Utopias and dystopias: the twain shall meet
Recently I was thinking about Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and that led me to the following video. A relatively short portion of it discusses the more general topic of utopian literature versus dystopian literature, and the speaker points out that those visions share collectivist characteristics and that therefore utopias and dystopias are two sides of the same coin, and that efforts at creating utopias lead inevitably to dystopic nightmares.
Here’s the excerpt
I once attended a philosophy class of my son’s that consisted of a discussion of Candide’s Dr. Pangloss’ insistence that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” That statement seems absurd on the face of it – how could it be? But by the end of the class it seemed quite plausible that in fact, this is the best of all possible worlds – accent on the word possible.
NOTE: I wrote about Brave New World in this 2024 post.
Speaking of Utopias and Dystopias, Eugene Lyons wrote two books on the topics.
Assignment in Utopia
The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America
Assignment in Utopia deals with his 6 years as a reporter in the USSR. Among other things, he interviewed Stalin—in Russian, no less. He discusses NYT reporter Walter Duranty’s “reporting” on the Ukraine famine—fraudulent reporting for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Lyons went to the USSR as a supporter of the Bolshivek “experiment,” but his six years there changed his mind.
What about Galt’s Gulch? The oath of which was:
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I swear by my life and my love of it I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
— Ayn Rand,”Atlas Shrugs”
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Or does having such a strong shared core belief make the Gulch collectivist?
huxley:
Is Galt’s Gulch actually promoted as a utopia? I don’t think Rand was into utopian thinking. But I’ve never read the full book.
neo:
I doubt Rand promoted GG as a utopia. She might have refused to categorize it that way because almost all utopias, as you point out, are collectivist. The same may likely be true of her followers
However, there is no shortage of writers and critics who refer to Galt’s Gulch as Rand’s utopia. For example:
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/utopian-studies/article-abstract/23/1/238/289913/Galt-s-Gulch-Ayn-Rand-s-Utopian-Delusion
I read “Atlas Shrugged” about the same time I took a college course on Utopian literature. GG sure seemed like a utopia to me.
FWIW, “Atlas Shrugged” is a very long, mostly conventional novel with lots of plots and character arcs.
However, it dances around a mystery — the creative, productive people are disappearing. Turns out — to a hidden valley named Galt’s Gulch after its founder John Galt. IOW Atlas shrugs and moves to Galt’s Gulch.
Dagney Taggart, the heroine, happens to crash land in the Gulch and meets Galt. She returns to America. Galt follows her, hacks into the radio system and gives a three-hour speech explaining Rand’s philosophy. As I recall that’s about 100 pages of the book.
That lengthy exposition defintiely puts “Atlas Shrugged” into the utiopian category along with Huxley’s “Island.”
Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia” was a political satire, I believe.