Utopias

1 July 2011Feature

Peace News last visited the Slovenian long-lived social centre, Metelkova, in 1995. Michael Pooler stopped by when the PEDAL: 100 Days to Palestine cycle ride to Palestine passed through last month.

Almost twenty years ago a group of artists and political activists squatted a disused army barracks in Slovenia, a republic in the former Yugoslavia, in an act of defiance against local authorities. The site has been transformed into the Metelkova Autonomous Space, a hub of cultural creativity and positive resistance.

After the 10-day war in 1991 which followed Slovenia’s declaration of independence, the Yugoslav army withdrew from the nascent state – leaving behind the Metelkova…

3 March 2002Comment

It would be very easy to argue that the true “axis of evil” is actually rather short, and stretches from the White House across the river Potomac and down to the Pentagon. But perhaps we would begin to sound like “America bashers”.

The problem is, as many have noted, that in this reality there is one dominant force (in a hegemony that also includes Britain, most of the European Union and some of south Asia) and that is the United States.

Total war

The “war on terror”, or…

1 March 2002Feature

Will education be the tool that helps us develop utopias, or will it remain our prison? Caroline Austin talked with "educational heretic" Roland Meighan.

Roland Meighan is an acknowledged “educational heretic” for his view that mass compulsory schooling is an obsolete and counter-productive learning system which should be scrapped as soon as possible. His latest book, Natural Learning and the Natural Curriculum challenges the very essence of the education system today. It is a devastating critique-and rightly so.

 

Caroline Austin: In your latest book, Natural Learning, you quote Mark Twain, who “never allowed…

1 March 2002Feature

Is your utopia a technology-driven super-society or a simple land-based existence, or a combination of the two? Chris Hables Gray argues that we must all choose which technologies we want, so long as our choices don't compromise our freedoms, our communities, or the living nature that we are part of and that sustains us all.

Technology has only become important to utopian proposals recently, but they have always depended on instrumentalist and rationalistic thinking. Plato's Republic, Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun, and Thomas Moore's Utopia were all based on regimenting and bureaucratic ways of managing people.

We have to notice how these early utopias are incredibly authoritarian and, to our eyes, are really dystopias. Consciously created dystopias based on technologies…

1 March 2002Feature

Ecotopias may appear as relatively modern visions, but their origins lie in the ideas and thinking of historic movements. David Pepper examines the journey to modern ecotopias.

Most radical thought and action about the environment could be described as “utopian”, since it envisages a radically different society with strongly sustainable development where the integrity of “natural” ecosystems is maintained.

Utopianism, popularly associated with a literary genre, is also a “state of mind” found in the constitutions, outlines or blueprints of any ideal republic. It always reflects existing social conflicts, and rejects existing society. The utopias of 1960s…

1 March 2002Feature

In this interview, which was published in Gandhi's weekly paper Harijan on 28 July 1946, Gandhi spells out his vision of the ideal community and its relationship to the individual

Harijan: You have said in your article in the Harijan of 15 July, under the caption “The Real Danger”, that Congressmen in general certainly do not know the kind of independence they want. Would you kindly give them a broad but comprehensive picture of the Independent India of your own conception? Gandhi: I do not know that I have not, from time to time, given my idea of Indian independence. Since, however, this question is part of a series, it is better to answer it even…

1 March 2002Feature

Gareth Evans explores the intersection of culture and utopian visions, offering examples and interpretations along the way. Come, see real flowers of this painful world- Basho

Oscar Wilde famously observed that he couldn't look at a map without it present among the nations, while Sir Thomas More invented the word with his 1516 treatise on the ideal society, compounding Greek words to mean not a place, literally nowhere.

The small matter of geographical non-existence didn't stop More however. In fact it was a prerequisite in his picturing of the perfect island community. And ever since that first named outing, utopia has spread across the world and beyond,…

1 March 2002Feature

The production of nuclear weapons has created plutonium and other radioactive wastes. In any future utopia these will have to be dealt with. Rachel Western argues that finding ways to cope with this legacy, with the care and respect that is needed, could be part of creating a utopia.

During the Second World War, nuclear weapons were developed and used. Obviously they have no part in a utopia, but although these weapons can be taken apart, the materials used to make them will be left behind.

There are high-tech schemes to “zap” away these wastes, but they are enormously expensive and don't actually do the job. In addition, the huge volumes of radioactive wastes left from the manufacture of the weapons will present a threat of cancer for hundreds of thousands of…

1 March 2002Feature

The first Jewish co-operative agricultural settlement was established in Palestine in 1909. The founders of what was to become the kibbutz movement believed they were laying the basis for a new society for the Jews, one based on cooperation, equality and communal living. One of the ideologues of the movement was the philosopher Martin Buber. In his book Paths in Utopia, which remains one of the most powerful critiques of authoritarian socialism, he claimed that this movement was one example of a non-authoritarian, libertarian or "utopian" socialism that had not failed. Uri Davis challenges this understanding of the kibbutz movement and draws parallels with the failure of Buber himself to live by the ethic he endorsed.

It is important to note at the outset that my own intellectual and moral development was profoundly influenced by Martin Buber's writings. Buber's article “What is to be done” in Pointing the Way represents a milestone in the process of my ideological radicalisation. (Uri Davis, Crossing the border)

This, then, is a personal account of a critical Buber disciple. Buber did not live to witness the 1967 war and the cruelty and the violence of the Israeli occupation of…

1 March 2002Review

Frank Cass 2001. ISBN 0 7146 8169 5 (paper), 0 7146 5153 2 (cloth), 257pp

This useful book contains thirteen essays and an introduction by the editor, from contributors to the international conference Millennium of Utopias, held at The University of East Anglia, Britain, in 1999.

As such, it ranges from academic but accessible overviews, from people evidently long-engaged with the field, plus snap-shots of two existent utopian-living experiments (at Findhorn, Scotland, and Twin Oaks, Virginia, USA).

The persistence of the word utopia indicates the…

1 March 2002Review

Frank Cass, 2000. ISBN 0 7146 8157 1, 173pp

Gerrard Winstanley famously once wrote that “words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing”.

He was that unusual individual, a utopian thinker who not only committed his vision of a better world to print, but acted to turn his vision into a reality. That he failed, and the patch of land upon which the Diggers first established their commune is now one of the most exclusive private estates in England, is…

1 March 2002Feature

This short workshop is intended to provide an opportunity to investigate our own utopias: "don't dream about your life, live your dreams".

There are many utopias and some people have written their ideas down and they have become quite well-known, such as Owen, Marx, Bakunin and "p m" (author of Bolo bolo). But everyone has a view of their own utopia and while some of our ideas are similar, in other things we differ. Often we know nothing at all about our dreams and our political…

1 June 2001Review

E & FN Spon, 2000, published in Canada and US by Routledge. ISBN 0 419 24670 3, 305pp.

More than twenty years ago Dennis Hardy wrote a great book on alternative communities in 19th century England which is now out of print. He has now written a “sequel”, a history of community experiments in England during the first half of the 20th century.

This new book bears some of the stylistic hallmarks of the earlier one: it is written with deep sympathy for the pioneers and their projects. The text is complemented by a host of photographs and other illustrations that help bring…