Conservative apologists for the status quo often stigmatize their opponents as “utopian.” But socialists and feminists shouldn’t be afraid of the term, since utopian thought can play an important role in helping us develop practical alternatives.
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Today’s conservatives do not merely resist change. Project 2025, for instance, is in many ways a textbook example of utopian thought, with an ethical vision that grounds its specific policy proposals and touches on every aspect of society, from family to trade, from gender to taxes. This imagined world is one they want to produce, not preserve, even if it’s wrapped up in traditionalist ideology.
The Left needs its own counterproposals: rich accounts of a transformed society that both help us decide what steps we should take now and keep us motivated for the long haul. I’m not suggesting all leftists should unite around one utopia but rather that debate and experimentation around ambitious aims for social transformation is an urgent political project rather than a matter of merely academic concern. Pace Marx and Engels, utopia’s radical potential has not yet been exhausted.
Here in the US, racists would break this. If you help one black person who “doesn’t deserve it”, then angry whites would rather shoot themselves in the eye than let the program stand. Well, that’s the angle that right-wing pundits use, anyway, and it’s shown to be effective time and time again.
The Nordic model is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not ambitious enough to set as a target. Plus, by being a real thing rather than an aspiration, people will look at the real flaws in the system as proof that it isn’t viable elsewhere. Ya know, like the xenophobia that people point to as the secret sauce of the Nordic model (not saying they’re right, just pointing it out as an example).
Creating a holistic vision of a future you want and the steps needed to be taken to get there will get far more results than pointing to real but flawed existing systems that can be attacked for being “imperfect”.