A Utopian approach to Utopia, 13 Oct 2000

Most readers will be aware of the search for the elusive Big Idea, but Jacoby's book distinguishes itself from the rest in its refusal to artificially create one out of thin air. Recent attempts have either collapsed under their own levity (in Britain we can still recall John Major's short-lived 'Back to Basics' campaign, and have yet to see a concrete expression of Tony Blair's 'Third Way'). Alternatively, they have turned out to be nothing more than a minor tinkering with existing policy, but labelled a 'grand plan'. Jacoby lambastes those who invest their intellectual energy in such tinkerings. For instance, the socialist John E Roemer, who presents a non-convertible coupon scheme as a radical way forward for society, is deserving of every bit of Jacoby's excoriating irony.

Instead of attempting to blueprint a Big Idea, The End of Utopia charts a decline both in political scope and in intellectual standards, with the worthy aim of reversing this decline. Multiculturalism - the motif underlying almost every Western government's public policy - is first to come under Jacoby's critical eye. Whilst acknowledging that it is reasonable and necessary for "students to know that there were black scientists, Jewish gangsters and women artists", he exposes the attempt to go beyond this as meaningless and even dangerous. Sure, there are differences in the appearances of people and in the activities they undertake, but different appearances and activities do not necessarily imply different cultures. In fact, considering that modern economic and sociological conditions (usually ignored by multicultural theorists) mean that more or less everyone partakes of the same daily routine, the same aspirations and the same concerns, a monoculture is altogether more likely. This does not, however, prevent the proponents of multiculturalism from advancing their meaningless demands for 'recognition' and presenting such demands in a language abstruse and riddled with empty buzzwords.

In the remaining chapters Jacoby directs his criticism toward several other themes that characterise the vacuity within intellectual and political life today: the celebration of mass culture and the denigration of high culture; the philosophical rejection of universal concepts (relevant everywhere) in favour of particulars (relevant only locally); the promotion of utilitarianism - in which visions of the future are reduced to a 'realistic' choice about the present. In each of these cases Jacoby elicits the tendency of those who hold such views to lower their horizons, precluding any possibility of their envisaging a future which is not simply an extrapolation of the present.

Throughout The End of Utopia Jacoby admirably holds fast to the ideas and concepts that allow expansive and imaginative thinking. However, it is this hold which ultimately acts as his weakness as well as his strength. His insistence in the relevance of utopian ideas is unfortunately nothing more than that - an insistence and not a demonstration. For instance, despite the rationality behind the notion of a monoculture, Jacoby fails to explain why multiculturalist ideas have such purchase on the popular imagination. He fails to explain why we often feel that there are different and diverging cultures within society (the so-called criminal fraternity, for example) who do not share our values and who apply an alien logic to everyday situations. Had he extended his economic and sociological analyses further Jacoby might have seen that, as well as bringing the masses together under similar conditions, the market also forces them apart along the lines of employed/employer, male/female, etc, and that government policies often compound divisions or create new ones (such as the deserving/undeserving poor). While real forces such as these exist, ideas which assume social fragmentation will thrive.

Thus, like all the great utopians before him, Jacoby promises everything, is intelligent, witty, far-sighted and eminently readable. However, The End of Utopia fails because it is too utopian (perhaps this makes it a success?). Jacoby's rallying cry is based on far-reaching ideals, but he is unable to engage with the divisive social forces which create the narrow-minded yet insistent concerns of multiculturalism, mass culture and utilitarianism. Unfortunately, the creation of a utopia requires one's feet to be fixed firmly on the ground.

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