Pro 4010 final
- 1. 1 | P a g e This essay seeks to looks at the communal aspects of the Utopian plan of society; identify the most practical Utopian plan and the relevance in the 21st Century. A Utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The term has been used to describe international communities. There are a few less crucial characteristics that utopia exhibits: The Utopia is usually far away in space, or time, or both, and the way of getting there is not clear or easy. The utopian literature does not provide a blue-print. It is not a formula of how exactly, things are to be done. Rather it is suggestive of how things could be if certain few, crucial social features were imagined to be different. Similarly, in its lack of heavy-handedness, utopia tends to light-heartedness, optimism and, even, playfulness (Manuel, Frank E., and Fritzie P. Manuel, 1971). Additionally, Socialism is a social and economic doctrine that calls for public ownership or public control of property and natural resources. The difficulty of defining socialism is apparent to anyone who attempts to study this protean doctrine, not least because what socialism is or is not is usually a matter of contentious debate (Bernstein, Eduard, 1967). Furthermore, as a political ideology, socialism arose largely in response to the economic and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution. There is an abundance of literature that attests to the dramatic way in which the industrialization of Europe affected the daily lives of individuals, particularly the working classes. The reformist trend in British politics during the 1830s brought some of these harsh realities to the public’s attention. In 1832, for example, a parliamentary investigation into the conditions in the textile factories—later known as the Sadler Committee’s Report—revealed the appalling toll on human life that had resulted from unregulated industrial growth. And, even if we discount certain embellishments or exaggerations, these accounts of the general working conditions in the factories were nonetheless all too illustrative of a social climate in which practices of the most callous inhumanity were accepted as a natural order of events and, most important, were at first not thought to be the general public’s concern (Bernstein, Eduard, 1967). However, there is a general consensus that the various schools of socialism share some common features that can be summarized as follows. Socialism is above all concerned with the relationship between the individual, state, and society. For the socialist, the individual is never alone and thus must always define himself or herself in relation to others. Socialists believe that a well-ordered society cannot exist without a state apparatus, not least because the state is seen as
- 2. 2 | P a g e the most effective vehicle for coordinating and administering to the needs of all. Socialists’ views on human nature distinguish them from their principal political rivals, the liberals and conservatives (Cole, G. D. H, 1957). Socialists hold that the values and beliefs promoted in a socialist society would enhance our capacity for acting cooperatively and collectively in pursuit of mutually reinforcing material and spiritual goals. Also, Socialists stress the importance of the economic system that operates in every society. It was their observations of the deleterious effects of industrial capitalism that caused socialist reformers to call for the development of new economic structures based on a completely different set of moral principles. The question of how the transition from capitalism to socialism would occur has been answered in different ways by different socialist theorists: Saint-Simon Saint-Simon is extremely important in his influence as a philosophical utopian but his system is a more or less linear extension of his own France. His followers are important relative to the credit-mobilier, deployment of railroads and the building of the Suez Canal (Wright, Anthony, 1986). Early on, science is at the apex in the style of Condorcet, with the gravitation law the cream of the cream. But, then Saint-Simon posited three different kinds of men, administrators and moralists, as well as scientists. Thus, there would be a natural inequality, but whereas before there had been a natural antagonism of man against man, now there would be harmonious varied actions of men working upon nature. The key, an Industrial Revolution key, is production. The more Saint-Simon's three kinds of men functioned together in nature the less need there would be for state and government, even for police. At the end of his life Saint-Simon set out his system as a religion - a tawdry religion to be sure - but that, too, has been influential (Wright, Anthony, 1986). The followers, the Saint-Simonians, extend the doctrines, positing Saint-Simon's three kinds of men as, rather, three different aspects of each man. This reduces inequality and furthers harmony. This refined scheme is also later formulated as a religion. The singular reign of reason promulgated by Turgot and Condorcet is ended (Sassoon, Donald, 1996). Fourier Fourier extended Newton with what he called his law of passionate attraction. The passions were the only authentic stable force throughout time, never mind the Church and the moralists. Human
- 3. 3 | P a g e history was a chronicle of repression, and the repression of desire was not only unnatural but the source of corruption. Witness that savages and children must be coerced into civilization. If the coercion were ended civilization would be abandoned. Fourier devised an interesting taxonomy of the twelve passions he identified (Lindemann, Albert S, 1983). Fourier sought far and wide for a patron, including Napoleon and the Czars and finally succeeded and founded a pilot community in what is now Rumania. Since man is psychologically complex, a complex social order is required for man's fulfillment (Sassoon, Donald, 1996). Therefore, this Columbus of the social order, as he called himself, adopted for each unit of his phalanstery a membership of 2 times 810 carefully chosen persons: 810 being the basic number of human passionate combinations. Each member was in a number of different groups engaging in a variety of different work, mostly agrarian, and other activities. In these different groups a great variety of different passions were involved and the emphasis was always upon love and friendliness within each group and friendly competition between groups (Cole, G. D. H, 1957). Owen Robert Owen was something of a self-made, enormously successful, cotton-mill industrialist at the time of the Luddites. By 1812, extremely wealthy, he was concerning himself with the economic and moral conditions of his workers, especially at his New Lanark works. He initiated a new educational system stressing the formation of good habits, partly to counter alcoholism. Then, studying the post-Napoleonic economic downturn he established self-sustaining communities, first for indigents and children, whom he saw as the initial victims of the social disorder. About 1200 inhabitants were well housed in rural settings away from slums. Surrounding the housing were workshop areas which were themselves surrounded by agricultural areas. The people were to live in the midst of the food they grew and ate (Owen, Robert, 1970). Soon his scheme expanded to include members of different income levels living in a variety of communities. This scheme was intended to further develop into a cooperative socialism, worldwide (Owen, Robert, 1970). In all this, Owen was not only advocating private financing but was also consuming his own fortune. This self-conscious behaviorist demonstrated the changing of children, indigents, and workers by altering their environment. In his 30-year experiment at New Lanark, Owen, and
- 4. 4 | P a g e observers from all over the world, reported upon workers who had gone from being drunken and shiftless to being the best workers in the world (Owen, Robert, 1970). Owen then gave up his New Lanark works to start afresh in the pristine conditions of new world New Harmony, Indiana. This turned out a disaster (Owen, Robert, 1970). Owen wrote increasingly savage attacks upon the social ills of industrialism and upon the industrial society which held the victims responsible for the ghastly conditions which had been visited upon there. He held that most people had their characters chosen for them, not chosen by them. As he increasingly attacked the church, the family and property as the institutions which were really responsible for the maladies of industrialism he became increasingly ostracized (Owen, Robert, 1970). Furthermore, the three principal groups were the Fourierists and Saint-Simonians in France and the Owenites in Great Britain. There were obvious similarities between them: (1) they regarded the social question as by far the most important of all; (2) insisted that it was the duty of all good men to promote the general happiness and welfare of everyone in society; (3) regarded this task as incompatible with the continuance of a social order that was maintained strictly on the basis of a competitive struggle between individuals for the means of living; and (4) were deeply distrustful of politics and politicians, believing that the future control of social affairs ought to lie not with parliaments or ministers or kings and queens but with the “producers.” They held that, if the economic and social aspects of men’s lives could be properly ordered, the traditional forms of government and political organization based on conflict and competitiveness would soon be superseded by a new world order of international peace and collaboration(Lindemann, Albert S, 1983). On the other hand, there were wide diversities separating these three groups. The Fourierists and Owenites were community-makers. They set out to establish a network of experimental communities based on their ideas that would become the foundation stones of a new social order. The Saint-Simonians differed from these two groups in that they were strong believers in the virtues of large-scale organizations and scientific planning. Their principal aim was to transform nations into great productive corporations dominated by a sort of “technocracy” composed of scientists and technicians. Unlike the Fourierists and Owenites, who eschewed political activity, the Saint-Simonians were not opposed to using the existing political channels as a means to bring
- 5. 5 | P a g e about the transformations they were advocating. In this regard would asset that the most practical among the Utopian plan is the Saint-Simonians (Manuel, Frank E., and Fritzie P. Manuel, 1971). Proudhon The work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon holds a singular place among those of French thinkers who were interested in the reform of society during the first half of the nineteenth century. Pierre- Joseph Proudhon was born in Besançon in 1809 into a family of peasant and worker background. Having received a scholarship, he moved to Paris, where his first work, published in 1840, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? Gave him instant notoriety. One of its regularly used slogans attests to the dominance of this worry: “The political constitution is nothing, the economic constitution is everything.” Proudhon is mainly a critic to the previous utopia thinkers (Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen) he is considered as Liberal Socialist (Proudhon, 1982). Conclusively, why should anyone trouble with utopian literature or Utopia philosophy? In the 21st Century reading a utopia of another time and place one gains the critical perspective of the author toward his own actual society and learns of his (usually his but sometimes her) views as to how a different social arrangement at that time could have played out into a much different society. The very nature of utopias invites us, suggests for us, to question the very assumptions - and that is what they are - the assumptions of our own society. It even urges us to not accept that the social features of this world are as they are meant somehow to be or as they must be. The current social features - GATT, NAFTA, the Global Economy, Multi-national corporations wasting natural resources and ignoring fundamental human needs to further their own greed and power - are indeed as they happen now to be: but here is another way - a better way - that they could be, implicitly giving us an alternative of other or rather different types of society order.