I want to offer a grounded, realistic defense of the importance of utopian thinking in politics. We can characterize this as the value of dreaming big.
When we look back over the past two centuries, we see a world defined by constant utopian dreams of a better future, from artists to political theorists to ordinary workers clocking in from nine to five and dreaming of a better world for their children. We see this in the twentieth century with the philosopher Bertrand Russell writing In Praise of Idleness and defending a vision of human flourishing in which we are not bound to repetitive labor and with the economist John Maynard Keynes speculating on a future in which we need to work very few hours to meet our needs. This line of thinking, widespread during the Great Depression and in the aftermath of World War II, occupied a prominent place in the consciousness of post-war America. Indeed, the twentieth century was replete with American dreams of abundance in which utilities, food, and, eventually, everything, is produced without the need for human effort.
There are many popular culture and academic examples that illustrate this line of thinking. Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 novel Player Piano questioned how humans will find meaning without the need for day-to-day employment. In the 1960s and 1970s Star Trek offered a vision of a world in which material scarcity is gone. The radical anarchist Murray Bookchin wrote in the 1960s that humanity was finally reaching a period of “post-scarcity.” This kind of thinking dominated much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
These dreams in midcentury America were not simply those of the radical left; rather, they were mainstream and widely shared, even aspired to by ordinary Americans of all types and political persuasions.
When did these dreams die? And why? The second question is more difficult to answer, so let’s focus on the first. We see some of the change reflected in pop culture—the 1979 film Alien depicts an industrial, dirty, grimy future of exploited “space truckers” who make a living by traveling throughout the galaxy and mining. Think of it as the anti-Star Trek future. Taxi Driver’s depiction of mid-70s New York City is far from utopian. Or take the apocalyptic song London Calling by The Clash in which they lament/crow that “phony Beatles mania has bitten the dust.” Each of these seem to reflect a much broader post-Vietnam, post-Watergate loss of innocence in which utopian dreaming went out the window. It’s as if political scandal combined with economic stagnation killed off the utopian impulse.
When we look at the facts this shouldn’t be too surprising. Americans work more hours in 2021 than we did in the 1970s. Yes, more hours. And as Robert Reich recently pointed out in testimony to the US Senate, although the economy is roughly three times as large as it was in the 1970s, the hourly wage for average American workers is roughly the same. That is a good starting point for explaining the demise of utopian hopes and dreams.
Can we no longer dream big? Did all our hopes of a world beyond scarcity simple disappear? Given the possibilities offered by technological development, and the necessity produced by rampant inequality, isn’t something like a basic income achievable? To put it really simply—our society is rich, why can’t we just pay everybody enough to live on?
I want to suggest that it is time to think big again. We should be able to automate away all the dangerous, repetitive, physically exhausting and soul-crushing tasks that define so much of work in the world today and replace them with a basic income. Journalist Paul Mason rightly stresses that “in the early twenty-first century the means to liberate ourselves from work are close at hand…we could be free of most physical work within a century.”
For those focused on the current Democratic majority in Congress and the questions regarding what to do now with that power, the questions I am asking might seem like a distraction. And the focus on what Democrats should do now is really important. What bills should they prioritize, and what do they have the votes to accomplish, between now and the 2022 midterms? These questions are crucial but also necessarily more immediate.
What does this have to do with dreaming? And how is this defense of dreaming practical? Because we also have to think long term. Politics is not only the art of the possible—for ordinary citizens it is also the art of contesting what in fact is possible. What is politically achievable is not fixed. It is the result of debate, discussion, writing, activism, protests, money, lobbying, and many other competing factors. Why have the Koch brothers invested so much in think tanks and lobbying? Because these actions don’t just impact what government majorities will do now; they impact what government majorities will do, and aspire to do, in the future.
Debates, organizing, activism, scholarship, and all sorts of other factors have impacted how the Democratic Party is using its power following the 2020 elections.
We can compare the priorities today as opposed to the Democratic agenda after the 2008 elections to see how things have changed in just over a decade. Imagine how much things can change in another few decades.
“How long can a culture persist without the new?” cultural theorist Mark Fisher asked. It is our task in politics to “make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.” So while we focus our attention on the Federal government today, let’s also make time to push for a tomorrow in which there is a universal basic income and people take on jobs not because they have to but because they want to.
Thinking big, and even dreaming of a utopian future, is one way in which we make such a future possible. To put it more bluntly, without dreaming of a better world we will never achieve one.