a utility calculus, and until recently the prevailing theories of law and
jurisprudence were derived from utilitarianism. Only in the 1970s did political
theorists of a non-Marxist kind even begin to develop non-utilitarian general
political philosophies, so total was the hold of the Benthamite tradition over
Western intellectuals. Even then it is instructive to note that the new
approaches, by thinkers likeRawls,Nozickand Dworkin, were based on a
return to a tradition of political theory, mainly that of JohnLocke, which was
the original competitor to the thinkers from whom utilitarianism itself
derived, such asHobbesand DavidHume. In a secular society, and one
without the intellectual armoury of ‘scientific socialism’, which has to operate
with a minimum of coercion and in a more or less democratic manner, there is
really little alternative to an appeal to rational self-interest, which is what
utilitarianism amounts to.
Utopianism
Utopianism is an approach to social or political theory based upon the design
of a perfect society (a ‘utopia’, after the title of Sir Thomas More’s example of
the genre, from 1516, using an imaginary island of that name). Earlier writers
had, of course, had elements of utopianism in their work. The most obvious
are the political systems designed inPlato’sRepublicandThe Laws. The point
of difference though is that Plato, and most political theorists, either expect
that their systems could actually be put into operation, or admit that they are
second best precisely because of the impossibility of carrying out an ideal
design in reality. More’sUtopiaand subsequent works of utopian writing stress
the ideal as a measuring tool for reality, rather than as an empirical possibility.
Utopias, if intended as such, are really thought experiments, political theory’s
equivalent to the perfect frictionless bearing, or perhaps an economist’s perfect
competition model.
The idea that utopias are impossible, and that some recognized writings on
utopias may never have been intended as blueprints, is stressed because the
concept of utopianism has largely become derogatory.Marxwas one of the
earliest writers to use the concept as a criticism, when writing of some early
socialistblueprints. Marx thought that, by not taking sufficient note of the
brutal facts of material restrictions andclasswarfare, these socialist writers
were being purely utopian, operating in a fantasy land. Thomas More did not
believe that his island political paradise could ever exist; later Jean Jacques
Rousseauwas to stress in his writings, especially theSocial Contract,that hardly
any existing society could be transformed to his specifications. This is why,
indeed, the conditions of political life are so much more pleasant on the island
of Utopia than in, for example,Hobbes’Leviathan.The latter is, if anything,
the opposite of a utopia, a dystopia, a system designed to fit with the worst
Utopianism