The Utopian Fallacy

The highly overrated columnist Peter Hitchens has said utopias can only be reached through oceans of blood and you never arrive. The misnomer here is contained in the totally erroneous assumption that the utopia, in this case theoretical Marxism, is utopian in the first place. The idea of forcing people, individuals into a uniformity of outcome regardless of talent,ability,aptitude,effort,competence,level of achievement is about as opposite to utopian as you could possibly get. It is the very definition of dystopia.

Dominic Sandbrook in yesterdays Mail essay on Marx was perpetrating the same canard and another one as well by claiming that such 'utopian' ideas are ok in theory but should be left in the library and the error is attempting to turn it into practice since we all know the fundamental conflict between theory and practice. We know no such thing for the theory/practice clash is yet another misnomer as in principle there is no such conflict. The only time there is is when the theory is removed from reality to begin with such as Marxism but this is not Sandbrook's point. He is claiming the general principle that there is a conflict between theory and practice which alleged dichotomy is not just erroneous but fatal. If something is right in theory it is right in practice.

If you tell people that their ideals may be noble but to put them into practice will lead to the deaths of millions they will plough on as ideals are what drive people and they will go to any lengths to achieve them.But to present morally depraved ideas as ideal is perhaps the greatest crime of all.