If capitalism is not to lead us to our doom, there is no alternative to thinking about alternative social models.
Our economic system is not having problems, it is the problem. Capitalism endangers life on earth and threatens to destroy everything. Even if it does not come to the worst, the outlook is more than bleak. We need an alternative.
Pull from the future
If capitalism is not to lead us to our doom, there is no alternative to thinking about alternative social models.
Our economic system is not having problems, it is the problem. The symptoms of a fundamental disease are appearing at every turn, a disease rooted in capitalism itself and the paradigm associated with it. Capitalism endangers life on earth and threatens to destroy everything. Even if it does not come to the worst, the outlook is more than bleak. We need an alternative. The solution begins with thinking about what that might look like. We don’t have to start from scratch in our deliberations.
by Thiemo Kirmse
[This article posted on 6/22/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/sog-aus-der-zukunft-2.]
It is clear why people think about utopias. If what exists is recognized as bad, unjust, destructive, even as hostile to life or even threatening to existence, then the question of alternatives arises. Thinking about alternatives does not immediately lead to utopia, because devising utopian worlds goes one step further than just considering how things could be better. Considering what the best possible world could look like is the logical continuation of the question of alternatives to what exists. And especially when the entire system, with no hope of change or improvement, is identified as the underlying evil, the questions become more fundamental.
The aspiration is high, seems audacious and makes the approach appear presumptuous and unrealistic, so to speak. But it can’t be any less than that, because you don’t contemplate the second-best system below utopia. Utopia is a place of longing, a construct of thought and the attempt to describe the best possible world.
The history of the intellectual development of utopian worlds is long. Plato drafted the first comprehensive description of an ideal state with the “Politeia” about 2,400 years ago. In a fictitious conversation between his teacher Socrates and others, Plato describes an urban city-state that is led by the “philosopher rulers” and contains two further classes: the guards and warriors, and the farmers and craftsmen. The abolition of private property – in Plato’s case, this applies to the first two classes – becomes a constant that applies in one form or another to many subsequent utopian designs. It took some time before the next major utopian concept was presented.
It was the age of seafarers, of European discoveries and conquests when the English Lord Chancellor Thomas More published his “Utopia” in 1516, which, as a major work of utopian literature, gave the genre its name. In the centuries that followed, other works of utopian literature were written, such as “The City of the Sun” by the Italian friar and philosopher Tommaso Campanella and “Nova Atlantis” by Francis Bacon. During the period around the French Revolution, the early socialists conceived of ideal worlds that, unlike those of their predecessors, they hoped to realize within their own lifetimes. The transition to the dreams of socialism and communism in the 19th century was seamless.
Utopias are part of being human
Utopias have accompanied the history of human civilization. The larger and more complex the systems of human coexistence become and the more they bring with them inadequacies and upheavals, the more we reflect on what could be fundamentally different and better. With the beginning of the early modern period, the emergence of the great nation states and the advance of the capitalist economy, utopias increased.
The German philosopher Ernst Bloch, who also presents a history of utopia in his major work “The Principle of Hope”, assumes, just like Theodor W. Adorno, that the utopian intention is a deeply human characteristic that simply belongs to being human. This is also the fear of historian and former co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Joachim Fest, who views utopias critically and recognizes a “human conversation about a better, more peaceful existence that has not been interrupted for centuries.”
In his book “The Dream Destroyed – The End of the Utopian Era”, Fest argues that “there will always be individuals or groups who do not resign themselves to this and expand their criticism into a vision of a better order that promises justice and happiness” (1). He says that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of socialism, “the utopian longing (…) has not been silenced”. With a view to what became of the French Revolution and the totalitarian systems of the 20th century, Fest believes that it is better to live without dreams of an ideal world from now on.
It is true that utopian world blueprints resulted from a critique of the existing order and that they were and are never independent of the time of their origin. Plato’s ideal state still knew slavery, the utopia of the early socialist Louis-Sébastien Mercier still had a King Louis, and a contemporary utopia would probably not be able to do without the concepts of sustainability and resource conservation. The opposite idea is absurd. Plato’s theme was not the destruction of nature, and a utopia formulated today that integrates slavery is unimaginable, even with the greatest stretch of the imagination.
The fundamental categorization of utopias into those based on a state model and those organized anarchistically is not entirely independent of their temporal origin. It is obvious that Plato thought about an ideal city-state. It is equally understandable that the German political scientist and utopia researcher Richard Saage suspects that the authoritarian-statist line of utopian thought came to an end in 1989. But unlike Fest, who hoped for the “end of the utopian age” at the same time, Saage finds utopias useful, if not necessary.
The dream is over
The ideas of another world have been dispelled. By the beginning of the 20th century, the major left-wing currents and movements had already lost their power, and by the end of the Soviet Union at the latest – but actually much earlier – the dream of a different world was over. At the height of the labor movement in the second half of the 19th century, the ideas of a better and fairer world were virulent. They promised liberation from exploitation and oppression and painted a distant picture of a more humane society. The analysis of the existing capitalist conditions could be directly understood as accurate.
However, there was no concrete idea of the future world, of socialism and communism. What little was said about it was still very vague. The end of domination and the completely liberated society, in which everyone can live according to their needs and abilities and develop, was a hopeful and at the same time blurred image. The combination of a comprehensible analysis of the present and a very vague but promising future mobilized the masses, and the vagueness of the future world was certainly a great strength.
History has taught us otherwise. There was no determinism that would have brought capitalism to an end and socialism to the fore. The rule of the proletariat did not go as planned and the transition from socialism to communism remained a pipe dream.
Utopias have disappeared
Today we live in a world without utopias. There is no conception of another possible world, no shared visions and no imagined alternative to the capitalist system. If they exist, they are not widely known and play no role in thinking about alternatives. The ideas of socialism and communism have been discredited by the real existing systems of the 20th century and what still exists of existing state alternatives is almost anything but what one thinks of when speaking of a liberated society in which everyone can live according to their abilities and needs.
The free market economy in conjunction with parliamentary democracy is considered the best possible order, the crowning glory of civilization and “the end of history”. The devastation and injustices, the wars, the displacements, the hunger, the exploitation of humans and animals, the destruction of nature and the unequal distribution of money, resources and life chances from the global to the local level: all this is perceived and criticized. However, it never goes so far as to focus on the system itself and make it the subject of critical reflection.
Likewise, the great existential dangers for humanity are well known: the danger of nuclear war – brought home to us by the war in Ukraine; climate change, together with the destruction of the entire biosphere; and the erosion of our democracies, which are increasingly giving birth to authoritarian structures. The problems and dangers are on the political agenda, they are discussed and dealt with. However, there are no real solutions that promise sustainable success.
What is missing is a widely perceptible systemic critique that focuses on capitalism itself. The space for thoughts, discussions and opinions is very limited, not to say almost channeled.
Awareness of the systemic causes is an important prerequisite for thinking more fundamentally and considering systemic alternatives to capitalism. In doing so, one can end up with a utopia.
System alternatives are not a subject for discussion
The question of whether and why one should think about utopias is still pending at this point. So what is the use of utopias? Is it helpful to think about alternative, even about the best possible systems, or is there perhaps more of a danger in this and the harm outweighs the benefit? And anyway, aren’t they all unrealistic, and isn’t thinking about them an idle and theoretical exercise because the considerations are too far removed from the existing system and you can’t know what might happen in the meantime?
Discussions about alternative systems usually don’t last long: “Yes, you’re right, the distribution of wealth is unfair. That should be changed. But that’s typical, everyone at the top is getting rich. That’s just how people are. The destruction of the environment? Sure, that’s a big problem too. But it’s no use if only we do something about it and everyone else doesn’t. The opposite is happening all over the world right now, and do you want to deny others progress? Another system? How would that work? Limiting power? A system of councils? Producing differently? That’s unrealistic.”
It is true that utopias are often unrealistic. In the best case, they are thoroughly thought out, provide good ideas and impulses for a better world, and are consistent within themselves. Then they are at least realistic in the sense that they are conceivable and one can say that such a world would be theoretically possible if only one could get there. But that is precisely what is no longer conceivable, and it is above all what is meant when people speak of unrealistic – of utopian: “It all sounds good, but we’ll never get there. Utopia is one thing, a possible way to get there is something completely different.
Utopias are valuable
The value that a utopia can have, if it is more than just a vague image and more than just an unattainable non-place, can be understood in three closely related parts: Firstly, it provides a target image and thus an orientation as to where the path could lead. Without such a vision, the many utopian set pieces that already exist and are being lived in the present, and the individual thoughts of what a better, utopian world could look like, remain unclear and diffuse. They can hardly be pieced together in one’s mind, or only with great difficulty, and not by themselves into a different world. Without a goal, one gropes in the dark and makes only slow progress.
Secondly, such a fully formulated utopia can consolidate and spread the idea that another world is not just a pious hope and wish, but is really possible. Simply saying that another world is possible is not very convincing. Of course, you can gain this conviction for yourself if you look critically at the capitalist system long enough, share a basically positive view of humanity, and break things down to a simple level and ask yourself what it actually takes for a good life for everyone. That is not much and should be correspondingly easy to produce.
But there is still a big question mark over what another world beyond the market economy and parliamentary democracy could really look like. Even a brief utopia that becomes a little more concrete can provide an answer to this and be more convincing than a one-liner. Otherwise, we would remain stuck in the idea that politics and economics cannot be organized better than in the form of parliamentary democracy and the free market economy: “How else could they be?”
Thirdly, it is the power of ideas that speaks for a utopia. Although it is true, as Joachim Fest critically states, that ideas can also be bad or lead to something bad. With his question as to whether “failure” is not “an unavoidable consequence rooted in the essence of all ideal concepts of order”, he goes beyond this possibility. The power of ideas thus speaks both for and against the ideas themselves. There is agreement across political boundaries that ideas can develop power. Fest sums this up succinctly with the following example:
“In fact, the Marxist promise of salvation has led generations of followers to acts of devotion that are only known from the great religious foundations” (2).
Friedrich August von Hayek formulated the idea more impressively at the first conference of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Hayek later repeatedly presented the “Opening Paper” and it can be understood as the strategic concept of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Hayek refers, of all things, to his economic opponent John Maynard Keynes, whom he quotes at length:
”… the ideas of economists and philosophers have a stronger impact than is generally assumed, both when they are right and when they are wrong. In fact, the world is hardly governed by anything else. Madmen in power, listening to voices in the ether, get their fantasies from some academic scribbler from years before.
I am convinced that the power of real interests is greatly overestimated in comparison to the slow infiltration of ideas. Of course not immediately, but only after a certain time; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are few who are influenced by new theories after they have passed the age of 25 or 30, so that the ideas used by officials or politicians or even agitators are usually not the newest ones. But sooner or later it is ideas, not interests, that become dangerous for the good or evil” (3).
For Keynes, as for Hayek, the idea was central.
In summary, a fully formulated utopia can serve as a goal. It can also contribute to the conviction that an alternative to capitalism and parliamentary democracy is truly possible and ultimately, as an idea, it can develop the potential to become powerful, to move people and to achieve a great impact.
Power corrupts – anarchism remains
The ideas of socialism and communism were not really bad in many ways. But they have also been rightly criticized, although it is of course always easier to criticize in retrospect. Especially the transition from socialism to communism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” have proven to be a nasty trap. The causes of the failure were certainly manifold, and yet the question of power certainly plays a central role both in the transition from one system to another and in an alternative order in general.
The view that power corrupts is once again widespread across political divides. To look at this more positively with a view to an alternative order, the work of Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, who emphasizes the better qualities of human beings by saying that people are basically good beings who help each other selflessly. Simply because it is in their nature. This radical idea could unleash a revolution. He says that the briefest summary of his book would be that most people are pretty decent, but that power corrupts. With a view to future utopias and following Richard Saage’s assessment, the circle almost closes at this point: the anarchist line remains.
Is a market economy and parliamentary democracy a utopia?
Unlike in the socialist states, the capitalist order and the parliamentary democracies and nation states are far less the result of singular ideas than of a lengthy historical process that has produced precisely this order. However, this does not mean that this existing order is a law of nature. Like every social order, it is man-made and can therefore be changed by people.
The underlying ideas of the free market and parliamentary democracy do not sound so bad, and if they had been formulated in advance as pure ideas – even in the form of a utopian order – they might have been acceptable. Again, the existing system is much easier to assess, and in case of doubt, no one knows what will become of an idea that may sound good.
The idea of a free market economy in conjunction with a parliamentary-democratic order, together with fundamental democratic rights, can be convincingly outlined: the market regulates itself simply through supply and demand. Everyone can participate in this market as a seller and a buyer. Through competition, the best products prevail and the price is regulated. The market economy creates innovations, promises technological progress and ensures an increase in prosperity.
The political sphere is organized in an obvious way. In free elections, citizens can choose their representatives to represent their interests. Politicians are accountable to the people and can be voted out of office. The separation of powers is designed to ensure that too much power does not lead to abuse.
The fundamental democratic rights of freedom of expression, freedom of movement and freedom of assembly and the right of association, together with the media as a fourth power, form the basis for a functioning democracy. Add to that the rule of law and social security: Et voilà! Even the question of the distribution of power is taken into account in this consideration. At this point, a critique of capitalism could now follow, but it should be omitted. This can be used to fill bookshelves – and it already has.
The radical left in Germany is searching
Where do these considerations lead? The last thought is an objection to utopias, and yet it should not lead to more than saying that any idea that promises an alternative order should be viewed skeptically and with caution. The devil is sometimes in the detail, which you may not see and may not even be able to guess at. You don’t know where the journey will lead. So what do you do when utopia, on the other hand, promises so much and keeps pushing it out of people?
A few years ago, the radical left in Germany, recognizing its own ineffectiveness and powerlessness, began a search for new strategies. The central problems identified were a campaign-oriented policy and being trapped in one’s own sphere. As a result of this realization, local work and helping people to help themselves locally came to the fore.
The aim is to anchor a revolutionary practice not only in previously unreached sections of the population, but also to show, on the basis of concrete experiences, that resistance can be overcome. At the same time, it is about a critical examination of the capitalist system. What is not mentioned, however, are concrete ideas and visions of another world. It is not about setting out for a specific goal, namely a formulated or even only outlined alternative to capitalism.
On the contrary: Inspired, among other things, by the struggles of the liberation movements in Chiapas in Mexico or in Rojava in northern Syria, the motto “questioning we move forward” serves as a strategic guideline. Certainly, not only because of the palpable hand-wringing search for a better system, there is an openness to utopian approaches and ideas, but a fully formulated alternative is not very popular.
Presumably, and not without good reason, experiences with failed approaches in the past play an important role here.
In addition, there are enough admonishers who urgently warn against precisely this and who, in everything, tend to point to the path of gradual emancipation as the more viable one. Noam Chomsky and Rainer Mausfeld say in unison that one should beware of following anyone who claims to know what another society would look like and how to get there.
Is this a general dislike of utopias or is it also the danger seen in the experiences of the past? The “questioning progression” has its justification and is understandable as a path. On the other hand, this pace seems much too slow in the face of the acute and imminent “dangers of destruction” and it also provides no guarantee of arriving at a desirable place.
Bringing the ends together – combining theory and practice
“Questioning progress” is the emancipatory practice. The practice that points the way to a better world and an alternative to capitalism also includes the many small utopian islands and highlights that are already pointing the way to tomorrow. Anarchist communities, collective businesses, local circular economies, organic farming, a vegan diet, renewable energies, repair cafés, housing cooperatives, exchange circles or ideas such as a basic income could be part of a different world. Testing them in practice shows what is possible, what adjustments might need to be made or whether the whole idea proves unworkable in practice.
Compared to emancipatory practice, utopias and sketches of another world or even thoughts about how to get there are an approximation from the other side. These are ideas and theoretical considerations that can be combined with practical efforts.
There is every reason to keep the theory just as flexible as the practice and to make mutual adjustments in the process of approximation.
Utopian ideas of a possible different world are of great value in making it clear that a different world is indeed possible. They can tie up the loose ends in practice into a larger whole and orient them towards a goal that has the potential to inspire people and actively take them along this path.
Just like utopia itself, the theoretical examination of the path to another world requires increased attention so that we do not stumble again and fall deeply at this point. In any case, the path is directly related to emancipatory practice, because the path always begins in the here and now. Theory and practice belong together here as well. They do not contradict each other, but can enrich each other.
Let’s talk about alternatives!
What is missing is an alternative to capitalism and also to parliamentary democracy, or, to put it in a nutshell, an alternative system. Above all, what is initially missing is a discussion about such alternatives. This would then also include a discussion about ways into this or that other world and about what is already available, what is good about it or what could be done better.
It seems a good idea to focus directly on autonomous structures. Just as the established party system and parliamentary democracy are not the appropriate vehicle for overcoming the system, so little suitable is everything that can be summarized in the broadest sense under the concept of bourgeois media when thinking about the space for a discussion about alternatives to capitalism.
What is missing is a systematic and ongoing discussion of how we can break away from the capitalist system and where we could move instead. And to be even clearer: this is not an independent discussion, but it is a different discussion from the discussion critical of capitalism. The latter has been conducted long and extensively, even if it is not anchored in the general consciousness and has not yet been able to emerge from its niche existence. It can and must be continued, and it must reach larger circles, but it does not in any way replace the exchange of systemic alternatives.
We don’t have to start from scratch. Instead, we can build on the many reflections and ideas that already exist. We can look at history and at practice. What a better world and an alternative to capitalism and also to parliamentary democracy might look like can be deduced from an analysis of the existing. At least it shows how it cannot work.
The question that arises is how such a discussion can be initiated and how it can be made possible for it to draw larger social circles and not just, if at all, be conducted in a niche – whether in an ivory tower or clandestinely in the back room of a smoky corner bar. What doesn’t make it any easier is that if you want to have this discussion on a larger scale – with everyone, in fact – then the fog surrounding the disorder of the system would have to be lifted, so to speak, and capitalism would have to be moved to the center of criticism. However, the latter should not be dwelled on for too long, so that the discussion about alternatives can finally begin.
Yes, another world is possible. But that alone is not enough. The awareness that this is the case is the first step on a long journey, alongside trying out and pursuing the many small initiatives in practice. And this awareness can mature all the more the more intensively we engage with it – including on the theoretical side. Then maybe we will broaden and shift our thinking and conversations about systemic alternatives will no longer end so quickly, but will lead further and become constructive.
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Sources and notes:
(1) Joachim Fest: Der zerstörte Traum: Vom Ende des utopischen Zeitalters, Siedler Verlag, 1991, p. 93.
(2) Ibid., page 11.
(3) Jürgen Nordmann: Machtelite als Gelehrten-Sekte. In: Björn Wendt, Marcus B. Klöckner, Sascha Pommrenke, Michael Walter (Hrsg.): Wie Eliten Macht organisieren, VSA Verlag, 2016, S. 135.
Thiemo Kirmse, born in 1976, first completed a commercial apprenticeship before studying mathematics and computer science in Bielefeld and Münster. Since then, he has been working as a software developer. In the context of the financial crisis, he became politically involved with Attac and Occupy. His criticism of capitalism has led him to the question of what an alternative system might look like. Further information can be found at utopia22.de.