Andrew M. Ward
June 2026
Utopias, as the Observatory suggests, are often restricted to the imaginary. The very word utopia means ‘no place’ ‘ou-topos’, though it is also a wordplay on the homophone ‘eu-topos’, meaning ‘good place’. From its earliest inception utopia was not intended to describe current conditions, but to project the possibilities for human flourishing, escaping the material and social restrictions of any ‘real’ place. This is also reflected in the use of utopian as a term used to dismiss ideas, as unrealistic, impractical, ‘pie-in-the-sky’.
Yet, many attempts have also been made to make utopian ideas a reality. Whilst none can be characterised as having completely achieved their aims, they have opened possibilities, experimented with new ideas and philsopsophies, attempting to show us another world is possible. As Oscar Wilde reminds us in ‘Man under Socialism’: A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
The utopian visions that drove many communities in 19th century America show both the limits and the possibilities of utopia. The industrialists and philosophers known as the ‘utopian socialists’ had the tools to go a step further. They believed they could engineer socialism in model communities. Communities like New Lanark, run by Welsh industrialist Robert Owen from 1800, would be test cases for Owen’s ideas on popular education, urban planning and labor regulation which would have influence beyond New Lanark. Owen opened the first kindergarten in Great Britain, and advocated for a holistic progressive education which had a lasting influence on schooling in Britain. The enduring legacy of Robert Owen as a key figure in the development of British trade unions and the cooperative movement is testament to how utopianism can drive real change. Owen also purchased an entire town, New Harmony, Indiana, from another communitarian experimental group - the utopian religious group known as the Harmonists - but his efforts to populate it with utopian socialists collapsed. Whilst Owen’s American experiments were unsuccessful, an offshoot of another utopian socialist experiment, inspired by the ideas of Etienne Cabet. The Corning Icarian Colony Iowa, which lasted 46 years before dissolving in 1898, which counts it among the longest non-religious communitarian experiments in the US. Unlike Owen’s vision, the Icarian communities were primarily agricultural. In the Icarians' own words ‘all work according to their strength and ability’, and their food was ‘wholesome and plentiful’. The late anthropologist David Graeber describes taking direct action as the ‘defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free’. In the early 1800s, America was seen as the place this could be done.
Whilst we should not shy away from the complicated histories of utopianism, it also provides fertile grounds for ideas and experiments. The goal of social transformation requires an optimism not always immediately at hand in current conditions. Utopia allows us to dream; otherwise, we are bereft of imagination and so condemned to accept the current limitations of existing conditions.
Robert Owen’s plans for his short-lived commune at New Harmony, Indiana