ABSTRACT
Having located the socialist utopia in the history of ideas, we have still to decide on the traits which define its identity, and that is admittedly a task which does not lend itself easily to an ‘objective’ treatment. The concept of socialism functioned in the culture of the last two centuries as a linchpin holding together a motley assortment of ideas of various degrees of specificity and elaboration. To find a community of substance which really unites them is not an easy matter. One cannot help invoking Wittgenstein’s analysis of ‘essences’: what do all games have in common? Are they not rather objects scattered all over a broad canvas in such a way that each object shares some traits with each of its neighbours, but shares with each of them a different feature?
