The two utopias

Paul Berman - in a 1996 work, which is now enlarged and re-proposed with an analysis of Italy of the seventies – conducted a reconstruction of the return of the utopias in the second half of the 20th Century (1) : a return which involved; the mercantile/capitalist rationality of the West; the planned industrial society of East Europe and Asia, and the developing Third World immersed in bitter conflict, still characterized by the presence of beliefs which guide or contest the social planning and the management of the politics. It is a reconstruction of a history of ideas, cultures and counter-cultures, delivered in modest tones and apparently a neutral record of facts, but not without theoretical consistency and ability to introduce new elements in the interpretation of the 20th Century. As a background, and enriching Berman’s work, are the great theories of Karl Mannheim and the comparison which the scholar makes between ideologies and utopias.
According to Mannheim, utopia is a project of social organization contrary to the existing order, “unfeasible from the point of view of an already established social order” (2) , (that is, workable in the framework of a change in the social structure), while the ideologies represent fallacious/ineffective messages (3) . In addition, Berman’s work is also a reply to those analyses of the 20th Century which defines it as the almost exclusive theatre of ideologies (4) , as a century characterized by clashes of ideas oriented to justify the conquest and maintenance of absolute and total power.
In the 20th Century, above all, at the beginning and the end of the century, ideologies and utopias, ethical propaganda and models of societies, alternative to the existing ones, criss-cross in repeated alternation. In particular, with the 70’s, always according to Berman, the ideologies become distorted or destroyed by a potent injection of utopia. A utopia which does not manifest itself as a disarming illusion, but which appears able, with time, to perform great transformations, by working from the real state of existent things, from the realpolitik and the “partial” representations of the society and of the political conflict, instead of guaranteeing unexpected and impossible changes.
The anti-ideological and non-ideological character of the utopias of 1968 can be seen in the fragmentation potential they have. The construction of a new society modelled in that utopian mixing pot undermines, at the foundations, traditional visions of the world. The push for liberty and equality, facing questions which, up to then, were unexplored, (equality of ethnic group, race and gender) damages an ideology of socialism restricted to the social consequences of the capitalist production.
Inequality, for this ideology, was manifested, above all, in the area of the factory: not in the society, the school or the family. The utopia of equality which was forged in those months and in those years strikes also an ideological aspect of liberal thought: the claim that the competition in the market favours, also without introducing strong modifications in the fundamental rules and customs, an equal distribution of opportunity in ascending the social ladder. The utopias system of 1968 hurts the political balances of the democracies of Western Europe, but it has sufficient strength to overcome the traditional theories and ideologies which had disguised the positions in conflict. The shortcoming of liberty is seen - both in western countries, in which economic liberty is not accompanied by equality in work, in competition, in customs, in the school, in the family - and in the eastern regimes in which, under the name of an appearance of material equality, the bases of democracy are repressed and the society is submitted to the rule of a rank of bureaucrats.
Barman writes that “around 1968, utopian elation was spreading throughout the student world, and also in many adult circles” (5) . The elation was generated by a rush of great events: “four enormous revolutions were contemporaneously shaking the world” (6) .
The first was a cultural revolution, consisting of protests, contesting authority, integration – in the civil society and then in the political one – protests of the Afro-Americans, open dispute against race discrimination and against the censorship of certain sexual identities. The themes of the first revolution were equality, equal rights, in a world which recommended competition for success, which privileged merit, which preached the innovation, but which tied personal destinies to status (family, citizenship, race and ethnic group), and which respected a code of ethics which was oriented towards social conservation.
The second was a revolution of the spirit, made up of new research on religiousness, on being, on the sense of reacting, on meditation (7) . According to Berman, the new spirituality found expression not only in the thousands of streams which lead to the sea of non-conformist religiousness, (the re-discovery of oriental religions, the diffusion of Buddhism, the culture of the prayer, the new syncretism, the faiths inherited from the past and those created in modernity, the mass conversions of non-traditional religions), but also in the more centralized religious institutions: the Catholic Church. Berman sees a new symptom in the II Vatican Council, in the rising of new theologies, in the compiling of new Christian catechisms.
The third was the world revolution against western imperialism. In the 60’s “the impression was strengthened that the Leninist-Marxist liberation movements were able to triumph in any distant corner of the peasant world, that the western superpowers were able to do absolutely nothing, that the high-tech folly of the western civilization had found its nemesis” (8) . Also here, a process of modernization besides liberation. The political movements of the Third World clothed themselves in a Marxist language to justify their clash with the imperialistic powers. But beyond this, affirmed the irreconcilability of forms of colonialism, old and new, and any type of subordination of nations in a system of exchange which, to be efficient, had to be performed on an equality basis.
The fourth revolution came up on another front and began to undermine the totalitarian regimes of East Europe and the construction of the already realized socialism.” The possibility that movements of the Left could actively rebel against the Soviet type communism and that they could even topple these tyrannies suddenly became a reality in Prague For the first time, for a brief moment, the defeat of communism was imaginable” (9) . The fall of the eastern regimes was not attributed to the fruit of the cold war, to the isolation of the ‘empire of evil’, but to the consequence of an onset, of people and elite, endowed with strong utopian ideas.
In Berman’s eyes, the spirit of ’68 delineated a complex society that was characterized by a strong desire for liberation and was initially tied to political cultures which contested both the modern market economy, and the representative institutions which had traditional accompanied it. The new society would not have been that of the competition of interests and of the separation between politics and economy, crowned by the representative liberal system, but a society in which politics and economy would merge and in which the control of decisions would be exercised from the bottom. “It would have been a society of direct democracy, with rustic characteristics (Third World style), refined (Czechoslovakia style) anarchic (workers’ councils) or permeated with counter-cultures (…) in any case, admirable” (10) .
Berman’s analysis proceeds with the description of a new utopian thought which manifested itself after ’68: utopias having a strong fragmentation charge which recuperated the foundations of the modern liberal democratic politics, changing, in part, the referenced points of the utopias which had immediately preceded them. The liberal democracy, before avoided or scorned as evil, is now seen, not only in the East European countries, but also in the cities of Western Europe, as endowed with innovative character.
To the old ideas of radical change in the social order and direct democracy, new ideas are substituted with an equal utopian drive. “There was the French version (which was put in motion by the movement of the new philosophers); the Eastern Block version (with the socialist students of 1968 who, while serving terms of imprisonment, were transformed into liberal dissidents, supporters of human rights)” (11) .
From the aspiration of the direct democracy, this new utopian construction passes to the appreciation of the representative democracy, in various versions: liberal or social democratic. Among the many that had supported the egalitarian utopia, observes Berman, they then discover the necessity of a democratic and liberal revolution. Two different attitudes having the same charge of utopia; “With the outburst of liberal revolutions in various regions, from the Baltic Sea to South Africa (…), the old hope of re-organizing the world on completely new and infinitely more democratic bases (…), the hope and the forbidden dream of utopia seem yet to be obtainable” (12) .


Projects and powers

In the French May of 1968, l’imagination au pouvoir was one of the most diffused slogans able to produce long-term effects on public opinion and to give rise to alarm in the political world. The movements asked the public institutions, the political forces the economic powers and the work organizations, for a return to the project, a re-composition of the profound reasons of the co-existence between individuals, a radical re-thinking of social relations, a new definition of the spaces for the conflicts and the nature of the conflicts. In some cases, the call was made directly to the people or to “classes”, on the assumption that the traditional representation was unable to perform the mandates conferred upon them. They asked that ‘where to go and how to go’ be defined, to animate a new season of political commitment, to control the sense of certain conquests defined as historically significant, to edify a new world that could not be degraded to the old decrepit worn-out world, to avoid that the revolution provoke into action its very own members, the more obscure of the counter-revolutions. The utopia wanted to animate the revolution, but impede betrayal.

The two utopias described by Berman expressed a dispute of the existing cultural, political and social balances, and gave rise to strong reactions from institutions, parties and States (both bureaucratic and democratic, from the majorities and from the oppositions, from both the West and the East). With a new desire for re-construction, the movements seemed to want to sweep away all that was in existence. The two utopias which manifested themselves between the 70’s and 80’s were able to converse with the powers, and not only at a distance. Dialogue consisted in harsh demands for change, in some cases, demands which shook and were able to induce the fall of powerful personalities or political edifices.
The themes which fed these exchanges were taken from the theories and principles which were at the base of the modern society and politics: secularization, individual responsibility, separation of the State and the civil society, the autonomy of the State from religion, the autonomy of the individual in search of truth (ethical, scientific, social) and in artistic creation. To the original theory forged in the advent of the modern society is added the radicalism of the objectives, definable both in space and time. The utopia designed projects which were able to regulate vast territories: geographic and social, differentiating, above all, from the point of view of time. The utopian project had sense only if it were able to translate itself into immediate realization.
The slogan ‘all and immediately’, which unites quantity/space with time, expresses very well that specific culture of the radicalism of objectives/time/means.
Furthermore, the utopian construction had to regulate, certainly, in a new way, irrespectively and non-ritually, relations and social conflicts on which it had worked for 10 years and on the official politics for much more than a century. A part of the utopia took themes right from the European socialist and communist tradition, returning to the origins of this last. In the French May, there were those who wanted to avenge themselves for the condemnation inflicted by Lenin on extremism, “infantile sickness”, denouncing in return, to the government or to the opposition, the senile degeneration of communism.
In other cases, unfortunate utopias re-emerged (from the point of view of mass consensus) like the anarchic ones or forms of fusion between models and different theories.
However, the utopia tried, in the regulation of social relations, to introduce principles which belonged to the entire cultural heritage of the modern industrial society. Secularization which entrusts to man, single individuals or associates, the task of deciding ones own destiny without recourse to transcendent principles deduced from pure reason. Equality, which entrusts social destinies to individual ability and not to status or to privileges acquired through birth. Liberty, as a right to non-manipulation by external authorities and as a duty to contribute, with the force of ones own subjectivity, to the social life.
The subjects to whom the movements addressed themselves were in certain respects the same which constituted the political power base, the social modifications which the movements wanted to introduce were more radical than those elaborated by the official political coalition, but in general, compatible with the industrial economies and with experimented systems of connections.
The utopia of 1968 and of the subsequent years also turned to social groups, until then, ignored by the parties or by the public powers or considered only at the level of political rhetoric. With the 1968 movement, it was asked that solutions be found to the needs of the young, the women, ethnic identity and to the needs of those who felt or were discriminated against for reasons of sexual propensity.
The themes that animated the utopias described by Berman are a condensed version of the very values of the industrial society: as much socialist as liberal-democratic; as much anarchic-collectivists as anarchic-capitalists. The genesis and the structure of those utopias are decipherable by keeping in mind the sources from which they were drawn.
Let us take certain themes as examples:
A) Equality of kind.
The objective of bringing about the end of any discrimination of kind coincides, in some respects, with the socialist and class objective of suppressing the exploitation of human labour. The question of the equality of the sexes is concerned with cancelling the women’s sentence of being relegated to the reproduction functions, to underpaid and subordinate work, which destines only the man to the production of wealth. As a background to the claims for equality of kind, there are also themes of the capitalist and liberal modern culture. The question of the liberation of women underlines how the modern culture must, in order to grow, free itself from ties of the community type. Competition cannot co-exist with a division of labour based on sex discrimination, which condemns ‘half the planet’ to domestic roles, excluding it from productive work, from schooling, from studies, from creative research, from innovation, from the market, from the autonomous access to the consumers.
B) Ethnic equality.
In the Black Panther movement of the United States, equalitarian themes from the distant Marxist and Leninist ascendancy found fertile ground. But the problem of ethnic equality is a question of fundamental importance also for the modern market society. The 1861-65 Civil War in the United States was not only a conflict over the equal dignity of individuals, but also a modernizing vehicle for the Country. In the war, the Northern States assert juridical and ethical principles strictly tied to the economic development: the equal dignity of individuals and, also, the re-assertion of the fact that servile or discriminatory labour, incompatible with modern industry, accompanies only backwardness or decline. (13)
C) The itineraries of spirituality.
As a symptom of the utopianism of the 60’s, Berman recalls the individual’s new search for a religion. In the United States and Europe a self-reform of religious customs and religions is witnessed. Many religious customs embrace transcendentalism, which is favoured both by the traditional and new types of faiths. A religious pluralism is diffused and proselyte religions grow in geographical contexts and in different cultures. The organized religions of the West affect internal reforms in an attempt to reduce the obstacles involved in reciprocal dialogue, or rather, the separation between clergymen and laymen: in the search for truth and in the reading of the sacred texts. During and after ’68, religious pluralism, at times, assumed picturesque characteristics, but it cannot be forgotten that the multiplicity of the faiths, the individual search for truth represented cultural factors to which are attributed the affirmation of capitalism in Europe (Weber) and the same geneses of the American democracy (Tocqueville).
D) The free search for happiness.
The utopianism of the 60’s strongly condemns the politics and the ethics of the repression of sexuality and discrimination against different sexual orientations. It is not just a question of liberal pulsation or existential anarchism. At the base of freedom for sexual propensities lies a fundamental principle of the modern society: the right to happiness engraved clearly in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, concerns a right which regards the existence of a citizen, but it also regards the forms of the society and the relation between the community and the individual. With the recognition of the individual right to the search for happiness, the Fathers of the Union mark the difference between the pre-modern community in which ethical and communitarian regulations surround the individual with a cage of prohibitions, by the civil society in which the individual, with his particularities, preferences and sympathies, is guarantor for the social cohesion. In fact, Adam Smith affirms that social cooperation was not determined by benevolence, but by egoism.
E) The Third World cause.<<
Also the movements’ Third World vocation of the 60’s had two faces. On the one side, it expressed equalitarian Marxist type or socialist cultures. The different distribution of resources among the nations would represent, on a global scale, the reproduction of the inequality among men which is seen in the single societies. The Third World cause of those years tried to apply the analyses of Marx, conducted principally on the developed society, to the developing, under-developed and “primitive” societies. But there is the other face of the theme. The inequality among nations not only creates injustice and deprivation, but it also inhibits development. The competition among nations is altered and the going concerns in the dominant and developed countries are not stimulated to compete with under-developed countries. In the Third World vocation of the 60’s, the message of Lenin is sometimes read, other times, the message of the liberal Victorians, who criticize colonialism (and the war for economic power) as a denial of peaceful industrial competition (14) .
The double identity of the cultures which are at the base of the utopias of the 60’s explain the continuity of protest from opposite systems, the capacity of manifesting itself as much in realized liberalism as in realized socialism: to animate the French Spring, as well as the Czecho-Slovak one, to begin the activity in the West to reach, in twenty years, a complete work of institutional demolition in the East.

From the offensive to the defence


With the beginning of the 21st Century the tempest of the utopias seemed to abate. Berman recognizes that after having extolled the rise of the peaceful revolution able to overwhelm the regimes of the East, he marks the decline. “Once again the sensation is felt that basic principles for a good society had, at last, been discovered. Once more, history seemed to proceed in a certain direction. And again, just as had happened after the revolts around 1968, in different parts of the world, the scarlet wave of colossal disasters arrived, of ethnic massacres and of gangster tyrannies” (15) . The hypothesis and the signalling of the decline are not only foreseen by Berman.
Christophe Aguiton, scholar of social organization, saw, with the end of 20th Century, a crisis of the movements, or rather, a structural decline to which was added a weakening of projects which had animated the 20th Century. “In not more than twenty years, in the more developed countries – North America, Western Europe and Japan – the unions had lost approximately half of their members. Perhaps, even more decisive than the crisis of the organizations of the workers’ movement and of the Left, in general, is the bankruptcy of ideology and prospective.
At the same time, the three great ideological answers of the post-war period came about: the models of the planned economy realized in a bureaucratic way in the East European countries; the Keynesian or Fordian models supported by the Western governments between the 50’s and 70’s, point of reference of the social-democratic parties and to a great extent by the unions, and lastly, the development models of numerous countries of the Third World” (16) .
In the face of the globalization in the world, three trends are manifest, to which correspond three poles, around which, organizations, parties and governments are collocated. There is a radical and anti-nationalist pole which is opposed to globalization, seeing it as a manifestation of capitalist development. It is a substantial pole which, however, does not formulate concrete propositions as a whole. “The possible alternative answers – democratic planning, self-management, etc., they are made fragile by the general crisis of the different projects of social transformation” (17) .
There is a nationalist pole which believes the closure within state borders is necessary, in order to preserve economies and living conditions against the tempest of the free markets. The nationalist pole is supported not only by the opulent countries of the West, but also some countries in the process of development.
Lastly, there is a neo-reformist pole that seeks formulas which are able to govern a process which is considered, in itself, positive and inevitable.
Besides the triple polarization, a modification of strategies can be seen, of both the parties and the new movements, made of unexpected backward steps and rapid advancements. “While the social movements have become totally radicalized, the political parties have evolved towards the Right” (18) . Furthermore, “the social movements mobilize themselves against the environmental and social consequences of the free trade globalization, arriving then at a more total protest. The political parties, especially if they take part in government management, have the tendency to consider the ties of this same globalization as immovable facts, which, at the most, the effects can be corrected.” (19) .
In the new movements which begin to take form, strategies, objectives and social installation change (20) . The radicalization is not manifested as a choice of attack, but of defence. The themes of the resistance, to resist, to impede, recur in the new movements, which start from the presupposition that they have to adapt to the new economic context, to the new social stratification, to the return of culture (such as the liberal and free-trade ones) which seemed to have been buried or drastically re-dimensioned in the course of the 20th Century. “We have come to a first conclusion: in a similar context, the classic rule, according to which, to remain on the defensive is better than to attack, has never been truer” (21) . As a background, there is the no-global movement, which presents itself as a convergence of a plurality of organizations or tendencies that are seeking a space for discussion, even before ratification or coordination. In the no-global archipelago, the movements oriented towards the cancellation of the debt of the poorest countries, has a pre-eminent position. Then there is the area of radical ecology, a composite area, but in which the English organization Reclaim the Streets assumes the role of symbol and which uses the spectacular (e.g. a simulated road accident) to diffuse environmental messages. There is still the sector of farmers’ movements which is against biotechnology and which tries to oppose the competition of the high-tech cultivation which is able to erode the traditional production.

Aguiton records again the experience of the actions against unemployment, knowing, however, the limited character of the network which supports it, (“essentially, the French network of the fight against unemployment and exclusion, and some Left streams of the Spanish and Italian unions”) (22) . In the catalogue, those of the women are collocated, as well as, the variegated experience of the non-government organizations.
Among the few experiences with a clear social interlocutor, there are, for Aguiton, those of the autonomous unions. The new work organizations are called to replace a traditional union in crisis, damaged by a new work structure behind which is the end of the Fordian model of production in the West. New organizations or worker co-ordinations substitute the great trade-union. These organizations are favoured in their installation by a particular type of selected organization: “they are managed by an apparatus of people which works part-time in order that the militants can maintain contact with the services and centres of production. When a trade-union conflict explodes, mandates of a limited duration are established through an operation which always privileges the consensus and the power of decision of the basic requests” (23) . Basically, the new trade-unionism, unlike the traditional one, seems able adapt to a productive structure founded on the precariousness, the pliability and the inconstancy of employment.
Aguiton does not deny the fragmentary and limited character of the new movements. They are the fruit of a global/social contingency: politics and economy have reduced the space for the irregular protest actions and have softened the traditional protest struggles. The head-on struggle has become surplus. The characteristic of this, writes Aguiton, is in the possibility of taking action when: “the fluidity of the ratios of strength created by leaks and crevices represents the occasion for the development of spaces of liberty” (24) .
The intervention and the projects cannot be programmed and rationally incorporable in a complex design in which social analysis and political strategy meet. “Therefore, a world takes shape, in itself, neither better nor worse, where no type of determinism can rigidly generate the different possibilities” (25) . The world described by Aguiton is animated by movements, but the elaboration of a project, the definition of an alternative/future model of society is made impossible or impracticable by a series of contingencies.


Activism

The characteristics of the new movements have been analysed by Tim Jordan, a non-neutral scholar of the action groups, who has made an explanatory catalogue and has given prominence to five specific points:
1. The impossibility of labelling these movements with political-type evaluations.
The schemes of the 20th Century and of the season of the utopias are not sufficient to make the particularities of the action groups of the 21st Century evident: starting from the great Right/Left division. “The known distinction between Right, Centre and Left has become problematic” (26) . As an example of confusion of language and direction, Jordan cites an aspect of the English ecology activist movement, Reclaim the Streets. The flags of the organization are not monochrome (according to the classical tradition of Left movements of the 1900’s), but tricolour, green for ecology, red for socialism and black for anarchy, “… but with a gamma of various possible combinations” (27) . During the course of demonstrations, every participant is free to choose colours and combinations which correspond to his tendencies. Jordan cites also ecological movements which actually choose certain themes of the Right. Earth First, which defends the environment against human abuse, has incorporated objectives which are typical of the conservationists. e.g. a rigid reduction of immigration to avoid the over-population of developed countries that are burdened with a surplus of residents. (28) .
2. Transgression as an element of cohesion.
The solidarity at the heart of the movement is not born from the project (be it reformist or utopian), but from the practice of transgression (29) . This last, in itself, is an attack “on the way in which the social rules, beliefs and oppressions are reproduced. The contrary of a social change brought about by transgression is a political action which wants to produce a different world, which is, however, at the same time, a confirmation of the existing one” (30) . The movements do not seek a new organization disciplined by rules, but a new way to take important decisions for the community.
3. The practice of dis/organization.
A crucial element of this is “the commitment to create open structures with a flat hierarchy. To have a horizontal network of co-ordination means to permit the participation of anyone who so desires it” (31) . The horizontal hierarchy is obtained by committing the militants in the decision of the meetings and opening them to anyone who is interested in the questions treated.
4. No utopia, but the search for a new moral philosophy.
The activism (32) of Jordan pursues an objective of ‘future city’ in new terms. “Not in the sense of programming a utopia, not in that of defining five-year plans which, when completed, will make the rising of a new dawn, and not even in the sense of reaching immediate objectives” (33) . The social movements try, on the contrary, to give life to “new ethical forms to new moral behaviour” which must permeate the society. It is not so much a project of a new earthly city, but the hope for the advent of a new morality of co-existence. “Men and women must be equal, the animals have the right to dignified conditions of life, the environment is essential for all of us and it is threatened, the laws regarding weapons must be more rigorous, the taxes on fuels are too high/low: all these claims and many more put forward by the Left, the Centre, the Right and by political activism from the bottom, begin to condense and define a new social morality” (34) . Activism for Jordan could lead to a new ethical foundation of the society, creating new moral rules which, “when they acquire the authority of mass consensus” (35) , can produce social transformation. “This weak little flame sometimes flares brightly; on other occasions, it seems almost on the point of going out. In all the manifold actions which challenge the existing social codes, this morality takes form and then becomes deformed” (36) . The new ethics are present in all of the social activism, in the dis/organization without hierarchy, in the emphasizing of pleasure as an alternative to the subordination of repetitive labour, in the counter-culture, in the alternative use of information and the networks. The proposed/preached ethics do not represent for Jordan a definitive finishing line. “The character of the movement, the continual creation of collective identity makes it certain that the immanent morality of activism will never be completed”.


Multiplication of utopias

Will the future of the basic policies of activism, of the spontaneity which comes from the bottom be characterized by a flight from utopia and by a refusal to construct models of a new society? Will the destiny of the social organizations be only defensive? Will the sight of the protest be limited to favour a change without indicating in what direction? Will preaching or propaganda replace definition/construction of a model of society which is different from the present one?

Aguiton, for a long time now, seems to be resigned to the defensive character of the movements: protection of conquests or rather, using the old language of the basic policy of the movements: formal recognition of spaces in which to move, practicability of objectives. Jordan trusts only in the spectacular aspect of the transgression/political action and in the preaching: something very different from the responsibility of taking political action and from the responsibility involved in the construction of a model of society.
In an important collection of essays (37) dedicated to the birth/emersion of an archipelago of new subjects of the political action, the problem of utopia, however, arises again, the need of utopia, the new way in which utopia, today, could be manifested and how it is manifested. Certain essays contained in the volume and dedicated to an analysis of the periodical meetings of the no-globals show a strong criticism with regard to the hypothesis of the transformation of the Social Forum into a movement. In the refusal of a process of coordination/organization, also a criticism of the idea of a model and, perhaps utopia, seems to present itself. According to the Brasilian scholar, Chico Withaker, the great world appointments, the series of the Social Forum cannot be considered as constituent congresses of an organization, but rather instruments which consent an exchange of experiences and which favour the birth of a plurality of identities. The Social Forum is not a movement, it is a space and it is necessary to desist “from the temptation to transform it, now or in the future, into a movement”. (38)
“A movement aggregates people – its activists, like the activists of a party, decide to organize themselves to reach certain objectives collectively. Its formation and existence implies the defining of strategies to reach such objects: the formulation of programmes of action and the distribution of responsibility among its members – including those concerned with the direction of the movement”. (39) Therefore, a movement has, for the author, an excluding character; i.e. it aggregates people and defining the objectives, it draws a borderline: with respect to such, one is either inside or outside. Furthermore, the movement is inclined to organization and hierarchy. Also in the hypothesis of the vastest participation, the constant control of the decisions from the bottom, the movement has to adopt a pyramidal structure. Vice versa, a space does not have a leader: “It is like a public square without a proprietor”. (40) From the theses of Withaker, one can deduce a strong diffidence with regard to the hierarchy and a strong suspicion concerning the exclusion implications which could have the definition of a strategy oriented towards the achievement of pre-defined objectives.
The position of Simon Tormey is different. He faces the question of the strategy and of utopia in an original way. Tormey is aware of the utility of the models and objectives for the political action. In this he moves in line with a tradition rooted in the socialist thought. Also Marx, even with his hard criticism of utopian socialism, shows an appreciation for the utopian modelling. Without an image of a different world, it is not possible to question the existing one. Utopia, Marx always reminds us (41) , often contains a description of the evils which accompany or have accompanied the society.
However, Tormey underlines a new type of manifestation of the utopias. In the tradition of the industrial society, a few utopias emerged which had strong attraction. Fragmentation of energy and pulverization of the utopian models were manifested in the society of the new movements. The industrial society was accompanied by great utopias, which concentrated the aspirations of vast masses, social classes and a substantial number of professional groups.
The organization of the industrial society; the ability to calculate its production and trade processes (the rational estimate of the consequences of economic action is one of the fundamental aspects of the capitalistic society); the existence of a simple social stratification in which the collocation of individuals is clearly delineated; the existence of strong forms of solidarity between the workers who have the same roles in the productive process, have all favoured the formation of certain utopias of great impact, able to nourish collective aspirations, available to guide powerful movements.
The possibility of designing the model of a new world of social relations is reduced the moment in which the forms of solidarity, fed by the industrial production in a development phase of the industrial society, come to an end. The society of the 21st Century is no longer, at least in the West, the society of class solidarity. “Instead of observing the cohesion of a single utopian project and (…) a triumphant collective project of emancipation, we see the fragmentation of the utopian energy”. (42)
Rather than the impoverishment of the utopia, Tormey speaks of the “proliferation of utopias, of utopian projects, ideas and dreams”. “The real problem is not so much the exhaustion of utopian energy, but the incommensurability of the utopias: your utopia is not mine and mine is not yours” (43) .
Tormey severely criticises certain present tendencies in the new movements: in particular, the temptation to utilize the protests of the economic policies which, today, are diffused throughout the world, to construct a new orthodoxy and a new model of economy. It is not sufficient to combat the neo-free trade capitalism, but it is also necessary to resist “inclusion in an ideology and in a movement which is addressed to the overcoming of neo-free trade capitalism” (44) .
Therefore, the idea of the co-existence of diverse projects of social change, able to express the different needs, desires and interests, is in opposition to the utopia as a single space. To discuss this type of utopian pluralism, Tormey draws from a work of the American philosopher, Robert Nozick, in whose work the anarchic anti-statism is united with the laissez faire of the free trade culture. In the Utopia State and Anarchy, the anarchic-capitalist, Nozick (to speculate is contrary to the anarchic-communists, perhaps, anarchic-internationalist, but in a global sense, that is, supporters of world-wide free trade), wishes for a society characterized by the plurality of the utopian experiments, composed of divergent communities in which it is possible to conduct different ways of life.
“The utopia is scaffolding for utopias, a place where people are free to associate voluntarily, to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of a good life in an ideal community, but where no-one can impose on others their own vision of utopia. The utopian society is the society of who supports the utopia” (45) .
In Tormey’s essay, the recuperation of utopia takes us to the theory of Stirner, the father of the anti-collectivist anarchy. According to Stirner, (46) society is a co-existence of egoisms in which the relations are not disciplined by general rules, but by a continual process of negotiations, agreements and alliances, of competition and co-operation. Drawing from two authors that are unloved by the Marxist culture (Nozick, scorned in the 70’s as being an exponent of the neo-conservative Hedonism, and Stirner, condemned by Marx (47) and then by the orthodoxy of historical materialism as an interpreter of the needs of the lower middle class, as against those of the working class), Tormey desires the formation of “utopian spaces which are not fixed, not contingent, but open” and of worlds which are “confused, nomadic and chaotic”, in which “the people would not want to be arranged according to logic or a principle of organization, but would wish to arrange themselves unaided and according to preferences and affinities” (48) .


New worlds


Karl Mannheim, in his most known work (49) , dense in theoretical analyses, but also including meditation on one of the most tragic European experiences of the 20th Century, the fall of the Weimar Republic and the advent of the national-socialist State (50) , represents, in alarming tones, the degrading, in the 1900’s of the utopia in the ideology. Mannheim’s analyses still seem, as they did during and after 1968 (51) , actual and useful in the interpretation of movements and social cultures.
For Mannheim, the utopia which transcends the contingency orienting the behaviour “towards elements which the present reality does not contain, at all” (52) has the limitation of moving away from the positive analysis of the facts and, too often, is loaded with an excess of valence and considered the only ‘smithy’ of the transformation. Furthermore, by not interpreting the facts in an impartial way, the utopia leads to the under-estimation/devaluation of the spontaneous evolution of the historical-social phenomena. The negative aspects of the thinking and acting, on the grounds of the utopian models, are accompanied, undoubtedly, by positive aspects. The utopia is, in fact, a vehicle of social renewal and evolution: “in opposition to the conservative idea of an established order, it impedes absolute transformation of the existing reality” (53) . The concept of utopia “makes an effort to become aware of the dynamic character of the reality, inasmuch as it does not assume as a starting point, the existence as such, but rather the real historically and socially determined one which is in a continual process of transformation” (54) . In other words, the utopia tends “to break the prevalent order” (55) .
For Mannheim, there exist also other forms of going beyond the reality and of projections towards the future which do not have the power of utopian renewal. Some “ideas which transcend the existing order” can have effects which are radically opposite to those of the utopia and represent a moment of stability and social conservation, rather than growth and renewal. It concerns ideas which, apparently, wish to go beyond the social reality, but which are, vice versa, “harmoniously and organically integrated with the prevalent vision of the epoch”. This is the case of the ideology which, in the same way as utopia, “transcends the present reality, but is never able de facto to actuate the projects implicit in it” (56) . The ideologies can be presented as the right inspirations; “but when they are then translated into action, their significance often becomes deformed” (57) . “For example, the idea of Christian brotherly love, in a society founded on servitude, must remain an idea that cannot be realized, therefore, it is ideological; also when the meaning constitutes, for those who are in good faith, a means for individual behaviour. To live coherently with this Christian love, in a society which is not organized along the same principles, is impossible.” (58) .

In the light of Mannheim’s thought, the refusal of organic models, the rejection of projects which are integrally alternative to the existing state of things, typical of the new movements, would represent a dangerous step backward. Active minorities present in the society would be lead to substitute the preaching of the definition of a new model of social relations. The propaganda tinged with moralistic colours certainly has the power to de-legitimize the existing institutions ( or vice versa, to legitimize them), but does not guarantee a direct commitment on the part of who promotes it in the actual modification, nor a transparent process of change. With propaganda, one entrusts to an indeterminate number of actors, the task of interpreting a generic message of salvation in such a way as to construct, in the indeterminate future, something which might be similar or adequate to it. The invitation to ethical propaganda from authors like Jordan could make one think of the return of those ideologies described by Mannheim as aspirations to the private behaviour of the individual destined never to be actuated! The strong project character of the utopias of the second half of the 20th Century is substituted by a weak design of exhortations, plurality of projects, fragmentation and exaltation of diversity and intimacy. The political antagonism chooses the path of a secret clash made of refusals of the existing, rather than comparison of projects. Therefore, the antagonism limits itself to a work of de-legitimization of the reality (earthly and concrete), without modelling any kind of social relations and a new type of organization.
The reformulation of the new season of the movements “without” utopia, according to the scheme of Mannheim is fascinating, but not exact. Perhaps, after 1968, interpreting the sliding of the utopias towards violence and the extra-parliamentary orthodoxies, one could still speak of the passage of the utopia to the ideology. More than a sliding of the utopia to the ideology, we are, today, in the presence of a social context in which Mannheim’s scheme is not applicable because both the productive structure and the social stratification are now missing.
The utopia to which Mannheim referred stimulated a society dominated by organized production (the great industry, the populous factory, the hierarchic and constrictive organization of the work, the manufacture centralization etc.,) and by a precisely designed social stratification. The social groups and classes were identifiable and classifiable on the basis of numerous parameters: the homogeneity of duties, the division of intellectual and manual work, the income, the schooling, customs, and the concept of existence. The society of the great factory was, therefore, the place of calculation, plans, programmes, projects, of the utopia.
In the post-industrial society, the social fabric undergoes strong modifications. From a simple stratification, it passes to an interlacing of groups, classes and individuals. The nature of the post-industrial production is of progressive dissolution of the centralized and organized structures. The organization decentralizes to the point of breaking up into individual centres of production, to become transformed into networks of functions. In the post-industrial system, also the division between manual and intellectual work becomes less, and likewise, the division between the direction of activity and the execution of same. To reach the formation of a product, the productive structure of the post-industrial society uses not only diffused manual labour, but also a great quantity of diffused intelligence.
The miniaturization of the groups (59) , the fragmentation of the functions, the molecular character of the social fabric (60) all have influence on political participation and on the possibility of representing the interests. In his analysis of the Post-democracy, Colin Crouch has shown how difficult it is to connect to the traditional (democratic) organization of public life (61) , a universe incoherent of functions produced by globalization and by the post-industrial system. The new social category produced by the post-industrial economy was, to a large extent, passive and without political autonomy (62) .
With reference to the new fragmented social fabric, the unifying scheme designed by Mannheim is no longer adequate when he defines the planning as utopian. Antony Giddens goes as far as to speak for our present times of an impossibility of systematic knowledge around the social organization. This comes from the impression “that many of us are ensnared in a universe of events which we cannot fully understand and, for the most part, seem to escape our control” (63) . An Italian scholar further observes that the individual identity “ceases to make reference and bases itself on a single and omni-comprehensive vision of the world which designs and directs the praxis, the belonging and the choices which define the everyday actions…, but rather, the identity is formed within systems of particular belonging (of role, category, etc.,) and is always more difficult to connect to the subject that actuates the global conceptions of life.” (64)


Fragmentation and recomposition

The social fragmentation and the impoverishment of the great utopias do not make the governing of the political systems easy. On the surface, with the decline of the great models of social reform the number and intensity of those conflicts which were traditionally presented as an obstacle to good government, should have been reduced, but it is a fallacious hypothesis.
Today, government action in the developed democratic countries of the West is prevalently orientated towards the reduction of welfare benefits as a consequence of the fiscal crisis of the State and the impossibility of sustaining the traditional forms of offered protection due to the economic, technological, scientific and demographic changes. With regard to the reduction of welfare benefits in the developed countries, the classic distinction (progressive/conservative) between the political powers reaches the point of losing significance. The Right and the Left are compelled, with certain differences, to take social measures of subtraction: reduction, limitations and in some cases, cutting social expenditures or reducing the number of beneficiaries. The distinction between the Right and Left (arduous on the subject of social politics) is manifest in an ever growing way in symbolic dimensions: new civil liberties, alignment of international positions, policies of criminal persecution (tolerance or zero-tolerance), the treatment of diversity (ethnic, existential, kind) attitude towards religious creeds, secularity of the State etc. Added to the welfare reduction is the incapacity/impossibility of including a growing part of the population in the social citizenship; not only masses of immigrants, but also masses of citizens which are part of a new disorganized and shattered work market.
The social State which was able to incorporate employee labour and to manage a system of social protection fed by an organized conflict of great collective structures (worker representation) is no longer able to offer a system of effective guarantees to those who perform autonomous and/or anomalous work. Social exclusion multiplies, even if this is often disguised by concealed shock absorbers (the informal community, the families, the hidden work sector, the parallel economies, the illegal, and the ethnic solidarity).
Politicians try to elaborate projects to design a future which is able to better the present and for which a social mobilization is opportune (65) . The lack of programmes is due, in part, to objective difficulties, to the fact that certain economic and social phenomena are not governable by political means, by State legislation or even by international rules, but are the fruit of mechanisms activated by new subjects which feed the global market. In the second place, the difficulty of planning is a want of consensus: social groups and formations which are able to guarantee effective support to any form of change are not visible on the horizon. Attempts to modify the social State, to transform it into an instrument able to satisfy new needs, always feed more the ferocious dissent of the groups which would be affected by the change, but do not, however, give rise to the adhesion and mobilization of the potential or future beneficiaries.
The fragmentation of the social life and the creative activities of income also modify and reduce the role of the active minorities. They are compelled to niche tactics; they operate in the crevices of the social life and work through symbolism for want of definite social interlocutors. The peace and the fight against globalization are unifying elements. Also, in the utopia epoch of the 60’s, international themes animated the movements, but in those years, the unifying elements were not only Vietnam, but there was the student condition, women’s liberation, urban growth, the factory, economic development, liberty in the arts, the autonomy of research, the liberation of the self.
Aguiton recognizes that the symbols against which the new activism reacts render the actions prevalently defensive. To inhibit an international meeting or cause it to be the occasion of mediatic initiatives is, already, a success; even if it has not been possible to materially influence established choices and modify relations between the North and South of the planet or introduce new items onto the political agenda.
Furthermore, the actions which are oriented to strike great symbols often impede an effective mobilization of interests. Only a marginal quota of the new activism is committed to employment problems; it concerns the new basic trade unionism examined by Aguiton and certain initiatives taken by the unemployed. In the majority of cases, the activist organizations catalogued by Aguiton and Jordan have strong élite characteristics. The new environmentalism of the United Kingdom, the battle against the placard publicity on the highways in the United States, the farmer movements (in the West, in France), a new feminism, the movements for sexual identity, all express the unease of minorities which are, otherwise, integrated into the society. In the great no-global rendezvous, the prevalent colour of the activists is white (66) and their profession, mainly student. The observation of the general colour of Seattle was not made by a malevolent opponent, but came from the no-global front. “Who comes from the centre of the system, who comes from places of power have a major possibility of constructing and sustaining a universal argument” (67) . Whites and students are capable of synthesis, of planning, of effective representation for certain needs, but the phenomenon has alarming aspects. “The model of reference for the future, now already widespread, coincides, above all, with the culture and history of the centres of the empire, of their metropolises, in particular, the United States” (68) .
The new movements, in the social fragmentation are capable of activism, but not of guaranteeing representation of interests and needs. Activism is manifested in symbolism, leaving unprotected those strata of society which are unable to find stable organizations in a context which is too complex, too distant and too ideological.
An example of non-representation of interests comes out of the Parisian November affair of 2005 and the nights of rebellion of the banlieue. Thousands of young people, French citizens of Maghreb origin and Islamic religion started an anti-institutional and social protest. The protest was spontaneous and had no connection with any official political party since they had no representation in the traditional parties. When on similar themes, in 2006, a mass movement of young people, principally students from the urban centres, demonstrated against the proposal of new regulations concerning the question of unstable employment, parties and trade unions gave their support to the cause. Not a single mention was made regarding a connection between the movement of the urban centres and the banlieue movement. In interviews, the young people of the Parisian November of 2005, stated that they could not identify with the platform of the urban student: even unstable work would be welcome in the desperation of the outskirts!
The new activism is oriented against the symbols and is not able to express interests. The lack of representation of needs and the impossibility of defending interests does not help the physiological performance of social life. Silence and repression can feed anti-social choices by groups or individuals (from street gangs, single aggressive actions to examples such as the Parisian nights of rebellion); they can favour symbolic protests expressive of malaise, isolated or in small groups; they can nourish choices of violence or total refusal of the rules of the conflict, and can induce individual itineraries of rebellion.

The lack of representation of needs modifies the very features which distinguish democracy. This, in the modern world, is made not only of the forms of universal suffrage, but also of its material effects. With the advent of the democratic State, the participation and the right to vote, public life determined and controlled from the bottom, must reduce the social differences and must impede that any social stratum is denied a hearing. If democracy works only to discipline a part of the traditionally protected interests, its exposes itself to crises and de-legitimization.
Accordingly to Crouch, Beck and Giddens (69) , the future designs for Western democracy do not seem reassuring. A crisis of democracy is painted which is ascribable to the silence of a conflict in a state of difficult reanimation. Is it impossible to reactivate public life? No hope for the near future? The answer must not be only pessimistic. The social upheaval and fragmentation came about suddenly, during the course of twenty years, in the panorama of the industrial societies. A molecularization of the society has substituted the class order and the geometry of the social strata, which renders unusable many of the instruments of social cohesion elaborated by the industrial society during the course of its history and in the history of its conflicts. Can the new anti-social individuality, which animates the social theatre and the contemporary economy, never find forms of cohesion and unification capable of creating effective movements, expressing needs and mobilizing groups for the defence of the common interests? Certainly, it is too soon for a totally pessimistic diagnosis. Also at the first dawn of the industrial society, the work appeared disjointed - unified by production processes, but divided in the conscience of the single worker. The history of the work organizations has not been a triumphal march. The beginnings of the collective organizations were anti-social, full of conflict and rich in episodes of fragmentation horizontal conflicts: between equals, between the poor. Marx denounced the conflict within the classes and the bitter separation of interests between the working class and the salaried army reserve, between employed and unemployed, between the proletariat and the lower-proletariat. At the first dawn of the democratic State, the irreconcilability of the interests of the salaried work and the autonomous work became clear. The history of the democracy has been, nevertheless, characterized by mediations and unions which have allowed coherence and the finding of connections in a world which previously appeared disjointed. Work organizations have been established, the mediation of the interests in conflict have been legitimated, the social and political pacts which consent the government of a society animated by divergent impulses, have been consolidated.
Also the fragmented work, the horizontal conflicts which agitate globalization, the molecularization of the typical functions of the post-industrial society can provoke actions, theories, projects of homogenization/identification of new social groups, even of new classes. Within the global society, there is a working class which exists prevalently in the countries of accelerated development, (China, India); there is also a diffused entrepreneur middle class (not only, therefore, the empire of the multi-nationals), a world of parcelled out work exists, but having common interests (even if it is without a group or class conscience). A slow work of unification is still possible – in fact, there is nothing in the social structure which can inhibit or thwart it – however, it has not yet been started.