ABSTRACT
Utopias are a distinctive genre of political writing, consisting of accounts, often fictional, of an imaginary perfect state or society. 'Utopianism' refers both to the methodology involved, i.e. the exploration of political ideas by the construction of such an imaginary state, and to the detailed content of the majority of actual Utopian narratives. In popular usage 'Utopian' is a pejorative term, meaning impractical or fanciful and naive. In Marxism it has a technical use, again pejorative, as the name for pre- and non-Marxist varieties of socialism, especially those honest enough to give detailed descriptions of how a socialist society would work. Marx eschewed this, arguing that the details of socialism could be left to the future to settle after the revolution when all would be changed.
