Searching for a modern utopia

When the anti-capitalist movement began to emblazon its banners with the slogan “Another World is Possible”, it signalled the revival of a utopianism that had been furled up and forgotten for at least a couple of decades.

Utopianism – the attempt to envisage a different, better world – was one victim of the right wing onslaught led by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the US. From 1979, when Thatcher took office, utopianism seemed unacceptable. “There is no alternative” was the slogan associated with the neo-liberal ideology she helped engineer.