Summary
Socialism is certainly a broad church, but underlying its numerous forms is a concern
with cooperation and equality, a belief that human nature can change and that
freedom requires an adequate provision of resources. Socialism is peculiarly prone
to the problem of utopianism because it seeks to establish a society that differs from
the world of the present.
The work of Saint Simon, Fourier and Robert Owen demonstrates that socialists
who were labelled ‘utopian’ by their Marxist critics, did not regard themselves in
this light. Marxism is a variant of socialism that leads to authoritarianism insofar
as it emphasises an unconditional inevitability, has a particular notion of revolution
and is apparently disdainful of moral judgement. Social democracy or democratic
socialism rejects utopianism but runs the risk of a dogmatic adherence to a doctrine
of realism that can be at variance with the facts.
Marxism can only be rescued from the problem of authoritarianism if it rejects
the notion of revolution as a single political event, and adopts a broader view of
class and a conditional notion of inevitability. The problem of Utopia in socialism
needs to be meaningfully addressed by constructing socialism as a utopian realism
so that neither half of this construct is stressed at the expense of the other.Questions
- Are Marxist organisations necessarily authoritarian?
- Can the notion of revolution play a part within a democratic socialism?
- Is socialism inevitable?
- Is parliament a barrier to, or a precondition for, a viable socialism?
- Is socialism necessarily utopian?
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