Utopianism and anarchism

This article challenges the assumption that utopian traditions of social and political thought have ceased to have any relevance, or make any contribution to, contemporary thinking. Key utopian ideas, specifically the importance of a focus on transforming the circumstances and environments of the present, are transmitted to the modern context by writers working in the anarchist tradition, who maintain anarchism's close links with utopianism, and continue to draw on, develop, and deploy utopian themes. Utopian themes are central to the anarchist writing of late 20th-century thinkers Paul Goodman and Colin Ward. These anarchists have developed the utopian themes of contingency, immanence and prefiguration. Their contact with utopian approaches to social change has also supported two unique deployments of these utopian themes. These are, firstly, a particular agency-centred vision of freedom as developed by the action and choices of individuals in the present, and, secondly, a specific portrayal of that active immediacy as pragmatic and piecemeal engagement with the immediate organisation of proximate material environments.