Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism
- 13h 43m
- Gregory Claeys
- Princeton University Press
- 2022
In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today’s thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability.
Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities.
An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.
About the Author
Gregory Claeys is professor emeritus of the history of political thought at the University of London. His many books include Marx and Marxism and Searching for Utopia. Twitter @GClaeysHistory
In this Book
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Redefining Utopianism for a Post-Consumer Society
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The Mythical Background—Remembering Original Equality
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Theories of Realised Utopianism
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The Varieties of Utopian Practice
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Luxury, Sociability, and Progress in Literary Projections of Utopia—From Thomas More to the Eighteenth Century
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The Triumph of Unsocial Sociability? Luxury in the Eighteenth Century
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The Later Eighteenth Century and the French Revolution
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Simplicity and Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Utopianism
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Twentieth-Century Consumerism and the Utopian Response
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Counterculture and Consumerism—The 1960s
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Life After Consumerism—Utopianism in the Age of Sufficiency
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Conclusion—The Great Change—Creating Enhanced Simplicity
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Afterword—Covid-19 and Sociability
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Bibliography of Works Cited
