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ISBN ?
non-fiction, utopia, anarchy, women
Re-issued with a Foreword by George Woodcock.
"Journey Through Utopia was first published just after Ms Berneri's death. Her expert book not only describes the various utopian visions set down by many writers throughout history, but also critically assesses them. What makes her book on utopias of special significance to us, is her stress on pointing out the authoritarian nature of most of these 'ideal' commonwealths. Ms Berneri warns us of the slaves in Plato's and More's states and reminds us that we should look beyond them to seek the antiauthoritarian utopias of Diderot's Tahiti , William Morris's Nowhere , or Zamyatin's survivors of the free, instinctive life who defy the 'Unique State'.
"In her own words she says: 'The authoritarian utopias of the nineteenth century are chiefly responsible for the anti-utopian attitude prevalent among intellectuals today. But utopias have not always described regimented societies, centralized states and nations of robots. Diderot's Tahiti or Morris's Nowhere gave us utopias where men were free from both physical and moral compulsion, where they worked not out of necessity or a sense of duty but because they found work a pleasurable activity, where love knew no laws and where every man was an artist.
"'Utopias have often been plans of societies functioning mechanically, dead structures conceived by economists, politicians and moralists; but they have also been the living dreams of poets'." [jacket blurb, pbk]
"An excellent critique of utopian thinking from an anarchist perspective." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1977).
Highly Recommended.
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