For many the East European revolutions of 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR represented not only the overdue demise of Soviet-style communism, but also the obsolescence of all utopian ways of thinking. This text argues history has reached its end-state in the form of a victorious liberal-democratic capitalism and all attempts to imagine an alternative social order were now damned as both futile and quixotic. Beyond Utopia? rejects the belief that utopian thinking is a necessary condition for the development of alternative solutions to the problems of the present and thus for historical...

For many the East European revolutions of 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR represented not only the overdue demise of Soviet-style communism, but also the obsolescence of all utopian ways of thinking. This text argues history has reached its end-state in the form of a victorious liberal-democratic capitalism and all attempts to imagine an alternative social order were now damned as both futile and quixotic. Beyond Utopia? rejects the belief that utopian thinking is a necessary condition for the development of alternative solutions to the problems of the present and thus for historical...