ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Utopianism and Politics. Since the time of the French Revolution, a substantial proportion of the most politically conscious and active people have tended to equate Politics with Utopianism. Utopianism signifies that one assumes as possible an ultimate condition of absolute harmony in which individual self-expression and social cohesion, though seemingly incompatible, will be combined. In other words, Politics is concerned with the careful manipulation of concrete data of experience, by reference to the logic and to the limitations inherent in any given historical situation; whereas Utopianism postulates a definite goal or preordained finale to history, for the attainment of which you need to recast and remold all aspects of life and society in accordance with some very explicit principle. For Utopianism is based upon the assumption that reason alone — not habit, or tradition, or prejudice — can be the sole criterion in human affairs.
