Mike Marqusee (1953-2015) was an American-born writer, journalist and political activist who spent the last four and half decades of his life in London. He is the author of numerous books including The Price of Experience: Writings on Living with Cancer, If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew, Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the Sixties, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock's Labour Party, War Minus the Shooting: A Journey Through South Asia During Cricket's World Cup, Anyone but England: An Outsider Looks at English Cricket, a novel, Slow Turn, and two collections of poetry, Street Music and Saved by a Wandering Mind.

Time to talk utopia

In 1818, Shelley visited his friend Byron in Venice, where his Lordship was camped out in a decaying palazzo, ruminating on the city’s faded glories. Their conversations - on human freedom and the prospects for social change - formed the basis for Shelley's poem Julian and Maddalo, in which the mild-mannered English rationalist Julian (Shelley) puts the case for hope while the brooding Italian aristocrat Maddalo (Byron) argues for despair. 'We might be otherwise,' Julian insists, 'we might be all / we dream of: happy, high, majestical' were it not for our own 'enchained' wills. To which Maddalo replies bitterly: 'You talk utopia!'

That snap dismissal echoes down to our own day. We've been taught to fear utopian thinking, which is denounced as not only impractical but positively dangerous: the province of fanatics. In ignoring the lessons of history and the realities of human nature, utopian idealism results, inevitably we are told, in dystopian outcomes. It's a modern version of the myth of Pandora's box: a warning against being too enquiring, too ambitious.

Fear of utopia, a mighty weapon in the arsenal of the ruling powers, has a long pedigree. Since Burke, at least, conservatives have warned that tampering with established institutions, encouraging people to expect too much, leads to disaster. The 'failure' of every social experiment, from the French revolution onward, is seized on as evidence of the perils of utopian thinking. Anti-utopianism was a staple of Cold War liberalism and was resuscitated as the ‘end of history’ thesis following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Increasingly we have been told that a utopian denial of realities lurks in even the most modest demands for regulation and redistribution. When it comes to the apparent dearth of alternatives, I'd argue that social democracy's long retreat into the arms of neo-liberalism is as great a factor as the demise of the Communist bloc.

Mike Marqusee (1953-2015) was an American-born writer, journalist and political activist who spent the last four and half decades of his life in London. He is the author of numerous books including The Price of Experience: Writings on Living with Cancer, If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew, Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the Sixties, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock's Labour Party, War Minus the Shooting: A Journey Through South Asia During Cricket's World Cup, Anyone but England: An Outsider Looks at English Cricket, a novel, Slow Turn, and two collections of poetry, Street Music and Saved by a Wandering Mind.

Time to talk utopia

In 1818, Shelley visited his friend Byron in Venice, where his Lordship was camped out in a decaying palazzo, ruminating on the city’s faded glories. Their conversations - on human freedom and the prospects for social change - formed the basis for Shelley's poem Julian and Maddalo, in which the mild-mannered English rationalist Julian (Shelley) puts the case for hope while the brooding Italian aristocrat Maddalo (Byron) argues for despair. 'We might be otherwise,' Julian insists, 'we might be all / we dream of: happy, high, majestical' were it not for our own 'enchained' wills. To which Maddalo replies bitterly: 'You talk utopia!'

That snap dismissal echoes down to our own day. We've been taught to fear utopian thinking, which is denounced as not only impractical but positively dangerous: the province of fanatics. In ignoring the lessons of history and the realities of human nature, utopian idealism results, inevitably we are told, in dystopian outcomes. It's a modern version of the myth of Pandora's box: a warning against being too enquiring, too ambitious.

Fear of utopia, a mighty weapon in the arsenal of the ruling powers, has a long pedigree. Since Burke, at least, conservatives have warned that tampering with established institutions, encouraging people to expect too much, leads to disaster. The 'failure' of every social experiment, from the French revolution onward, is seized on as evidence of the perils of utopian thinking. Anti-utopianism was a staple of Cold War liberalism and was resuscitated as the ‘end of history’ thesis following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Increasingly we have been told that a utopian denial of realities lurks in even the most modest demands for regulation and redistribution. When it comes to the apparent dearth of alternatives, I'd argue that social democracy's long retreat into the arms of neo-liberalism is as great a factor as the demise of the Communist bloc.