It's a nice academic distinction, but it doesn't work in practice. How one sets up a social organization of production affects how and what is produced. The relations and forces of production are unified, interpenetrate, and determine each others' character. So we can't separate the "bad utopianism" (figuring out how to get people to work together) from the "good utopianism" (figuring out how to save water, etc.) BTW, several of the 19th century utopians were pro-environment (e.g., William Morris).
BTW2, I'm in favor of limited utopianism, where it's treated as a subject for discussion and collective self-education rather than as a set-in-stone blueprint to be imposed. The utopians often have the same attitudes as the stereotyped Vanguardists: while the utopian says "here is my correct scheme for how to run society, so worship it, follow me, and stop thinking for yourself," the Vanguardist says "here is my correct Party Line or Program, so worship it, follow me, and stop thinking for yourself."
------------------------
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 8:14 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:29861] Re: utopianism??
>
>
> Jim Devine:
> >when you advocate "measureable proposals," are you saying
> that we need to
> >develop "recipes for the cook-shops of the future"? I
> thought you were
> >against utopianism.
>
> Utopianism means blueprints for how society should be run.
> Stating that
> there are 2 billion souls on earth and given 2 trillion gallons of
> available water, we must strive to guarantee sufficient drinking and
> sanitation necessities for all these souls is not very
> "utopian". It would
> only be utopian if we came up with the precise political
> forms to implement
> this goal. All we need to do is look at how water is used
> today and project
> intelligent alternatives. This means drawing upon
> *scientific* input from
> hydraulic engineers, etc., not disciples of Fourier or Bakunin. For
> example, the Green Revolution is a complete misuse of water.
> So are big
> hydroelectric dams. Opposing such waste is not utopian. It is
> rock-solid
> realism. Utopianism would involve something like this:
>
> ---
>
> Suppose we work in a ball bearing plant. It is time to figure
> out how much
> steel we need, how to apportion our tasks among ourselves, and how to
> organize our day. Yes, these decisions affect on people beyond our
> workplace so that consumers of our product, producers of
> products we use,
> and also citizens in the vicinity impacted by our byproducts,
> should all
> have a say-by all means. But should we workers in the plant wait for
> authoritative instructions from municipal assemblies who are neither
> knowledgeable about our plant nor use the ball bearings that
> we produce,
> and should we influence the outcomes ourselves only via our
> participation
> in those local assemblies, separated from our jobs and
> co-workers, as if we
> had no greater stake than other folks? Should those who
> actually use the
> ball bearings have no greater say than those who don't? This
> seems to me so
> overwhelmingly odd a proposal to entertain that the pressure
> causing the
> Libertarian Municipalists to rule out workers in workplaces
> having any
> direct power over workplace outcomes via their own workers
> councils, and to
> rule out consumers having impact via consumers' councils as
> well, must be
> very compelling indeed.
>
> full: http://www.zmag.org/lm.htm
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> www.marxmail.org
>
