Koryakovtsev Andrey
http://doi.org/10.17506/ryipl.2016.17.1.2136
Abstract: Key Marxist category is the socio-historical activity (practice). In considering Marxist view, the author identifies such a feature as projectivity – mental, conscious orientation towards the future. The success of human activity depends on the extent of consistency of purposes and conceptions with human conditions of activity, properties of its subject, and the quality of used means. The utopianism, an idealistic nature, parameters and characteristics, or, on the contrary, realism, – these are characteristics of the degree of compliance. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between proactivity and utopia. Non-Marxist concepts of social utopias are based on their mix. This leads either to apologetics utopian consciousness, or to condemnation of transformative social projects. In both cases, it depends on political preferences and does not correlate to the scientific objectivity. Engels links utopian social projects of the New Time to special “way of understanding” of social development. The article clarifies that this “way of understanding” consists of methodological eclecticism. Based on Marxist approach, the article formulates three criteria of utopian quality. The first takes place when the thinker tries to detail to predict future social status. According to the second one, utopianism consists of the insufficiency of the means with the original idea of radical transformation of society. The third criterion is the discrepancy of the objective results of implementation of social projects and their original intentions, despite the fact that the project itself is practically possible. In the light of these criteria, the article analyzes social projects of the New Time, particularly focusing on the teachings of T. More, T. Campanella, F. Bacon, and J. Lock. He concludes that they embodies methodological and ideological polyphony. In each of them one can detect both features of bourgeois-democratic (liberal), and antibourgeois (communist/socialist) approach. Therefore, it is not correct to assign them to particular ideological doctrine.
Keyword: social utopia; social projection; human activity; Marx; Engels; More; Campanella; Bacon; Lock; utopian socialism; methodological polyphony; ideological polyphony; liberalism; communism.