Only utopias are realistic

by Gabriele Gillen

[This article posted on 8/19/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.ossietzky.net/artikel/nur-noch-utopien-sind-realistisch/.]

“Utopias are the source of strength for every emancipation movement. They arise from indignation about intolerable conditions and open up the prospect of a just community. They contain the hope for change. But this can only succeed if enlightened thinking, if political judgment comes into play.” (Oskar Negt)

In 1516, the Englishman Thomas More outlined the image of an ideal state in his book “Utopia”. Morus divided his “Utopia” - from the ancient Greek “non-place” or “nowhere” - into two parts. In the first part, he describes his encounter with a Portuguese world traveler, who tells him about foreign countries, but beforehand sharply criticizes the conditions in England. He considers it unjust and absurd, for example, that thieves are sentenced to death and hanged everywhere. They were only stealing out of bitter need, the Portuguese defended them, while the nobles “live idly like drones off other people's work” and “beat their tenants to death”. The fierce social criticism that Morus puts into his guest's mouth culminates in the words: “Where there is still private property, where all people measure all values by the yardstick of money, it will hardly ever be possible to pursue a just and happy policy.”

But what must a just state be like? What customs and laws characterize a peaceful, humane society? How can it be managed without money and private property? The guest answers these questions with a report on the fictitious island state of Utopia. Utopia has 54 cities, “all spacious and splendid, with exactly the same language, customs, facilities and laws”. Utopia's society is egalitarian. People eat together in communal houses. Money is practically abolished and goods are distributed according to need. There are no disputes, as more is produced than can be consumed. The reason for the surplus: In Utopia there is no unproductive, parasitic class of nobles, or high clergy.

Thomas More, a diplomat by profession, undoubtedly developed ideas that were revolutionary for his time: the abolition of private property, equal prosperity for all, religious tolerance, universal health insurance, culture from an early age. But his utopia is also hell, with rigid constraints. If you want to travel, for example, you need a permit. Anyone traveling without one is flogged. Adultery is punished with slavery, or death if repeated. The state also regulates the individual's daily routine, the cultural program is prescribed and the freedom of the individual is severely restricted.

So no equality without control and oppression? And vice versa: no “freedom” without whips?

History has taught us that many utopias, whatever they were made of, ended in intellectual terror, on the scaffold or under the guillotine - in the gulag or in Bautzen. What was originally good or well-intentioned turned into its opposite. Idealism always carries an element of terror. Those who do not want the good must be forced to do so - even if it costs them their lives. In order to defend the ideal society, the utopian becomes a dictator whose ideas are ultimately enforced by force - against the nature of the weak or stubborn subjects or those dreaming of a different utopia. General virtue can only be achieved through a culture of prohibition, through the brutal education of the good, the true and the beautiful.

Or is there another way? Those who envision a better future, a world without violence and social injustice, without exploitation and destruction of nature, without greed and indifference, are not simply dreamers. By imagining a better tomorrow, we recognize the mistakes, the sins of the present. We need utopias, we need dreams, we need outrage at the discrepancy between the real and the possible.

But we seem to be running out of utopian ideas. Perhaps because we are surrounded by the present, constantly confronted with bad news that we are no longer able to process and assess, if only because of its abundance. There is a lack of in-depth questions about the background and systematic explanations of contexts - on social media anyway, but also on public radio and television stations. Instead of an intelligent critique of the system and the depiction of power and interest relations, a new headline has to be produced immediately, the next sensational pig always has to be driven through the village: Headlines instead of stories, quotas instead of content. Games instead of bread. Plus the hysterical propaganda of the ruling center. Journalists as vicarious agents and media executioners of the government and the zeitgeist.

There are no role models and no time for reflection. Not even among the young, by the way. For analysis and resistance, for new concepts and solutions, for dreaming up utopias that get us moving, we need calm and clarity, concentration and serene courage.

But the gray veil of the diffuse information society lies over our longings; our hopes are eaten away by the fear of some horror that we have been persuaded to believe is inevitable in the next security and surveillance package; our thoughts are drowned out by the din and flicker of modern amusements, into which we flee from the complexity of pressing questions and from exhausting reflection.

Today, half a millennium after Thomas More, the discourse on the future mainly revolves around technological projects, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. The code of life should one day be able to be edited as if it were a Word document.

The only powerful utopia is digitalization, which will supposedly be able to solve all problems. A fully automated future with intelligent toothbrushes, smiling care robots or self-driving cars, with drones at sea and in the air that are constantly searching for new resources and enemies, with smart agriculture, with smart houses and their networking of home technology and household appliances, with the constant monitoring of public places and our everyday behavior.

Is the future still a utopian place today or just an extrapolation of the present using artificial intelligence?

Perhaps the number of possible utopian ideas is finite. Ideas for a better world must inevitably revolve around the same theme: Around the limitation or even abolition of property. The way in which the right to property is regulated and exercised has been and still is responsible for the worst evils of civilization. Anyone who dares to make a utopian design cannot avoid this question. Expropriation! Redistribution! But how? How many differences may remain, how many differences must remain? Real socialism, the remaining capitalism, the once so cuddly promised social market economy - in the assessment of freedom, solidarity and justice: they have all failed. If only because there is no agreement on what exactly freedom is, what exactly solidarity is, what exactly justice is. Is the only possible utopia perhaps a long list of minimum requirements? For example: the value of a job must be reassessed and paid differently: more money and good housing for the caring, nurturing professions - and a ban on millions in compensation for bankers or tens of millions in compensation for footballers. The money would be better invested in the health service, which has been cut to the bone, in care for the elderly or in schools. Or: no more arms deliveries; the right to an analog life; respect for lateral thinkers.

In China, a digital points system is being used - advertised as a social utopia. The government's tool is intended to combat nepotism, illegal business and fraudsters. And to educate citizens. Forcibly monitored by their smartphones, they receive points for decent behavior: Braking at crosswalks, visiting elderly parents, buying healthy food, disposing of waste correctly, regularly having a kind word for those in power on social media... Points are deducted for paying bills late, for traffic offenses, missed visits to elderly parents, unpopular political statements. Under the slogan “social credit rating system”, citizens' most private data is researched and collected. Those who behave well are considered “trustworthy”, those who do not behave well in the opinion of the state are “trustbreakers” and are punished. “Trust criminals” are not allowed to fly, for example, or are not given a ticket for a train. Access to universities or state jobs can be denied, and loans or insurance policies are made more difficult to obtain. A full points account, on the other hand, makes life easier - when it comes to finding an apprenticeship for the children, finding accommodation or paying interest on loans. The aim is to create a better person for a better society. Which ultimately benefits everyone.

Do you think it won't come to that in our country?

It is already commonplace to manage our own health data via a cell phone app; to use a fitness tracker to record our running routes, energy expenditure or sleep quality and send it to our health insurance provider in return for a discount on premiums; to book our doctor's appointments with Doctolib; to have cameras in televisions and computers watch us; to make our whereabouts public at any time via Google; to do online banking or make contactless payments with our cell phone; to unlock our smartphone using fingerprints, facial recognition or iris scanners; to collect Payback points to record our purchasing behavior; to enter our age, email address and place of residence when using an app. Or to store online and create our personal shopping list for anyone who is interested. We voluntarily disclose our privacy. A dream for state security agencies, a dream for the companies that make millions from our data. And we are constantly voting for more: even more cameras in public spaces, even more drones, even more digital networking with the authorities. So that no one steps out of line.

We don't feel monitored or restricted in our freedom. The “brave new network and consumer world” doesn't seem threatening to us, but attractive and practical.

Swipe cell phones, Google searches, one-click shopping - simplicity wins. There is very little awareness of the increasing surveillance and restrictions on our personal freedom. After all, we have nothing to hide. And the surveillance cameras protect us from criminals! Until we get caught ourselves. For small everyday sins or for having the wrong opinion. I, for one, have a lot to hide. From the state, from my bosses, from corporations, from my neighbors. Because privacy, the ability to remain unseen and unheard, is at the heart of democracy and freedom.

I fear that parliamentary democracy - already severely damaged by social inequality, militarization and wars, the green-left's desire to replace class issues with identity politics - cannot and will not build a “firewall” against the dawning digital dictatorship. After all, anyone who does not see digitalization as a promise of salvation is no longer considered a sane interlocutor. I'm also not sure how a referendum on a points system based on the Chinese model would turn out here in Germany. The SPD and the Greens are already financing denunciation portals with a lot of money.

And two years ago, the left-wing Rosa Luxemburg Foundation judged the Chinese points system to be quite innovative.

Despite all the unhealed wounds from the totalitarian systems of the 20th century, we are allowing ourselves to be seduced into the next totalitarian system. It looks very different from the dictatorships that have come to an end, it flickers a beguiling blue and is full of promises of consumption and distraction, it claims individual freedom with every click, although we are led in circles through the digital arena on manipulative nose rings, it lulls us with games, series and app-controlled fun. Hidden behind this is modern, AI-controlled state security. This is how the utopia of the well-connected power-hungry and profit-hungry in corporations and governments (alone) is fulfilled. But we, you and I, are not victims. We are perpetrators. Without collaborators and followers, there would be no totalitarianism. And there always and everywhere seem to be enough collaborators and hangers-on to make totalitarianism possible.

If you ask them, people claim that they want to be free. Freedom is something beautiful, something worth striving for, as long as you don't have it and only want it. But once we are free, we are already looking for the next lack of freedom. If necessary, we simply claim not to be free. To be under some kind of constraint. Because being free means moral responsibility, which we like to shirk, which we like to blame on those at the top, the politicians, the bosses, the party, the stock corporations. Admittedly, this is not wrong. The politicians, the party, the board members of DAX companies also have a moral responsibility. They can decide whether they work for the community or just for their own benefit - and they have more power. A power that we have given them. We can decide to take it away from them. No longer vote for them, take to the streets, form our own parties, refuse to consume, only switch on the television again when journalists remember what their task is for democracy: to educate, including about who benefits from what and how, to confront the system with questions, not to constantly give the powerful a stage, but the weak; to tell stories that bring us closer together. But then we also have to listen and watch - and not just consume one series after another.

We decide whether we want to bring democracy back to life. And add the social to the market economy: Collectively blocking pointless building sites where millions of taxpayers' money is being sunk; collectively fare dodging on the Bundesbahn; collectively refusing to pay rent in those former council apartments that the state has sold off to real estate groups; collectively tear up the harassing sanction letters from the employment agency; go on general strike until the billions for pointless prestige objects are invested in culture and social welfare; open the borders together for those seeking protection and build houses together with them in the many sparsely populated landscapes. And, yes, going to prison together for all these violations of the law. Millions of arrests, millions of court cases. What fun. Utopian creativity. The magic word is “collective”. Because “united strength is more effective in bringing about success than fragmented or divided strength”, Martin Luther King once said.

We can and we must choose. Do we fight against each other or with each other?

We need a safe home for all people. The secure prospect of work and participation, of food and water, of a roof over their heads, of functioning social systems - and of streets or paths where you can walk without being threatened.

But this home should offer even more: Culture, encounters instead of consumption; an intellectual space in which we learn and acquire knowledge, not just oriented towards economic interests, but towards the humanistic ideals that are often so ridiculed today, which are concerned with the formation of values, the ability to think and the education of compassion and political commitment; a space in which we can express our hopes and aspirations, in which we can find the reasons and ideas for our common life on this planet - in small communities that we still oversee. Not a world government, not a superpower, but regions. For the majority of people, globalization is not a space that gives them a sense of security, but one that deprives them of the opportunity to feel part of a (self-chosen) family.

We should turn our ideas for an earthly utopia into stories for everyday life. What we long for, what we desire, the important things, is what others also want: Dignity, a livelihood, a meaningful job, friendship... Solidarity is compassion for the pain and hardships of others - and the sharing of what we hope for ourselves: Respect. For our neighbors, for the elderly, the sick, refugees. We can learn this, it's not difficult, because it immediately makes us lighter, happier. What we give, we get back. Science and technology have sobered us up and made us shiver. Digital modernization keeps our world in a cold dependency. We need to re-enchant them with stories about a more humane and caring society. With stories that we want to turn into reality. Tales of neighborhood, friendship, touch. Proximity is home.

More and more people are looking for a new home.

Home is one of the incantations of the age of globalization and digitalization, in which mobility and rapid technological change determine the everyday lives of millions. Home means belonging, community and identity in a neoliberal, confusing world. Those who speak of home usually suffer from homesickness. Home becomes a word of longing because it seems threatened or lost to many. The experience of homelessness and loss of home is increasing. When there are suddenly no more country doctors to be found in rural regions, when train connections are discontinued, corner stores and pubs close and people migrate to the cities, when village and small town centers become deserted. The longing is for a time when communities still seemed intact, social relationships alive - home as a lost utopia in a thoroughly rationalized world that destroys manual work and causes structural change that drives people out of their traditional living environments and forces them into a mobility and flexibility that they would not have chosen voluntarily.

But city dwellers can also experience a loss of home as they watch established neighborhoods become gentrified, rents become unaffordable, businesses close and familiar neighborhoods disintegrate.

So many people are afraid. They are looking for resonance, community, belonging, affirmation, but are finding them less and less in the modern world, when economic changes, cultural upheavals and a rapid change in values are destroying familiar ways of life and putting them out of kilter. When the last coal mine in the Ruhr area closes or a certain form of industrial work is no longer needed because it is made cheaper in other countries or replaced by robots. When fishermen can no longer make a living from fishing because their catch quotas do not allow it or the seas are overfished. When farmers no longer earn enough from farming because they can't compete on the world market. When small stores fall victim to large online retailers. When cultural institutions close around the corner because the money flows into expensive prestige buildings.

Those who have moved here may also feel homeless, having turned their backs on their birthplace, their traditional culture and their country of origin in order to find a better life in another country. The job-seekers from Eastern Europe, the refugees from poverty, war or lack of freedom. Their homeland has been destroyed, or their country of origin was never their homeland because they experienced hardship and misery, persecution or danger to their lives there. They can only find home as a second home, in the sense of filmmaker Edgar Reitz: as a home to which one does not naturally belong, but which one has to create for oneself. For migrants, such a second home in the country of arrival means above all an existence in legal security, peace and economic survival. However, at the borders to their hoped-for new homeland, they increasingly encounter defensive reflexes and resentment from others who see themselves threatened by the new arrivals and believe they have to defend their homeland against the foreigners. Because they fear that they are taking something away from them, material resources, but also existential certainties. For them, homeland becomes a political battle cry, the longing for homeland is misused in a right-wing nationalist, populist manner and the concept of homeland serves as a cudgel and cover word for xenophobia, xenophobia and the “fear of the other”, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called it. Sociologist Heinz Bude speaks of a “society of fear”, in which “mistrust of the world's lack of support” is expressed. Many people suddenly see a retreat into the national as a panacea against the impositions of the modern world; they imagine barriers and border walls as protection against the feeling of threat. Homeland as an expression of xenophobia and nationalism.

In a world that is becoming ever more charged in this way, people end up being thrown back into the Mediterranean or shot at border fences. There is no hope in this world. Only the law of right and survival of the fittest applies here. In this world, it is not worth acting rationally and selflessly. People prefer to suppress their conscience. Because people have no trust in others, they declare the principle that man is a wolf to man to be a law of nature. And ultimately believe in this law of nature themselves.

Politicians react to the insecurity of living conditions and the anger of citizens by, for example, setting up a Ministry of Homeland that promises to create a homeland but only lays fiber optic cables across the country. Politicians cannot, of course, order or enforce a homeland, but they can provide an infrastructure that enables people to create a life in which they feel at home and not neglected. Anyone who builds houses for refugees must also build houses for the long-established. After all, those who welcome “strangers” must feel safe. Those who are supposed to show respect to newcomers must also feel respected. Those who constantly feel despised by the red-green elite no longer have the strength for openness.

We will not be able to create THE just state in which everything is equal for everyone. Because in the end that can only mean dictatorship and terror. There is not THE utopian model of life and organization into which we can force all people. We have to accept different needs, ways of life, cultures and religions. Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently. But we must limit power and resist injustice.

Instead of mobbing and monitoring people, instead of calling for a coup, instead of spreading fear and making up threatening news, we could simply do a bit of gardening. Or invite the neighbor over for coffee and maybe even some homemade cake. We could simply think about the fact that what is good for us is also important for other people. We could switch off the computer and buy newspapers so that they don't all go bankrupt. We could delete our Amazon account and shop in the neighborhood. Maybe with less choice, but who needs more and more? We could go to the forest and watch the three birds that we haven't wiped out yet. We could simply be kind to each other. We could dare to have lots of little utopias, which is uncomfortable, but so much more lively.

In Dante's Divine Comedy, there is a vast limbo at the very top of the Hell's funnel. This is where the lukewarm souls, the whiners with no real worries, the indifferent, the ones who look away, the comfortable ones who neither heaven nor hell want to have crowd. They only vegetate.

We should stop just vegetating.