A common response to the case of the World Socialist Movement is the word utopian! It is uttered with a note of finality as though it needs no elaboration. "You are utopian !” they tell us, and whether they are one-hundred percent defenders of what is called the American way of life or blood-and-thunder type, self-styled, revolutionists they regard us with an expression of pity and usually change the subject. The anti-establishment radical and the defender of the status quo are, on this subject, allies because they are both convinced that our goal of a world without nations, without buying and selling, without wage labor and capital — employers and employees — is an impossible dream in our lifetime, the lifetimes of our children, grandchildren and possibly our great and ever-so-great grandchildren. It is utopian, they tell us. to feel otherwise.
Well, we are not so certain that our detractors of either variety know quite what they are talking about, that they really understand the meaning of the term utopian as applied to the advocates of world socialism. For the word does have a definite meaning and utopianism did have a definite role to play at an earlier period in the development of capitalism. In fact, it still has at least a debatable reason for existence in lowly-developed areas of the capitalist world. We refer to the organisation of colonies such as New Harmony, Brook Farm, Oneida, and a host of others in early America; to the kibbutzim of modern, but industrially weak Israel; to all of the attempts in the past and the present here, there and everywhere to build islands of peaceful cooperation in a violent sea of capitalism. This is utopianism, and whether it is the idealist who seeks to get away from it all by retiring to a kibbutz or even to a hippie community, or the so-called socialists and communists who believe that socialism — even communism, as they like to put it — can be built within the borders of a nation it is they, not us. who are the utopians.
There will be no peace for them as long as they exist in a capitalist world and to blame this on people of ill-will, on reactionaries, on Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives is to indulge in more escapism from reality, in more utopianism. The pressures of capitalist economics and the pressures of the capitalist state are all around and will allow no peace, no escape, no utopianism. Do we have to dwell on this point?
We are not utopians. We are hard-headed, practical, scientific socialists. We know that capitalism and the suffering for most of the population that goes with it cannot be abolished simply by changing the organization from private ownership to state ownership. Nor can capitalism be improved for most of the population by passing reform legislation in congress or parliament or whatever it is called. Nor does It make sense to retire to some backwoods area where one can live a desperate, hand-to-mouth existence while one is free to toll from sunup to sundown on infertile soil even if the capitalist state were to maintain a complete hands-off attitude, an unlikely probability.
This is not our concept of freedom. Friends! Fellow-workers! There is a world of potential plenty for everybody who inhabit the earth. And it is there for the taking. How do we take it? Not by idle, utopian dreaming. Not by the encouragement of nations whether designated capitalist, communist, or anything else. The way to abolish poverty, war, hatreds based upon skin color and ethnic background is to organize on the political field to abolish nations, to abolish buying and selling, to abolish wage labor and capital, to introduce a world society based upon production for use, not for sale. Anything short of this goal is utopian, will not work. Do you really need more evidence than the history of the last fifty years? Let’s organize now, not for more utopianism but for world socialism.
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