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.
If there's anything you should learn from Trump, it's that it doesn't matter one iota what most people think. Most people will consider the status quo natural and anything outside of it laughable, regardless of how ideas and people move across that boundary. If we make leftism reality, centrists will become leftists without us ever needing to actively convince them.
What matters is the rate at which people learn good ideas and the rate at which people give up on trying to make those good ideas a reality. A small group of people learning great ideas is more valuable than millions learning a populist version of those same ideas. It's better to fascinate a thousand and weird out a million than to have a million people vaguely agree with you.