What kind of Utopia would you like to live in?

No place

Utopia, to me, is difficult to define because humanity is constantly changing and diversifying. So, any utopia that actually addresses our concerns would have to be constantly changing and diversifying as well.

- I've done my best here - Green Island   http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html

Utopian thinking is great, and much needed on the left. But as Caissa points out, utopia is a pun: it means both "good place" and "no place." It's best to look at utopia not as a reality, but as a horizon. The not-yet-here.

Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, and Fredric Jameson are some great Marxist Utopian scholars with a lot of fascinating writing on the subject.

The Utopian Vision of the Future: Then and Now - A Marxist Critique by Bertell Ollman

Having referenced that article. it's noteworthy that those in the Bolivarian Movement Towards Socialism in Latin America make specific reference to the use of Utopian ideals in the outline of their programs, policies, etc. They are making their Utopia.

Siamdave, Green Island looks pretty cool, but we could make ON just as cool... and BC and MB and...

Canada, 1968. "Can we start again, please?"

Maybe  getting a job that does not consist of handing out flyers and telemarketing.

Too late! Pierre Berton declared 1967 as "The Last Good Year"

The best Utopian novel I have ever read is "Kazohinia" by Sandor Szathmary. It is unusual in the sense that the book shows both a Utopia and a Dystopia side by side and it is damn funny.

You can download (or read) the whole book at:

http://mek.oszk.hu/01400/01456/html/index.htm

An eternal Pennsic works for me...

The one the Lady In The Radiator sang about...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrl3n2ZtK2E

How about a socio-economic system that is not class organized? Maybe, you know, like Socialism. We can start there and see what happens.

Or maybe like the aboriginies of Australia, were there is no progress so that life will stay as close to the original time of creation as possible?

Mine. Definitely not yours. Which is to say, utopia is a vision, not a place (as the name suggests), something not concretely realisable, but something akin to hope, something that can sustain, even inspire. More of a forever distant destination, it is the journey that is taken to it and the fellow travellers one meets that matter most. I think it implies respect for the journeys of others, even if they have different visions.

My Favorite Utopia is populated with people who have the following qualities:

1. Logical
2. Don’t let emotion muddle their thinking
3. Are aware of the importance of Basic Principles
4. Know and apply the Scientific Method for problem-solving
5. Think things through from initial concept to final consequences
6. Don’t get distracted by irrelevancies
7. Focus on the topic and don’t get off on a tangent
8. Have clear moral principles I agree with (life-oriented)
9. Don’t indulge in hypocrisy
10. Have an attention-span of more than 5 minutes
11. Have Imagination
12. Have a sense of Humour
13. Don’t bore the hell out of me

I know this Utopia will never exist but it is nice to fantasize isn’t it?

Here is en excerpt from Kazohinia about a hypothetical Utopian:

"I searched my mind for an example of entertainment to which he could not object even from the point of view of the kazo. Finally I mentioned chess as a harmless pastime of the soul from which nobody could suffer any harm. I drew a chessboard, and sketched chess pieces on small slips of paper and then I expounded the rules of the game, which, I may say, was an onerous task. I had never had such a thickheaded pupil. When I had explained for the fifth time, he repeated his question for the sixth time: "But what is the aim?"

"To remove the king of the enemy," I said and began to explain again.

Shrugging his shoulders he eventually agreed to a game. I made a move with a pawn and beckoned to him to move, at which he took my king, placed it beside the chessboard, and looked questioningly at me.

"And now what is the sense in that?" he asked inanely.

I put the figure back with considerable annoyance.

"It's not that simple!"

"You can see it is!"

"But you must observe the rules! If you play like that then of course there is no sense in it. If you play according to the rules, you will see that there is sense in it."


With great difficulty we played a game right through to the end. Of course, I beat him.

"And now what?" he asked.

"Now I am the winner."

"What does that mean?"

"I have taken the game."

He thought for a long time. Clearly he still did not understand.

"And what does that actually mean?" He eventually came out with it.

"That I have won."

"You explain one word with another, which for you seems to be necessary because none of them has anything to do with reality. You have coined both of them without either of them having any content."

He was unable to understand - as he put it - why we were doing nothing so lengthily and painstakingly, to which there would have been no point even if I had removed his king at the very start, and he drew the conclusion that the whole of our life and public life probably consisted of making complications out of nothing, and that our actions were directed by imaginary idols.
……………………………..

He pondered.

"Did your soul have its fill when we played chess?"

"Yes, because I won the game. You see, you have no such pleasures."

"And how do you manage to arrange that both parties win the game?"

In spite of my low spirits a smile flitted across my face.

"How can you imagine that? It is a game for us to play against each other and not for each other. One of the parties must lose."

"And is the losing party happy too?"

"No. He is unhappy. But he, in turn, may be the winner on another occasion."

"Then why do you make one of the parties unhappy?"

To tell the truth his question somewhat surprised me and I had to gather my wits together to make him understand the situation.

"The thing is," I commenced, "that happiness means obtaining a certain energy for the soul, and like every energy, this, too, comes from a difference in levels, from the results which I have achieved and not others."

I would not want to live in a utopia.

I enjoy the diversity of my human experience far too much.

I do not think that diversity would exist if we had solved all our problems.

Watching the wall-to-wall horror stories on the 6-o'clock news is part of your diversity.

Enjoy!

It would make more sense to address what I actually said, would it not?

What makes you think utopia is homogeneous?

The fact that I have never encountered a description of utopia that was not somewhat or entirely so.

Looking at alien's post #13, (and I am not choosing alien's utopia for any reason other than it is very accessible to everyone in this thread) we see a list of 13 factors that would be present in that utopia.

The trouble with that one is that my very good friend who is an absent-minded artist would have no apparent place in that "utopia", because she allows irrational things to inspire her way of interacting with the world. While her style of thinking gets us lost on the freeways of Vancouver Island, it also makes her capable of exploring creative fields of thought that I can only glimpse when I look at her works.

Well, then you didn't read my post earlier in the thread, or, apparently, anything by Ursula LeGuinn. Irrationality, diversity, pleasure, creativity: to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, if these things aren't in Utopia, I don't want it on my map.

It is spelt LeGuin, and I assume you are alluding to The Dispossesed.

A society where people where not "allowed" to own private property on have locks on their doors. Ostensibly, they coul dhave, but social conditioning would have rendered the inidividual a pariah. I would not want to be considered an outcast simply because I really like using my Estwing 20 oz. hammer and not having people walk in on me when masturbating.

There is a difference, of course, between a Utopian program and Utopian desire. It's the latter which is more useful, more critical to building a better world, and the former which becomes visible to us as a series of elegant failures. To view a Utopian program as the culmination or totality of Utopianism in general, is a very short-sighted and defeatist state of mind (the kind, perhaps, which also thinks pointing out spelling errors makes their point stronger, or others' weaker--of course, it's actually, "Le Guin," but only in a perfect world...).

I am not even sure that a utopian desire is useful. To me, it presupposes that we have some sort of agreement on what we want, or that we should be moving towards a specific goal. The desire for a utopia seems like a desire for simplicity, for an end to our worries and conflicts, for an end to those things that force us to become more than we are.

I do not want to stop growing and changing.

Private property laws benefit the rich mainly. What you end up with are vast inequalities and a significantly large part of the work force allocated to doing guard labour, like it is in America today. They own the largest incarcerated population in the world and large percentage of them behind bars for dumb crimes: possession of marijuana, bouncing cheques, and very many other non-violent crimes. No thanks.

It seems to me that you are operating under a very fixed, very restrictive idea of Utopia. I'd encourage you to revisit my post #4 in this thread and open up your definition of Utopia. As a horizon rather than an endpoint, Utopia is precisely about growth and change--or "becoming" in philosophical parlance. It is, to quote Jean-Luc Nancy, "singular plural" at once individual, unique, localized; and social, historical, universal.

There is a tendency to view Utopia (as Adorno mentions above) as some abstract impossibility, easily dismissable: "Oh, that's just utopian thinking." When, in fact, that is exactly what the capitalist (or call it hegemonic) ideology imposes on us to ensure its  own continuity and perpetuity. We should engage (Bloch argues) in concrete Utopia, rooted in historical realities, "militant optimism," and, above all, hope. Educated hope, in fact.

Indeed, this is the point you may have missed about Le Guin: there is no "utopia" as such in The Dispossessed; but it is nonetheless utopian. It is the truck and exchange between the worlds presented to us in the novel where we are to find our utopian horizon. It is in these interstices we will find a world toward which to strive--not some fixed schema offered to us by quick-fix midnight paid programming.

In a utopia, would it possible to commit transgressions against others? if the answer is yes, then is it really utopia?

If it is no, then there must be some way of making such trangressions impossible. This necessarily restricts human freedom, which is in itself a transgression, which is impossible in our utopia.

So, if we define utopia as an endpoint, it is an abstract impossibility.

But let us look at your idea of utopia as horizon, or educated hope. I am not sure what you mean by that.

Just looking at the phrase "educated hope", I am not sure if it is necessary. For example, I have no idea what exactly all the problems are that trans-sexuals face in our society. It would be fair to say that I am uneducated in their plight. Nor am I hopeful that any great changes will be made. However, I will still support any and all efforts of trans-sexual people to have their rights and equality recognised. Furthermore, my lack of education in this area also precludes me from deluding myself that I know better how to help trans-sexuals than they themselves do.

Educated hope, or docta spes, is a term Ernst Bloch employed in order to take us from some abstract utopia (like the one your syllogism attempts to construct) to a concrete utopia.

Since Thomas More wrote Utopia,  a luminous island rising out of the sea, the idea of utopia has undergone a trasnformation in the cultural imagination from a space to a time. It's much easier to understand it as a horizon if we go along with this shift--if you don't you will find it very difficult to get out of the closed, static idea of utopia-as-island. If it's an island, I'm not there, and it suffers from all the critique you have given. But if it is a horizon, it becomes possibility, or, perhaps, potentiality--a much more attractive concept. That is, it is not prescriptive--which seems to be the philosophical hurdle you can't get over. In fact, may Utopian thinkers hold that it is impossible to describe Utopia in a positive manner at all. Rather, it should be seen through determined negation: these are all the ways in which it is not. As I have been saying--and I think you agree--any time someone says "This is the only way," it will be a false utopia. That's what Jameson means above when he says we should adopt an "anti-anti-utopian" strategy--precisely what Le Guin enacts.

So what we have here, with respect to a horizon, or docta spes, is that Utopia is above all a process of becoming: it is unknowable and incalcuable, but necessary nonetheless.

Sounds like extremely selfish and unsocial behaviour to me. Lots of people prefer to share. And you know what they say about big hammers and small nails.

It still seems vague to me.

Well, I am a spambot.

What's vague? "It"? I've only responded directly to your examples. This is a dismissal typical of hegemonic ideology which denies alternate modes of being and sociality: akin to Thatcher's "There is no alternative to capitalism." You've got to let go of the fixed, frozen conception you have of what constitues Utopia--it's simply no longer valid. It's not a program, it's not prescriptive, it's a horizon, it's futurity, and it's rooted in history.

An example:

In this famous quote by Warhol it would be easy to dismiss this pop artist as naively celebrating consumerism and alienated production, gullibly suckered by capitalist pipe dreams. But what Warhol detects, here and elsewhere, is something more in the act of sharing a coke with someone--that utopia exists in the quotidian. Warhol opens up a potentiality, a utopian horizon in a moment capitalist ideology would prefer to dehistoricize, close up and lock down: there is nothing outside the here and now. Warhol submits the possibility that a coke bottle might in fact represent a mode of being or feeling that is not quite here yet but nonetheless an opening. Of course, we must admit the possibility that this hope is naive, that it probably will be disappointed. But nevertheless, this move by Warhol is indispensible to the Utopian act of world transformation.

It's not unlike the wonderful poem by Frank O'Hara "Having a Coke with You," in which a simple, disposable and quotidian act, so part and parcel of the capitalist system, opens up the possibility of sharing same-sex love. For me, these moments are the true Utopias: concrete beads of time which promise the possibility of something more, the promise that things could be different. And those different modes of being could be anything, are anything: full employment, the freedom to fully engage one's sexuality, freedom from poverty, war, strife, sustainable living, etc.

To me it seems that this definition of utopia is simply an awareness of the possibility of good in the here and now. Would you agree with that definition?

I'd lose the "awareness" and change "here and now" to "then and there" (to quote José Muñoz). Utopia is always about the margins and the future. Muñoz would also prefer the term "potentiality," which seems to me a more future-oriented, more pregnant term. The potentiality of good in the then and there. Not bad.

More relevant excerpts from Kazohinia

"I told him about Plato's state, Saint Thomas Aquinas's principles of the divine universality of the outcome of labour, the common work of the Cathari and the Hussites, Fourier's phalansteries, Thomas More's Utopia, Proudhon's people's bank, Louis Blanc's national workshops, Robert Owen's social manufacturing plants, the communal states of the Dominicans and Jesuits in South America, and finally I came to scientific socialism and the latest theories, to the plans of Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Bernstein, Kropotkin, Kautsky and Plekhanov, and to technocracy and the democratic socialism of the Fabian Society, Wells and the Webbs. I spoke of the work theory of mercantilism and physiocracy, of the liberalism of Adam Smith, and of the trade unions; nor did I fail to mention the ideas that had not materialized, such as Georgism, syndicalism and anarchism.

For his life he could not understand how it was possible to imagine so many things concerning such a simple thing as life."

Those are some fun passages, alien, thanks. They remind me of Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race. The Socratic dystopian tack.

There is a lot more -- it is the most incisive and mercilessly logical analysis of the Human Condition I have ever read.

And it is unique by being both a Utopia and a Dystopia side by side.

And it is very funny!

Here is another exchange I like:

"You lay siege to the walls drawn on a map just as if it were not you yourselves who had drawn them. You heal wounds inflicted by yourselves in order to be able to wound again, and you struggle against an economic crisis as if it was not you yourselves who stopped the machines."

"...Only the words and the names of the theories can be varied,...not life itself, which is predetermined by our organism. And anyone who attributes independent life to the words, is sick and a somnambulist."

"But from these words economic systems are born," I retorted.

"Is it not all the same in which system you are ill?"

When I read this, I finally understood: sane people would make any system work (be it Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc.), insane people will screw up whatever system they dream up. The problem is not with the system, it is with the people. We will never have a Utopia until and unless we become Utopian-quality people with those attributes I listed earlier.

It is not 'us' against 'them' -- it is all of us against ourselves.

Sobering thought indeed.

That story about the chess game is wrong. The point of chess is that it is a game about  life. You play a game of life in a short amount of time....

Everything in chess is about deciding what you  will give up to gain something... That my friend is life.

When you play chess, you experience life in the present. That's why you play.

Playing chess helps develope your dicision making abilities. You very quickly realize what your decisions bring.

Do I give up a pown to get a knight or do I try to move it to the other side and turn it into a Queen? do I think three steps ahead or five? How good are my prediction skills?

Na, that guy had it all wrong about the chess argument.

Alien:

Sorry bro, but sane people can not make any system work.. How about a system of slavory?

Capitalism can never work no matter how sane humanity may be. It's a ttheoretical nightmare, that's why it has never brought what its proponants say it will.

Andy FN Warhol, we're quotoing Andy Fn Warhol?

Andy forgot to mention that the bum couldn't afford to by the coca cola because he was to depressed living his life in a disinfranchized exploited class of poor people. That he was to bussy begging for pennies so that he could feed his alcohol addiction that he got when he was trying to self medicat his missory away. And that he couldn't afford the medical coverage and his lythium perscription went unfilled.

And hell, he's so confused, he thinks a coke is what his buddy is addicted to.

Sorry, trippie, you missed the point.

...you missed this one too.

I suggest you read the whole book. I am sure if you read it in full context, you will understand what he is talking about. As I said earlier: it is very funny and quite easy to read.

http://mek.oszk.hu/01400/01456/html/index.htm

I think Catchfire is suggesting that utopia is a journey rather than a destination.

Here is another quote from the Dystopia part. It should be eerily familiar to us. 

"I spoke about how many more flats there would be if everyone were ordered to build houses rather than have so many living in one room with so many others, some even spending the night under the stars.

Instead of replying, Zemoeki took me by the arm and led me to the house which I had seen on the day of my arrival, with one half of it built and the other pulled down. Now the only novelty in it was that they were rebuilding the demolished part and in the meantime pulling down the part that had been built.

"Do you see," Zemoeki said, "how wisely the k o n a sees to it its members should have a flat?" I had already been itching to know the secret of this strange house and taking this opportunity I asked why they pulled the other half down. He gave the same reply, however, as the mason had earlier.

 "So as not to cause homelessness."

I timidly remarked that the best help against homelessness would be the existence of flats. I don't know what was so ridiculous about this, but Zemoeki laughed very heartily, called me a poor bivak and declared that I seemed not to be aware of the elements of the science of housing economy either, which even to the most uneducated Behin is a well-known thing.

I tried to remain calm and asked him politely to enlighten me on the Behins' science of housing economy. We set down on a bench and Zemoeki began to talk. 

He related that once, in olden times, the Behins had built houses, setting out from the erroneous belief that with this they would relieve the housing shortage. Material justice, however, demanded that from among the homeless only those should receive a flat who had participated in the building.

Accordingly the builders were given a fancy printed certificate by virtue of which they had the right to stay for a month. 

At the beginning, of course, they were given the certificate in vain, because only some of the builders could receive a flat, but as the building progressed, more and more people had a roof over their head. So for the time being, everything seemed to be in order.

However, when the building programme had been carried out, the dwellers, one after the other, had to be turned out into the yard as they did not build any more and so did not receive new certificates for the months to come. So the scholars came to know that building resulted in homelessness. 

I tried to contradict this by saying that if the houses were ready why did they continue to demand monthly certificates from the builders and why did they not let them stay for ever.

Zemoeki replied that it would have been unjust, and that it was lamik to demand a flat for a man who did not work any more. However, he admitted that the problem was extremely grave and to solve it the kona had employed many scholars with good salaries, who racked their brain about it day and night. They also propounded the scientific law of housing economy as follows. 

"Flat displaces man."

The solution, however, was still not found for a long time, as the problem was double-edged: while building was in progress there were certificates but no flats, when they were finished there were flats but no certificates. In the beginning they tried to overcome the difficulty by building still more flats, and while these were being built the builders could remain in their old places. This way, however, more and more flats remained unoccupied with which they could do nothing. 

Everybody had already surmised that flat-building work was useful for the public only if it did not give rise to flats. So they realized that people were to be given employment so that they could reside in them. The flats, however, were to be pulled down immediately in order to avoid catastrophic homelessness. 

"But then it is not actually building," I said. 

"Of course not! ... This is the kona's wise provision for its members. The kona puts mattock in the hands of its members lest they should remain homeless.

quoted in The Structural Crisis of Capitalism, p. 129, Istvan Meszaros.

Slavoj Žižek - A Permanent Economic Emergency

The recent lengthy piece by Marta Harnecker in Monthly Review, as well as Michael Lebowitz's "The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development" makes specific reference to "doing the impossible" and, furthermore, outline how it has been carried out.

If I did end up living on the path to a Utopia, I'd want it to be structured(and I don't mean this flippantly)something like the "holodeck" on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"-that is, I'd want it to be a reality that everyone could adjust to fit her or his own desires for the best possible world.

One in which the English made breakfast, the Chinese made lunch, and the French made supper.

If the Germans are making the beer, I'm in.

"What kind of Utopia would you like to live in?"

As far as I can tell, the utopian society exists in the future. And if we survive the next 100 years as a species, we might be able to achieve an advanced state of technological well being where material poverty and hunger by today's definition are eliminated by a more advanced society. As a socialist, I must see and think of the forest before individual trees, and beyond the materialist view of the world. We could have achieved this advanced state of affairs a long time ago had the past turned out differently, and if world revolutions had introduced socialism as an alternative earlier than, say, the adevent of Sputnik and post war era or perhaps the beginning of the industrial revolution. Humanity is behind the eight ball right now and must change our ways if we are to achieve utopian existence. Utopia is in the future. For now we have to do better than merely survive the near and long term. We have to start doing some serious central planning in order to even start down the long road to a technically advanced state of utopia.

"What kind of Utopia would you like to live in?"

Planitia

We have been talking about Utopias that we can't have.

How about a semi-utopia that we could have, right here, right now. With something in it for everybody, left or right.

Let's agree that we acknowledge both of our needs: freedom from, and compassion for, each other. Let us agree that the compassion part has priority, up to a very well defined point. This point is where the basic survival needs of every citizen in our country is assured. Beyond this point our priorities change and our need for freedom takes over. The concept I have in mind is not unheard of: it is a variety of 'Basic Income Alternative' a policy that has been and is currently studied by various western governments (including Ireland and Canada). In my version of this idea we have a two-tier economy, with the two tiers completely isolated from each other.

The essence of this system could be the following: People decide that the most important goal is to make sure everybody's basic needs are met. The basic human needs can be easily calculated by using scientific data on age-dependent calorie requirements, climate-dependent clothing and housing requirement, population-dependent health- and education-requirement and the necessary energy and raw-material production, as well as the necessary infrastructure in transportation and communication. It could be easily planned based on physiological, climatic and demographic data.

They create an economy to assure that. There is no money involved, every citizen has to participate with a minimum number of hours per day (required to produce the basic needs for everybody -- not more than 2-3 hours per day, based on current technology and no waste) and the produced goods are made available to everyone freely. This economy is completely self contained: it has its power generating stations, their mining, their industries, agriculture, transportation and  communication facilities, schools and hospitals. Everything they need to produce basic goods and services. Then they say: we have it  covered. Now, whoever wants more, can do it in their spare time, as long as 1./ they don't touch our economy in any way whatsoever (if they can't do it without us, it is their problem, we will not let anything compromise the 'prime directive'). 2./ They don't cause damage to the environment and don't harm anyone in the process (including other species) .

Of course, there are millions of details to be worked out but the basic concept is clear and well defined, unlike in various forms of Socialism.

You're obviously from another planet. No human would be naiive enough to think that such prescriptions have a hope in hell of coming to fruition.

And you're notion of freedom ... sucks. Near as I can make out, it consists of the absence of constraints maybe freedom as capriciousness or some goofy petty bourgeois glop. Give yourself a slap upside your alien proboscis. heh.

Real freedom is is people participating in making themselves, not in just getting their basic needs met. Your idea sounds like a liberal version of barracks socialism. Fuck that shit. See Mike Lebowitz: The Socialist Alternative and don't come back until you've absorbed it into your consciousness. Now pass me that beer.

Profanity for argument?

Hmmm...

Yo, N, dial it down.

alien, one of the problems with your utopia is that some people can't "work" in the sense of working to produce labour, goods, services, etc. In our lives we will have different times when we can't engage in it, and for some, they will never be "productive" as you've defined it. Any society I live in has room for such folks.

There is also no mention of visual arts, creativity, music. These are not secondary considerations. And what about culture? Do we all become, what, generic white folks? 

Utopia is not an actuality, it's a goal.

Thank you Maysie for civility. 

As I mentioned, millions of details need to be worked out. 

I concentrated on the basic conceptual foundation of the dilemma in all socialist schemes: the extent of redistribution is completely undefined, arbitrary, resulting in forever fight over distribution. 

As I also mentioned, it is an advanced form of the "Guaranteed Basic Income" idea that does exist in some form or another (also in arbitrary forms). 

The most important aspect of this system is ethical: As long as people/children go hungry, have to sleep on the streets, get sick and die, without help, of preventable illness or can't afford basic, good quality education, everything else is a luxury.

Once these basic human needs are satisfied, then we can talk. 

The other pillar of the system is also ethical: Every human being benefits from living in a society, as opposed to living alone in a jungle. Every human being owes something to the maintenance of this society and should be expected to contribute. Those who have legitimate reasons not to, for a period of time (or even permanently), can be exempted, obviously. 

Now, I don't really think that this system will "come to fruition", but it highlights the ethical and conceptual foundation of any system that has a chance of being different from the one we do have now, and what we have had, with minor variations, for thousands of years. 

This is the time, people, to think outside the box and try something that hasn't been tried (and failed at) before for millennia. 

Wars, famines, brutality on one hand, or creative thinking outside the box on the other. 

I don't see any other way. 

But, of course, I am an alien from outer space!

Peace is not the absence of war—peace is the absence of fear.

All creatures have value and are subjects of equal care and love; similarly, in a society of justice and peace, all people matter equally.

I used to say ... that the dream of a peaceful society, to me, is still the dream of the potluck supper. The society in which all can contribute, and all can find friendship, that those who bring things, bring things that they do well and bring a variety of things. Those who can't cook can still organize, help clean up, and all belong. And that, however archaic it might sound, is still the society that I dream of, not that everybody runs everybody's business, but that we create conditions under which a potluck is possible.

— Ursula Franklin, various quotes

alien, have you read "Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy?

Classic sci fi/utopia/dystopia novel from the 70s. It's a wonderful read. 

writer, that potluck sounds great.

Yes, Maysie, I have. Yes, I know, any idea can be twisted and abused and turned into a nightmare. Communism was, for crying out loud! This unfortunate human (as opposed to alien) talent does not change my basic argument: as long as those 2 ethical pillars are not incorporated into a solution, no solution is possible.

This is the problem. Postponing addressing how people's needs are met means inevitable failure. If people are not participants in the process of determining and meeting their needs, then it's just going to be, at best, Soviet-style barracks equality - something you claim to dislike.

Sorry if I offended you with colourful language. You'd do well to have some colourful ideas, instead of the same, old, drab, worn out unworkable prescriptions.

writer has the right idea - a potluck, in which everyone participates in the making is already better than anything you've put forward. It's dynamic, collective and participatory. Have a nice day.

No, Beltov, you did not offend me.

It is my Babble policy: never be offended.

I suspect you did not finish reading my posts and/or did not give yourself enough time to think them over. I do agree with writer's potluck idea.  Everybody contributes to the extent of their ability and everybody is valued equally.

In my Utopia people are "participating in the process of determining and meeting their needs" in a truly representational democratic system. So I don't know how you got the impression that they don't. It is not a centrally run buerocratic system as you may think.

The essence are those 2 ethical pillars I highlighted in my earlier post.

From what you quoted, and your highlighted comments after, made me realize that you completely misunderstood my proposal. 

It is the second tier of the aconomy, created for the luxuries, that needs to be dealt with after the basic needs of every citizen are met.

The potluck image has created another image in my mind, in this quest to describe utopia.

Let the most marginalized define this new world and have all or most of the decision making powers.

Well, yea, exactly. Empowerment in the process of determining and fulfilling people's needs ... means that the citizenry becomes more fully human because more empowered. Therefore, the least empowered need the most empowerment.

And, funny thing, one of the earliest socialists (Fourier) defined social justice in terms of how far the status of women had improved. He was looking at the society he lived in, and saw the most disadvantaged, the most disempowered, being women.

Even liberal philosophers have taken a stab at this view; John Rawls who is very famous for his theory of justice has some variation of empowering the most disadvantaged at the heart of the theory.

Anyway, sorry for the impatient tone. I'm behind in my reading and very soon I will have no time for any extra reading.

Sorry, changed my mind...

This is not substantially different from graduated income tax and various contributions to social programs, except - and this is a huge exception - in the removal of money from the equation. When the contribution is in money, it is necessarily arbitrary: one person's work is valued higher than another's, because of fashion or exclusivity, or the dictates of capital. Thus, we can train enough doctors: there is no point in their closing out competition (or entering the profession for the wrong motives!) if doctors don't get more of the resources than janitors; if everyone who likes the work and has the talent can train for it.

   I have some ideas on how to get from here to there. Go to the communities with the lowest per capita income - say the poorest 10% - and ask them to submit a list of what they need in order to raise their standard of living to the next 10%. Take enough resources, material, people-power and whatever is required, from the top 1% income group. Then go to the next 10% lowest income communities, and take their requirements from the top 2%, and so on, until we meet in the middle. Which, by the way, will be a higher standard of living than working people have now, and at a fraction of the hours of labour. So the miner can go out painting every afternoon and the surgeon has time to learn a second language. 

thread drift/ Thanks for the book res at #56 Maysie. The university library is getting it out of storage for me/end thread drift

Another huge exception is the absolute requirement for the basic-needs-economy to be COMPLETELY isolated (hermetically sealed, air tight, etc) from the other tier.

If the bastards had any way whatsoever to touch it -- they would subvert, corrupt and eventually destroy it, as they have subverted, corrupted and almost (they are working on it day and night) destroyed all the progressive social-justice gains we have made in the fifties and sixties.

Yes, of course. Capitalists are able to become mega-rich because they have access to - and power over - a work force with no other options. That's exactly why they need to destroy the social safety-net.

When the contribution is money, as it is now, it may not be a real contribution at all, or may even be negative contribution, depending on how the money was obtained. It could be stolen, extorted, or obtained as salary/income/profit for really destructive behaviour that causes great harm to society. But they "paid their taxes" (those who did), so they are on record of 'contributing'. In my scheme, where money doesn't exist in the basic-needs economy, the contribution has to be obvious and visible by the contributor actually being there and doing something visibly useful.

Coming late to the party:)

It got my historical dithers up so as to pin down points of views that may have inspired cultures to look for new lands beyond the realms of thought each society was used too, and "hoped for" in some better form.

Why quest for new lands, planets for living? 

Bacon's Utopia: The New Atlantis

Tommaso Campanella- See also:The City of the Sun [71]

What contributions were idealistic set before those who signed the documents that one would have found reference from Raphael toward the Stanza's of the signatore's room in Rome?

The Room of the Segnatura contains Raphael's most famous frescoes. Besides being the first work executed by the great artist in the Vatican they mark the beginning of the high Renaissance. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the "Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae", which was presided over by the pontiff and used to meet in this room around the middle of the 16th century. Originally the room was used by Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513) as a library and private office. The iconographic programme of the frescoes, which were painted between 1508 and 1511, is related to this function. [72] See Raphael Rooms [73]

You had to understand the setting and the historical drama set forth?

[74]

School of Athens by Raphael [75]

So to set this up some background was needed?

Hope I didn't bore you with precursors of "new thoughts of how differing societies were formed?  How one may of attained such insight by helping one to realize the choice we have about how those new societies may have inspired?

Of course, "a science" evolved from it all?

Life Vs Productivity: 'What Would You Live and Die to Protect?

http://www.truth-out.org/life-vs-productivity-what-would-you-live-and-di...

"It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the contant victim of brutal attacks.."

Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion (and vid)

http://thelastoutpost.com/video-5/pro-think/empire-of-illusion.html

I think some might argue that there is actually very little preventing anarchy. The proles way outnumber the powerful elite few by some incredibly large number.  And the power mongers know it. It's been one continuous psyop against the proles. We are divided and  conquered only in our minds.

Check this one out: http://www.thevenusproject.com/