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ISBN 0-8052-0338-9 (US pbk, 1972)
non-fiction, essay, utopia, scarcity, sociology, world issues
"Utopia and Its Enemies evaluates the main contemporary currents of attack on the utopian ideal and includes an analysis of modern utopian thought." [jacket blurb, US pbk, 1972]
"...is it reasonable to suppose that a world without scarcity is within human reach? Can everybody's basic material needs be satisfied? Is the suffering now so widespread corrigible with a rational reorganization and allocation of world resources? There is as yet no answer, nothing approaching an answer, to this question. Some, like Herbert Marcuse, suppose with a unwarranted ease that the reason there is scarcity is that advanced capitalism steals, hogs, and wastes the world's resources. Scarcity will end if capitalism is replaced. Others imagine that nothing can be done to improve the world's condition in the long run; that things will get worse. Population will outstrip the means of subsistence; irrecoverable resources will be exhausted; the natural environment will first become corrupted and then unlivable. One view is magical; the other apocalyptic. It seems to me that those who are guided by the idea of utopia must courageously examine the question of whether the material basis for a world without scarcity can ever come into being. The place of conjecture in such an examination will, of course, be large. The truth may be that there can be no utopia, but there can be an apocalypse. The morality of futurist thinking would then consist in trying to ward off or delay the apocalypse, not in dreaming about perfection, or even about a world without scarcity." --George Kateb (from the preface to Utopia and Its Enemies , 1972 edition).
"George Kateb provides us with a much needed critical study of utopian and antiutopian ideas. My own view, however, differs from both. As Marie Louis Berneri pointed out in her excellent book, Journey Through Utopia , most utopias are narrow, regulated societies, often authoritarian in management. Yet a few retain a sense of freedom, and the notion of individual creativity. As for the apocalyptic view, I have that too. But the apocalypse has already happened. So, now we need to find ways to neutralize the poisons that permeate the soil, air and water. We need a new constructive utopianism which recognizes the broad spectrum of possibilities and vigorously supports the best of them. Elimination of hunger, poverty, scarcity, and violence. The encouragement of creativity, invention, and diversity. Protection of civil liberties, human rights, and personal freedom. These are all truly worthy goals." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 12 March 1996).
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