Otto Neurath’s Utopias — The Will to Hope

Abstract

When Neurath wrote these lines in the Social-Democratic monthly Der Kampf in 1920, he already had behind himself a concrete attempt to realise the Utopia of a new economic order: the Munich soviet republic had been destroyed! But not much had changed concerning the importance of the concept Utopia: the view that socialism stood at the door was still common in Austrian Social Democratic circles, and Neurath’s Utopias were after all designs which were to be realised after the proletariat had gained power.

To aim for a life order as a goal means to produce a picture of it. Such pictures of historically not given life conditions we shall call ‘Utopias.’ The state of the future, as Ballod and Bebel tried to describe it, is a Utopia. Today, when socialism stands at the door, it is of greatest importance to know how the new life order looks, which one wants to bring into existence. (Neurath 1920a, p. 224.)

First published as ‘Otto Neuraths Utopien — Der Wille zur Hoffnung’ , in Arbeiterbildung in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Hrsg. F. Stadler, © 1982, Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, Wien, pp. 94–99. Translated with kind permission of Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum and the author by T. E. Uebel.