Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism by Gregory Claeys

As humanity confronts the climate crisis, it has become increasingly clear that science alone cannot save us. Official reports based on the natural sciences “fail to analyze critically the value systems, power relationships, and institutional processes that have resulted in climate change.”1 If we are to meet the moment and create a truly sustainable society, it is imperative that the humanities and social sciences join the conversation. Therein lies the importance of this book, which argues that utopian thought can help humanity envision the transformations necessary to construct a sustainable world.The bulk of this lengthy tome traces the history of utopian ideas though four ages: the early modern period, during which spatial concepts, particularly the idea of the Americas, occupied humanists’ minds; the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, when writers turned their attention to the future; the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the age of the Soviet experiment and other attempts to realize utopias; and, finally, the turn of the twenty-first century, when critics claimed that the victory of capitalism and liberalism over communism spelled the “‘end of history’ and ‘end of utopia’—proposals which now look downright ridiculous” (17). Rather than merely surveying utopian thought, however, Claeys focuses on two intellectual threads running through its history, the critique of luxury and the valorization of sociability.The longstanding critique of luxury is critical to Claeys’ argument. Early modern thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Christian traditions as they blamed luxury for corrupting morals and eroding civic virtue. French Revolutionaries repudiated aristocratic ostentation in favor of Spartan simplicity, and early nineteenth-century utopian socialists banished luxury from their visions of egalitarian society. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the appeal of ancient austerity began to wane as socialists sought a higher standard of living for working people. Claeys urges contemporary activists to reclaim past critiques of luxury and demand the end of excessive consumption. But because he does not expect the rich (which he defines as the wealthiest 15 percent of humanity) to heed readily such a call, he introduces the second key theme of utopian discourse: sociability. Enhanced sociability, he claims, will compensate the rich for the material sacrifices they will have to make. Here, too, the utopian tradition serves as a wellspring of ideas; thinkers from Thomas More to the hippies of the 1960s extolled the virtues of public sociability, which cultivates a sense of belonging and, according to current psychological research, generates human happiness.Claeys’ analysis of the rhetoric of luxury and sociability sets up his final chapter, which adds a third theme—sustainability—and lays out a plan for a twenty-first-century utopia. He proposes a radical Green New Deal to be implemented by an international body invested with sweeping powers and a massive budget that will set energy, transportation, housing, food, labor, tax, and environmental policy across the globe. The plan balances international social engineering with “voluntary simplicity,” vibrant local democratic institutions, and mass amusement (in the form of festivals) that will see humanity through the jarring transition to green socialism (463).The strength of Claeys’ vision is that it avoids the most dangerous extremes of utopian thought, eschewing both naïve prescriptions for re-enchantment and soul-killing regimens of austerity. His is a clear-eyed utopianism that seeks to move beyond capitalism and socialism, both of which are predicated on “the indefinite expansion of human needs, production, and population” (453).Yet the book is not without weaknesses. The interpretation of consumer desire that underpins its argument blindly follows a tradition stretching from Bernard Mandeville to Thorstein Veblen (via Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith) that emphasizes emulation (status competition through conspicuous consumption) at the expense of other anthropological and sociological theories of consumption. The book also tends to assume the existence of a universal human psychology, which strikes this reader as profoundly ahistorical and, given the book’s content, Eurocentric. Indigenous ideas of sustainability are sorely neglected. Nevertheless, the book makes a compelling argument that the utopian imagination has a critical role to play in the creation of a sustainable future. Further, at the most basic level, the book’s methodology encourages scholars and activists alike to use knowledge of the past as a resource in the life-and-death struggle for a green world. For that reason alone, this book deserves to be read widely.