engels was with fostering such changes, the rejection of utopia is a rejection on the basis of its imputed social function – that of distracting the working classes from more suitable political activity, from ‘conscious participation in the historical process revolutionising society before our very eyes’. Utopian socialism draws up schemes for the future. Its main fault however is not that it does this, or that the schemes themselves outline the wrong sort of future, but that it entails an idealist model of social change, suggesting that the mere propagation of such schemes will have a transformative effect. Utopia here is effectively defined in terms of its function, which is seen as a negative, counter-revolutionary, one: The chief offense does not lie in having inscribed [a] specific nostrum in [a] programme, but in taking a retrograde step at all from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movement. In their terms the key question is whether movements foster a deeper understanding of the class struggle, or whether they disguise it behind plans to persuade all classes to combine in the construction of a society based on harmony. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 66

Sorel also argued that ideas, in the form of myths, could potentially perform a mobilising and transformative function. The distinction drawn by Sorel between myth and utopia is interesting in its own right, but doubly so when compared with the analysis offered by Karl Mannheim, probably the most well-known theorist of utopia; for Mannheim’s argument similarly insists on this transformative potential, while attributing it to utopia. Part of the difference between the two is terminological, with Sorel’s use of the term myth having strong similarities with Mannheim’s definition of utopia. There are, however, also differences of substance, particularly concerning the emphasis on human will and the political evaluation of myth or utopia: Sorel celebrates the non-rationality of myth for its effectiveness; Mannheim fears the irrationality of utopia as well as the possibility of its extinction. The focus for both writers is […] on the role of ideas in social change; but whereas in Marxist hands utopia is defined in terms of the negative function of preventing social change, here myth and utopia, respectively, are defined in terms of the positive function of promoting it. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 69

Bloch’s relationship to Marxism is more problematic. Like William Morris […] Bloch stands at the juncture of Marxism and Romanticism. His project can therefore be seen as an attempt to import into Marxism a concept of utopia deriving from a mixture of mysticism and the Romantic tradition and thus as a contamination or dilution of Marxism itself, or it can be seen in Bloch’s own terms as an attempt to reinstate Marx’s own intentions within Marxism through the fundamental but neglected Marxist concept of utopia. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 97

Bloch refuses the identification of utopia with a literary genre: "to limit the utopian to the Thomas More variety, or simply to orientate it in that direction, would be like trying to reduce electricity to the amber from which it gets its Greek name and in which it was first noticed. Indeed, the utopian coincides so little with the novel of an ideal state that the whole total of philosophy becomes necessary … to do justice to the content of that designated by utopia.” [Bloch The Principle of Hope, Basil Blackwell: Oxford 1986, p. 15.] Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 99

Bloch would agree with Mannheim that ‘wishful thinking has always figured in human affairs’ and that ‘myths, fairy-tales, other-worldly promises of religion, humanistic fantasies, romances, have been continually changing expressions of what was lacking in actual life’. He would agree too that they have a compensatory aspect and even that they are susceptible to manipulation: the mirror in which wishful images are reflected is ‘a beautifying mirror which often only reflects how the ruling class wishes the wishes of the weak to be’. However, the compensatory aspect of wishful thinking does not in itself mean that it operates, as Mannheim supposes, to sustain the status quo. It is not merely fictitious compensation for the discomforts of experienced reality, but a venturing beyond that reality which is essential to the inauguration of a transformed future. Utopia contains compensation, but also anticipation. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 100-101

The designation of utopia as ‘anticipatory consciousness’, which is the subtitle of part two of The Principle of Hope, depends upon Bloch’s central concept, the Not Yet. It has two aspects, the Not-Yet-Conscious and the Not-Yet-Become – its ideological and material, or subjective and objective aspects. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 101

The idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious is developed through a critique of Sigmund Freud. In Bloch’s view, Freud regarded the unconscious as a kind of rubbish bin of repressed material that was no longer conscious; this overly negative approach on Freud’s part disregarded the additional and countervailing characteristic of the unconscious, that of being a creative source of material on the verge of coming to consciousness. The unconscious is also the pre-conscious, is intrinsically creative and the source of the utopian impulse, which Bloch appears to regard as a fundamental human propensity. The expression of the Not-Yet-Conscious is of course subject to social determination and thus varies with individual and historical circumstance; hence the variation in utopian expression demonstrated in the rest of The Principle of Hope. The Not-Yet-Conscious is at its strongest in youth, is expressed par excellence in the creative arts and is intensely present in times of change, particularly revolutionary change. Thus ‘all times of change are filled with Not-Yet-Conscious, even overfilled; a Not-Yet-Conscious which is carried by a rising class’. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 101

What prevents the Not-Yet-Conscious from being a purely psychoanalytic or ontological category is that it is the subjective correlate of the Not-Yet-Become, a category which applies to material reality. It is fundamental to Bloch’s argument and to the concept of the Not-Yet-Become that the material world is essentially unfinished, the future is indeterminate and therefore that the future constitutes a realm of possibility. Once the world is seen as in a constant state of process, but a process whose direction and outcome is not predetermined, there are always many possible futures – futures which are real possibilities, rather than merely formal possibilities. Not all projected futures are real possibilities; there are of course constraints, and Bloch’s model is not one of pure voluntarism. Nor are all real possibilities desirable: they include ‘devastatingly, possible fascist Nothing’ as well as ‘finally feasible and overdue, socialism’. These possible futures must be seen as part of, rather than outside, reality despite the fact that the indeterminacy of the future means that there is no necessary development from potentiality to actuality, and despite the fact that not all real possibilities will in fact be realised. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 101-102

Anticipatory elements are identified with concrete utopia (and, as we shall see, Marxism), compensatory elements with abstract utopia; thus Bloch refers to ‘the power of anticipation, which we [call] concrete utopia … (as distinct from the utopistic and from merely abstract utopianizing)’. It is not a question of dividing the mass of material outlined above into concrete and abstract examples, as a division of sheep from goats. Just as Mannheim pointed out that ideology and utopia are ideal types and appear in reality interwoven with one another, so too Bloch sees abstract and concrete utopia, compensation and anticipation, as interwoven in the objects of his study. Unlike Mannheim, Bloch carries this to its logical conclusion: the task is to reveal and recover the anticipatory essence from the dross of contingent and compensatory elements in which utopia is dressed up in particular historical circumstances. Abstract utopia means that the derogatory sense of the term remains, and rightly so, but should not outweigh the positive sense that pertains to the function of concrete utopia: ‘the category of the Utopian, beside the usual, justifiably pejorative sense, possesses the other, in no way necessarily abstract or unworldly sense, much more centrally turned towards the world: of overtaking the natural course of events’. Bloch’s celebration of the anticipatory element present even in vestigial or contaminated forms across the range of human culture, and his simultaneously ruthless attitude to utopia’s abstract trappings, recall Engels’s response to utopian socialism; it is a celebration of the thoughts that break out through fantastic coverings, coupled with a rejection of the coverings themselves – and implying that it is a greater blindness to reject the former than to be deluded by the latter. Nevertheless, the distinction between abstract and concrete utopia is fundamental to Bloch’s project. The rehabilitation of utopia depends upon the removal of the abstract elements which clutter up the concrete core. Concrete utopia must be winnowed out, stripping wishful thinking of that which is purely fantastic, compensatory and escapist. The process entails: "knowledge and removal of the finished *utopistic element*, with knowledge and removal of abstract utopia. But what then remains: the unfinished forward dream, the docta spes which can only be discredited by the bourgeoisie – this seriously deserves the name utopia in carefully considered and carefully applied contrast to utopianism; in its brevity and new clarity, this expression then means the same as: *a methodical organ for the New, an objective aggregate state of what is coming up.*” [Bloch The Principle of Hope, Basil Blackwell: Oxford 1986, p. 157.] What can then happen is that the utopian function ‘tears the concerns of human culture away from … an idle bed of contemplation’ and ‘opens up, on truly attained summits, the ideologically unobstructed view of the content of human hope’ [Bloch The Principle of Hope, Basil Blackwell: Oxford 1986, p. 158.]. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 104-105

A large part of the substance of The Principle of Hope consists of Bloch’s attempt to demonstrate the core of concrete utopia in a range of cultural forms, including both religion and bourgeois culture. The reclamation of these as more than repressive ideology is justified by the idea of cultural surplus. Bloch does not dispute the view that the ruling ideas in any age are the ideas of the ruling class, or that ruling class ideologies justify social conditions by disguising their own economic roots and the system of economic exploitation. However, many cultural productions outlast the conditions that give rise to them: they ‘reproduce themselves in cultural consciousness even after the disappearance of their social bases’. This formulation is unsatisfactory in that it ignores the fact that cultural productions do not reproduce themselves, but are reproduced within historical contexts, even if these differ in some respects from those in which they originate. However, Bloch argues that ideology would be unable to carry out its most important function, ‘namely premature harmonization of social contradictions’, if it consisted only of deception and false consciousness; and those elements which are detachable from the immediate conditions of creation are designated cultural surplus. This surplus is differentially distributed between different cultural forms, being more prevalent in architecture than philosophy, and particularly so in music; it is this that creates continuing culture, and this which must be reclaimed. Cultural surplus is equated with concrete utopia: ‘it becomes clear that this very surplus is produced by nothing other than the effect of the utopian function in the ideological creations of the cultural side’. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 105-106

[Bloch] treats religion, and particularly the Judaeo-Christian tradition, with considerably more respect than is general among Marxists. It is the mystical rather than didactic elements of religion which appeal to him and he argues that the biblical tradition is the major source of utopian striving in the Western world. […] In Bloch’s view, this is not simply because the ideological supremacy of institutionalised Christianity made the Bible an available cultural resource which could be extensively drawn on by architects of the utopian tradition: in the third volume of The Principle of Hope Bloch makes far more radical claims about the importance of the Christian concept of the Kingdom of God. Bloch’s overall project has been described as an intention to fill the gap into which the Gods were imagined. He refuses to belittle the importance of the gap or to underestimate the richness of the way in which it has been filled by religion. Again, he denies that this involves any departure from Marx, who observed not only that religion was the opiate of the people but that it was the heart of a heartless world and the spirit of spiritless conditions. For Bloch it is also therefore an anticipation of a world no longer heartless, conditions no longer spiritless. Religion carried utopia as goal and as aspiration and would continue to do so as long as reality fell short of the conditions for a truly human existence. […] Bloch’s view of Marxism does not involve simply the assertion that the conditions for communism as a better mode of social organization exist, although this was part of his thesis. What is prefigured in all utopian traces is the overcoming of antagonism between humanity and the world – a state which begins to be really conceivable and approachable through Marxism, in communism. The resolution of antagonisms that is represented in the image of the Kingdom is more profound than could be imagined in any currently conceivable social state for it, like Brahms’s Requiem, involves the overcoming of death, the most profound problem of human existence and the most profound anti-utopia. What Bloch argues is that for religion to become unnecessary (for his is an atheistic position, if one that can only be misunderstood by merely describing it as atheistic), Marxism must absorb the field of hope represented by the Kingdom. Or, to put it another way, the idea of God must be separated from that of the Kingdom, and repossessed as at least a potential embodiment of true humanness, the *humanum*. The Marxist inheritance of religion involves the abolition of religion, but it also involves the affirmation of faith in a redeemed future which Bloch sees as religion’s positive aspect. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 114-116

In the end, there is no doubt that Bloch’s view of utopia rests on anthropological claims about the nature of human beings and human consciousness, embodied in the concept of the Not-Yet-Conscious, as well as on cosmological claims about the unfinishedness of the world and real possibility embodied in the Not-Yet-Become. These, as well as the political claim that Marxism makes concrete utopia a real possibility, are contestable, but there are other reasons why Bloch’s work has not had more impact outside the realms of theology. For most readers the problem of whether or not Bloch is orthodoxly Marxist is not a burning issue, and rightly so; the question of whether his position is right, or at least useful, is of much greater importance. Yet problems remain for Marxists and non-Marxists alike and Bloch remains difficult to assimilate to either a Marxist or a liberal-humanist tradition. For Marxists, there is a suspicion that Bloch’s Romanticism and mysticism render him fundamentally anti-materialist (although this judgement is far too simple). […] Further, within both Marxist and liberal-humanist traditions in the Anglo-American academic world the predominantly positivist orientation is at odds with the non-verifiable nature of the argument. If Bloch is not hopelessly mystical, he is at least irredeemably evaluative. From the point of view of both these traditions there are major weaknesses in Bloch’s argument: the positing of transcended alienation as a goal disconnected from the process of material production; the emphasis on subjective experience; the failure or refusal to provide clear or verifiable criteria for his distinctions; and a teleology which suggests that history has a goal rather than simply that human beings have purposes. These weaknesses make it difficult to assimilate Bloch’s strengths, which in the end may be more important. Besides the fact that Bloch brings into focus both the question of the function of utopia and the boundaries, if any, of the field of its subject matter, his work transcends the limits of purely intellectual enquiry. He reminds us that utopia involves fundamental questions about the human condition and its future, and he refuses to abandon faith in the possibilities of that future. His legacy is therefore too important to be left solely to theologians. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 121-122

Tillich opens with three assertions about the status of utopia. First, utopia ‘is rooted in the nature of man himself ’. Secondly, it is not possible to understand history without reference to utopia, since human consciousness and action are meaningless without reference to utopia as beginning and end. Thirdly, with clear dependence on Bloch, he argues that ‘all utopias strive to negate the negative … in human existence; it is the negative in that existence which makes the idea of utopia necessary’. Utopia has both positive and negative characteristics: it contains truth, in so far as it contains the telos, the goal and the purpose of existence; but it also contains untruth, in that it forgets that estrangement is a condition of human existence. Utopia is fruitful in that it opens up possibilities which would have been lost without utopian anticipation; but it is unfruitful in that it is in the nature of the wish to describe impossibilities as real possibilities. Utopia contains power, the power of transformation, and the ‘root of its power is the essential – the ontological – discontent of man in every direction of his being’; but utopia is also impotent in that its negative inevitably leads to failure and disillusion. This contradictory nature of utopia – again defined in terms of function and implicit content – calls for its transcendence. Tillich sees this as accomplished by reference to two orders, the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal is that of the political and social, of immanent utopia. The vertical is that of radical transcendence, the divine, which continually breaks through. In this breaking through, the Kingdom of God actualizes itself in history; but it is always resisted and suppressed, so that fulfilment in the horizontal is only ever partial. Although Tillich’s debt to Bloch is obvious there is also a radical departure here. Bloch did not see estrangement as a necessary feature of the human condition, but as a contingent one. As we have seen, despite the suggestion that utopianising is a fundamental human propensity, Bloch denied the existence of a fixed human nature which would make it possible to posit estrangement as a necessary and universal condition. ‘There is’, he says, ‘no fixed generic essence of man … ; rather the entire course of human history is evidence of a progressive transformation of human nature’. Bloch saw in communism a way out of estrangement, so that utopia was a real possibility. Although there are similarities between Tillich’s notion of radical transcendence and Bloch’s discussion of the fulfilled moment, there is no doubt that Bloch believed more strongly in the possibility of the full actualisation of utopia – at least if the abstract content (which corresponds to Tillich’s negative aspects) were to be eliminated. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 120-121