Utopianism in the Work of Zygmunt Bauman - Sociologi - Aalborg ...

utopia (Bauman 1976a), socialism still proved a viable solution to many of the
problems faced by capitalism such as ‘legitimisation crises’ but already in the
early 1980’s these hopes ended in the throes of death culminating in the up-
heavals in Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s and the definitive dethronement of
the State Socialist projects. These Socialist utopias, being some of the only uto-
pian attempts in history ever really to have been put into flesh instead of merely
remaining words, as the ancient Greeks expected of their classical utopian aspi-
rations, were ultimately ‘upturned’ as Noberto Bobbio (1989) termed it. Peter
Beilharz (1991) showed how many of ‘labour’s utopias’ on the Left such as
bolshevism, Fabianism and social democracy all failed to deliver and bring
about the promised mode of production where oppression and alienation disap-
peared and his analysis is indeed inspired by Bauman’s own work on the failed
class project of socialism (cf. Bauman 1972, 1982). This historical defeat of
socialism, or the vulgar variant of it practised in the East, however, did not
mean that Bauman shrew in the towel and altogether surrendered his socialism
convictions. Many of his ideas of socialism as a particularly active utopia still
remain with him as well as the hope that such ideas can “pave the way for a
critical activity which alone can transform the present predicament of man”
(Bauman 1976a:13). Instead of supporting utopianism as conventional and con-
serving activity, today he rather views it as critical activity.
Bauman’s values, though, are no longer exclusive socialist if understood
in terms of ideological monopoly. Rather, they appear to be encompassing and
universal humanistic values that especially the Enlightenment philosophers es-
poused despite his often outspoken critique of the historical excesses of
Enlightenment. As he stated in an interview conducted a decade ago about the
utopian principles (of justice, self-assertion and autonomy) guiding his work:
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