Utopianism in a Dystopian World: Whither America?
The Utopian Impulse in American History.
The Golden Age of Utopianism, 1820’s to 1850’s.
In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: Part I.
Burton Weltman
“Keep hope alive!”
Jesse Jackson
Historical Cycles: Utopian//Dystopian.
There has been a pattern in American history of utopianism alternating with dystopianism as a dominant motif in American thinking. Depressing times breeds depressed thinking. But depressed thinking has heretofore been followed by optimistic thinking. Utopian ideas have, in turn, generated progressive reforms, so that despite the ups and downs of American history, the overall trend has been up. Three steps forward, one or two steps back but, overall, an upward movement. It is important, therefore, that in the midst today of what most people seem to be experiencing as a dystopian period that we generate utopian ideas as a counterpoint. We have done it before. We should do it again.
Utopianism in a Dystopian World: Whither America?
Setting the scene: Cultural and political divisions among states, bordering on civil war. Lingering bitterness by the losing candidate in the last presidential election, claiming that his loss was corruptly engineered and that he had really won the election. Becoming a candidate for the next election, he has been demagogically cultivating racism, sexism, and sectional hostilities and promoting authoritarianism. Intense differences among people over the role of the federal government in the economy and especially in regulating the supply of money and interest rates. Widespread vicious antagonism toward poverty-stricken immigrants. Economic hardship among small farmers and businesses, the middle classes being squeezed by inflation. All in all, a dystopian scene with seemingly no hope on the horizon.
Sound familiar? Sound like the 2020’s? With Donald Trump as the desperate, disgruntled, demagogic presidential candidate? With the Federal Reserve, abortion, Latin American immigrants, gay rights, public versus private schools, and other antagonistic elements filling out the scene? Yes. But it is also the 1820’s. With Andrew Jackson in the role of Donald Trump. And with demagogic ranting against the National Bank, anti-slavery activists, Native Americans, divorce, Irish immigrants, schools, and other controversial issues. A dystopian scene very much like ours looks today.
Yet, in the midst of the mess of the 1820’s, hope sprang eternal in the form of utopianism. The second quarter of the nineteenth century was, in fact, a high point of the utopian visions that had energized reform in the country since its beginnings and that have continued ever since to inform Americans’ feeling and thinking about society, even if we don’t always realize it. The purpose of this essay is to assay utopian thinking in American history with a focus on the 1820’s as a prime example for us today. In the period of the early nineteenth century, Americans had to make a choice between competing visions of utopia. They did so. Perhaps not wisely. But maybe we can learn from them. For we face similar choices today. If only we can recognize the options and wisely choose.
Making Room for Utopia: Choosing to look at History as Chance, Causation or Choice.
It is a commonplace that how you look at the past largely determines how you look at the present and anticipate the future. There are three main ways that most people look at history, seeing it as either a matter of chance, causation or choice. It makes a difference which way you choose.
To do or not to do, that is the main question that your view of history answers. Given that the present isn’t what you would like it to be and the future looks bleak, what, if anything, can and should you do. If you look at history as a matter of chance, then there is nothing you could have done to make a difference in the past or present, and likely little that you could do to change the future. You are almost forced to take a passive and cynical attitude toward any attempts to make things better. What will be, will be, and that’s that. Likewise, if you look at history as a matter of causation, of one thing leading inevitably to the next, then a passive and pessimistic view of the world is almost inevitable. Again, what will be, will be, and that is that.
Conventional histories almost invariably portray history as causation. They describe one event after another in a post-facto stream of events that in retrospect can look inevitable. And since most social and economic realities are better today than they were in the past, history becomes a celebration of the past, no matter how bad things were then. The conventional narrative about America in the 1820’s takes this form. The disgruntled demagogue, Andrew Jackson, who lost the election of 1824 to the distinguished diplomat John Quincy Adams, the son of one of the most important Founders and a Founder himself, beat Adams in 1828. Conventional histories have almost invariably portrayed this as a victory for democracy.
But that is a conclusion that does not take into consideration the options people had and the consequences of Jackson’s election. Jackson’s bid for the Presidency had previously been dismissed by Thomas Jefferson and most of the remaining Founders. “He is one of the most unfit men I know for such a place,” Jefferson claimed, “he has very little respect for the law… his passions are terrible… he is a dangerous man.” Sound familiar today?
In Jackson’s case, the consequences of his election included renewed support for slavery, renewed brutality toward Native Americans, the development of the spoils system of government jobs (to the victors go the spoils), and the destruction of the national banking system which resulted in the worst economic depression of that era. The consequences of Trump’s election would likely be even worse, reaching truly dystopian proportions. We can only hope that history does not repeat itself in the forthcoming election. And there always is hope.
The past may be prologue, but it can also be the beginning of many different things. If you look at history as a matter of people making choices – confronting options, evaluating possibilities, and then making choices – you can view the present and the future as realms of opportunity to make your lives better and your world a better place. Given that America is a self-proclaimed land of opportunity, that should be the American way of looking at history: optimism to the point of utopianism.
Varieties of Utopianism: What’s in a word?
Webster’s Dictionary defines the word utopianism as the attempt to create a perfect society in which everyone would live happily together in peace and harmony.[1] The word “utopia” is from an ancient Greek word meaning nowhere. First used in 1516 by Thomas More as the name of the ideal society described in his book Utopia, it has become for most people in recent years a synonym for silliness. It is a word that is widely used to disparage something as fanciful, unrealistic and unserious. But that is not what More intended. As has happened with many words, the meaning of “utopia” intended by its originators has been warped by opponents of the idea represented by the word, so that it has come to mean almost the opposite of what was originally intended.
More intended his utopia to function as both a criticism of the injustices and inefficiencies of the existing society in England and as an example of the sort of changes that could make it better. More was a devout Roman Catholic who later died rather than violate the tenets of his religion. Exemplifying the fact that people’s ideals invariably reflect the limits of their existing society, More described an ideal society that resembled a monastery, the ideal way of life for a Catholic. It was not an unrealistic ideal for his time and place, albeit not for everyone. He did not expect all of England to become a monastery, but rather hoped the English would accept aspects of his utopia as ways of perfecting English society, albeit perfection was never likely to be achieved.
Utopian proposals can take different forms, depending on the society from which they emanate and whether they are intended as outlines, blue prints, experiments, examples, or otherwise. As an outline, a utopian proposal can be merely a list of perfections that could be considered. As a blueprint, it can be a nuts-and-bolts complete construction manual for making an ideal society. As an experiment, it can be an actual community that tries out ideas of perfection to see if they will work. As an example, it can be a full-blown community that is intended as the first among an expected proliferation and combination of ideal communities.
To most utopians, the word utopia is taken to mean nowhere yet. To some, the idea has been to actually construct a perfect society. To others, it has been to construct an example of a perfect society as a working model for others to emulate. To still others, constituting the majority of those who could be called utopians, the goal has been to develop an intellectual and ideological model of a perfect society and to promote the model as a goal and a benchmark of progress toward that goal. American history has been full of utopian proposals of all sorts. While many of these proposals have been eminently unrealistic, many have been quite pragmatic. In fact, the United States was founded on utopian proposals, a fact which is not generally acknowledged.
Conventional Narratives of Utopianism in American History.
Very few conventional treatments of American history do justice to the long history of utopian ideas and ideologies in America, and almost all ignore utopianism as an ongoing theme in American history. There may be some mention of Robert Owen’s New Harmony, a socialist community founded in Indiana in 1825, and Brook Farm, a cooperative commune in Massachusetts during the 1840’s, and both are usually portrayed as failed examples of a foolish utopianism.[2]
Conventional narratives give no indication that a country of cooperative communities seemed a realistic option that was seriously considered by Americans during much of our history. Or that the other options that Americans have had during our history – including mercantilism, free enterprise capitalism, and socialism – were also utopian in their origins, outlook and expectations, including those that became reality.
It is a historical fact that free enterprise capitalism developed during the nineteenth century as the predominant social and economic system in America. It is not generally acknowledged, however, that free enterprise capitalism, which is generally portrayed as a down-to-earth economic ideology and just the opposite of the wishful thinking of utopians, began as a utopian proposal. Generally equated by historians with Americanism as the best of all possible systems, free enterprise capitalism is portrayed as inevitable, as though there were no other plausible alternatives. But that is neither the way it looked to most people in the past, nor the way it really was.[3]
This conventional treatment of utopianism is an example of the way conventional narratives often overlook alternatives that may look unconventional to us today but that were seriously considered and were in the mainstream of discussion in the past. It also exemplifies the way in which conventional narratives generally portray the winning argument in a historical debate as the obvious choice and the only practical option among impractical alternatives. This portrayal ignores the arguments of the opponents of the winning option, the flaws and impracticalities that they found in it, and the possibility that an alternative option might have been better, both for people of that time and for us today.
That an historical option looked utopian does not necessarily make it a mistake. It is often the case that yesterday’s so-called foolish utopianism becomes today’s conventional wisdom. For many Americans, utopias of one sort or another have seemed realistic options.[4] In dismissing, for example, mercantilist republicanism and socialist communitarianism as unrealistic options for nineteenth century America, and missing the ways in which free enterprise capitalism was itself a utopian proposal, conventional narratives miss an important point about American society both then and now.[5]
Cycles of Utopian and Dystopian Thinking.
American history can, in fact, be seen as a cycle of utopian and dystopian movements, spiraling upward and down, albeit with an overall upward spiral of social betterment. Three steps forward, one or two steps back. Never reaching perfection, but with clearly demonstrative progress over the years. These cycles include the Puritans of the 1600’s, the American revolutionaries of the late 1700’s, the democrats of the 1820’s to 1850’s, the Populists and Progressives in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and the Great Society and countercultural movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Each of these movements came out of a dystopian period of social distress that seemed never ending.
The Puritans came out of the religious, economic, demographic and political crises in England during the early 1600’s. The American revolutionaries were driven by a combination of imperial conflict with England and civil conflict within the colonies. Class and sectional conflicts motivated the democrats of the mid-1800’s. Gilded Age corruption, poverty and violence spurred a host of utopian ideas and movements in the late 1800’s, which in turn spurred the Populist and Progressive reform movements of the early twentieth century, and which essentially mark the beginnings of modern American society.
The dystopian mid-twentieth century, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the anti-Communist hysteria, produced a strong utopian reaction of hippies and flower children, with communes everywhere. But it also spurred major legislative, social and cultural reforms toward ending racial discrimination, poverty, sexism and other social ills.
Each of the utopian movements in American history was motivated by hopes and dreams of a perfect society. Each failed in that aim but succeeded, nonetheless, in pushing progressive reform forward. But in each case, another dystopian period descended upon the country and things went from bad to worse until the next burst of utopian fervor.
I am writing this in late September, 2024. We have lived in recent years through a great plague, a great increase in global warming, a great economic recession, a great inflation, a great immigration of displaced persons, a great increase in gun violence, and a great increase of international war, among other disasters. Most people seem to see and feel this as a dystopian period of history. And we are facing an election like that in 1828 in which a disruptive and dystopian candidate is denouncing the pragmatic optimism of his opponent. We can only hope that this is a turning point and that the politics of hope, the utopianism that has underlain our history, will reemerge and result in our being rescued from our current predicament.
BW 9/24
[1] Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. (Chicago: G.&C. Merriam & Co., 1971), 978.
[2] Joyce Appleby et al. The American Republic to 1877. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 377-378, 412-413.
[3] Joyce Appleby et al. The American Republic to 1877. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 308.
[4] William Goetzmann. Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), xiv.
[5] See “utopian societies.” American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011.
Utopianism in a Dystopian World: Whither America?
The Utopian Impulse in American History.
The Golden Age of Utopianism, 1820’s to 1850’s.
In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: Part I.
Burton Weltman
“Keep hope alive!”
Jesse Jackson
Historical Cycles: Utopian//Dystopian.
There has been a pattern in American history of utopianism alternating with dystopianism as a dominant motif in American thinking. Depressing times breeds depressed thinking. But depressed thinking has heretofore been followed by optimistic thinking. Utopian ideas have, in turn, generated progressive reforms, so that despite the ups and downs of American history, the overall trend has been up. Three steps forward, one or two steps back but, overall, an upward movement. It is important, therefore, that in the midst today of what most people seem to be experiencing as a dystopian period that we generate utopian ideas as a counterpoint. We have done it before. We should do it again.
Utopianism in a Dystopian World: Whither America?
Setting the scene: Cultural and political divisions among states, bordering on civil war. Lingering bitterness by the losing candidate in the last presidential election, claiming that his loss was corruptly engineered and that he had really won the election. Becoming a candidate for the next election, he has been demagogically cultivating racism, sexism, and sectional hostilities and promoting authoritarianism. Intense differences among people over the role of the federal government in the economy and especially in regulating the supply of money and interest rates. Widespread vicious antagonism toward poverty-stricken immigrants. Economic hardship among small farmers and businesses, the middle classes being squeezed by inflation. All in all, a dystopian scene with seemingly no hope on the horizon.
Sound familiar? Sound like the 2020’s? With Donald Trump as the desperate, disgruntled, demagogic presidential candidate? With the Federal Reserve, abortion, Latin American immigrants, gay rights, public versus private schools, and other antagonistic elements filling out the scene? Yes. But it is also the 1820’s. With Andrew Jackson in the role of Donald Trump. And with demagogic ranting against the National Bank, anti-slavery activists, Native Americans, divorce, Irish immigrants, schools, and other controversial issues. A dystopian scene very much like ours looks today.
Yet, in the midst of the mess of the 1820’s, hope sprang eternal in the form of utopianism. The second quarter of the nineteenth century was, in fact, a high point of the utopian visions that had energized reform in the country since its beginnings and that have continued ever since to inform Americans’ feeling and thinking about society, even if we don’t always realize it. The purpose of this essay is to assay utopian thinking in American history with a focus on the 1820’s as a prime example for us today. In the period of the early nineteenth century, Americans had to make a choice between competing visions of utopia. They did so. Perhaps not wisely. But maybe we can learn from them. For we face similar choices today. If only we can recognize the options and wisely choose.
Making Room for Utopia: Choosing to look at History as Chance, Causation or Choice.
It is a commonplace that how you look at the past largely determines how you look at the present and anticipate the future. There are three main ways that most people look at history, seeing it as either a matter of chance, causation or choice. It makes a difference which way you choose.
To do or not to do, that is the main question that your view of history answers. Given that the present isn’t what you would like it to be and the future looks bleak, what, if anything, can and should you do. If you look at history as a matter of chance, then there is nothing you could have done to make a difference in the past or present, and likely little that you could do to change the future. You are almost forced to take a passive and cynical attitude toward any attempts to make things better. What will be, will be, and that’s that. Likewise, if you look at history as a matter of causation, of one thing leading inevitably to the next, then a passive and pessimistic view of the world is almost inevitable. Again, what will be, will be, and that is that.
Conventional histories almost invariably portray history as causation. They describe one event after another in a post-facto stream of events that in retrospect can look inevitable. And since most social and economic realities are better today than they were in the past, history becomes a celebration of the past, no matter how bad things were then. The conventional narrative about America in the 1820’s takes this form. The disgruntled demagogue, Andrew Jackson, who lost the election of 1824 to the distinguished diplomat John Quincy Adams, the son of one of the most important Founders and a Founder himself, beat Adams in 1828. Conventional histories have almost invariably portrayed this as a victory for democracy.
But that is a conclusion that does not take into consideration the options people had and the consequences of Jackson’s election. Jackson’s bid for the Presidency had previously been dismissed by Thomas Jefferson and most of the remaining Founders. “He is one of the most unfit men I know for such a place,” Jefferson claimed, “he has very little respect for the law… his passions are terrible… he is a dangerous man.” Sound familiar today?
In Jackson’s case, the consequences of his election included renewed support for slavery, renewed brutality toward Native Americans, the development of the spoils system of government jobs (to the victors go the spoils), and the destruction of the national banking system which resulted in the worst economic depression of that era. The consequences of Trump’s election would likely be even worse, reaching truly dystopian proportions. We can only hope that history does not repeat itself in the forthcoming election. And there always is hope.
The past may be prologue, but it can also be the beginning of many different things. If you look at history as a matter of people making choices – confronting options, evaluating possibilities, and then making choices – you can view the present and the future as realms of opportunity to make your lives better and your world a better place. Given that America is a self-proclaimed land of opportunity, that should be the American way of looking at history: optimism to the point of utopianism.
Varieties of Utopianism: What’s in a word?
Webster’s Dictionary defines the word utopianism as the attempt to create a perfect society in which everyone would live happily together in peace and harmony.[1] The word “utopia” is from an ancient Greek word meaning nowhere. First used in 1516 by Thomas More as the name of the ideal society described in his book Utopia, it has become for most people in recent years a synonym for silliness. It is a word that is widely used to disparage something as fanciful, unrealistic and unserious. But that is not what More intended. As has happened with many words, the meaning of “utopia” intended by its originators has been warped by opponents of the idea represented by the word, so that it has come to mean almost the opposite of what was originally intended.
More intended his utopia to function as both a criticism of the injustices and inefficiencies of the existing society in England and as an example of the sort of changes that could make it better. More was a devout Roman Catholic who later died rather than violate the tenets of his religion. Exemplifying the fact that people’s ideals invariably reflect the limits of their existing society, More described an ideal society that resembled a monastery, the ideal way of life for a Catholic. It was not an unrealistic ideal for his time and place, albeit not for everyone. He did not expect all of England to become a monastery, but rather hoped the English would accept aspects of his utopia as ways of perfecting English society, albeit perfection was never likely to be achieved.
Utopian proposals can take different forms, depending on the society from which they emanate and whether they are intended as outlines, blue prints, experiments, examples, or otherwise. As an outline, a utopian proposal can be merely a list of perfections that could be considered. As a blueprint, it can be a nuts-and-bolts complete construction manual for making an ideal society. As an experiment, it can be an actual community that tries out ideas of perfection to see if they will work. As an example, it can be a full-blown community that is intended as the first among an expected proliferation and combination of ideal communities.
To most utopians, the word utopia is taken to mean nowhere yet. To some, the idea has been to actually construct a perfect society. To others, it has been to construct an example of a perfect society as a working model for others to emulate. To still others, constituting the majority of those who could be called utopians, the goal has been to develop an intellectual and ideological model of a perfect society and to promote the model as a goal and a benchmark of progress toward that goal. American history has been full of utopian proposals of all sorts. While many of these proposals have been eminently unrealistic, many have been quite pragmatic. In fact, the United States was founded on utopian proposals, a fact which is not generally acknowledged.
Conventional Narratives of Utopianism in American History.
Very few conventional treatments of American history do justice to the long history of utopian ideas and ideologies in America, and almost all ignore utopianism as an ongoing theme in American history. There may be some mention of Robert Owen’s New Harmony, a socialist community founded in Indiana in 1825, and Brook Farm, a cooperative commune in Massachusetts during the 1840’s, and both are usually portrayed as failed examples of a foolish utopianism.[2]
Conventional narratives give no indication that a country of cooperative communities seemed a realistic option that was seriously considered by Americans during much of our history. Or that the other options that Americans have had during our history – including mercantilism, free enterprise capitalism, and socialism – were also utopian in their origins, outlook and expectations, including those that became reality.
It is a historical fact that free enterprise capitalism developed during the nineteenth century as the predominant social and economic system in America. It is not generally acknowledged, however, that free enterprise capitalism, which is generally portrayed as a down-to-earth economic ideology and just the opposite of the wishful thinking of utopians, began as a utopian proposal. Generally equated by historians with Americanism as the best of all possible systems, free enterprise capitalism is portrayed as inevitable, as though there were no other plausible alternatives. But that is neither the way it looked to most people in the past, nor the way it really was.[3]
This conventional treatment of utopianism is an example of the way conventional narratives often overlook alternatives that may look unconventional to us today but that were seriously considered and were in the mainstream of discussion in the past. It also exemplifies the way in which conventional narratives generally portray the winning argument in a historical debate as the obvious choice and the only practical option among impractical alternatives. This portrayal ignores the arguments of the opponents of the winning option, the flaws and impracticalities that they found in it, and the possibility that an alternative option might have been better, both for people of that time and for us today.
That an historical option looked utopian does not necessarily make it a mistake. It is often the case that yesterday’s so-called foolish utopianism becomes today’s conventional wisdom. For many Americans, utopias of one sort or another have seemed realistic options.[4] In dismissing, for example, mercantilist republicanism and socialist communitarianism as unrealistic options for nineteenth century America, and missing the ways in which free enterprise capitalism was itself a utopian proposal, conventional narratives miss an important point about American society both then and now.[5]
Cycles of Utopian and Dystopian Thinking.
American history can, in fact, be seen as a cycle of utopian and dystopian movements, spiraling upward and down, albeit with an overall upward spiral of social betterment. Three steps forward, one or two steps back. Never reaching perfection, but with clearly demonstrative progress over the years. These cycles include the Puritans of the 1600’s, the American revolutionaries of the late 1700’s, the democrats of the 1820’s to 1850’s, the Populists and Progressives in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and the Great Society and countercultural movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Each of these movements came out of a dystopian period of social distress that seemed never ending.
The Puritans came out of the religious, economic, demographic and political crises in England during the early 1600’s. The American revolutionaries were driven by a combination of imperial conflict with England and civil conflict within the colonies. Class and sectional conflicts motivated the democrats of the mid-1800’s. Gilded Age corruption, poverty and violence spurred a host of utopian ideas and movements in the late 1800’s, which in turn spurred the Populist and Progressive reform movements of the early twentieth century, and which essentially mark the beginnings of modern American society.
The dystopian mid-twentieth century, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the anti-Communist hysteria, produced a strong utopian reaction of hippies and flower children, with communes everywhere. But it also spurred major legislative, social and cultural reforms toward ending racial discrimination, poverty, sexism and other social ills.
Each of the utopian movements in American history was motivated by hopes and dreams of a perfect society. Each failed in that aim but succeeded, nonetheless, in pushing progressive reform forward. But in each case, another dystopian period descended upon the country and things went from bad to worse until the next burst of utopian fervor.
I am writing this in late September, 2024. We have lived in recent years through a great plague, a great increase in global warming, a great economic recession, a great inflation, a great immigration of displaced persons, a great increase in gun violence, and a great increase of international war, among other disasters. Most people seem to see and feel this as a dystopian period of history. And we are facing an election like that in 1828 in which a disruptive and dystopian candidate is denouncing the pragmatic optimism of his opponent. We can only hope that this is a turning point and that the politics of hope, the utopianism that has underlain our history, will reemerge and result in our being rescued from our current predicament.
BW 9/24
[1] Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. (Chicago: G.&C. Merriam & Co., 1971), 978.
[2] Joyce Appleby et al. The American Republic to 1877. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 377-378, 412-413.
[3] Joyce Appleby et al. The American Republic to 1877. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 308.
[4] William Goetzmann. Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), xiv.
[5] See “utopian societies.” American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011.
historyaschoice 