AnarWiki/markdown/The_Balkanization_of_Utopia_(Pamphlet).md

**The Balkanization of Utopia** is a 1965 leaflet written by [Chris
Pallis](Chris_Pallis "wikilink") and published by
[Solidarity](Solidarity_\(UK\) "wikilink"). It is a short defense of the
sectarianism and infighting that dominates leftist politics and a
prediction of a new
[counterculture](Counterculture_of_the_1960s "wikilink") and
[revolutionary wave in the late
1960s](Revolutions_of_1968_-_1975 "wikilink").

## Transcript

> "Until he has witnessed an Easter march, the average citizen can have
> no idea of the number of groups hell-bent on the balkanization of
> Utopia and the diversity of magazines and badges which they produce.
> Yesterday Ilford Liberation Group, the Fellowship Party, and the
> Anarchists were groups for the connoisseur, while the Young Communist
> League, the district committees of London area Communist parties, and
> the Young Socialists provided more familiar forms of dissent"
> (*Guardian*, April 19, 1965).

The [Press](Mass_Media "wikilink"), the [police](police "wikilink"), and
representatives of the established political parties must share a
certain incredulous surprise on occasions like
[Aldermaston](Aldermaston_Marches "wikilink"). For there, surfacing into
broad daylight, emerging from the anonymity of their daily lives, are
literally dozens of different political (or anti-political) groupings,
scores of rank-and-file papers, subversive to various degrees of the
Established Order, and thousands upon thousands of individuals - with
strongly felt opinions of their own - united in their opposition to the
[Bomb](Nuclear_Weapons "wikilink") and in their determination to take
responsibility for their own actions.

What vision of the future do these people hold? The categories of
traditional politics are quite inadequate to define them. These crowds
are unlikely to be demonstrating for either Mr. Wilson's or Mr. Gollan's
"alternatives" to the established order. This mass of humanity on the
road, "hell-bent on the balkanization of Utopia", must be a bureaucrat's
nightmare.

The procession - as is well-known - is filmed and photographed from
every angle, dissected, enlarged, submitted to the most refined
technologies of identification known to the Special Branch. This rabble,
this horde of potential troublemakers must be identified, their
affiliations established, the files kept accurate and up to date. How
much easier it would be to treat them all as "reds" or
"[pacifists](Pacifism "wikilink")", as
"[communists](Communism "wikilink")" or
"[anarchists](Anarchism "wikilink")", without having to worry about the
finer shades of doctrinal difference, without having to document this
massive dissent.

But that wouldn't do in this scientific age\! The clerks and computers
must be kept busy. Tagged, the rebels must be. Who is "dangerous" and
who is "daft"? Who owes allegiance to Moscow and who to Transport House?
Who lives in the past and who in the present? Who believes in
non-violence and who doesn't? Who believes in Parliament and who does
not? Who are the "resolutionaries" and who the "revolutionaries"? And
how the hell can we make sure their beliefs remain static, and that they
won't split, and shift allegiance, and bugger up the card index? Who are
sheep? Who are goats? And in which pigeonhole do we put the hybrids?

The politicians must view it much as the police does. Why don't all
these people just stay at home and leave it to us? Why don't they trust
their elders and betters? Why aren't they happy just to vote for us
every few years? Why do they argue so much - and in the streets too?

And is all this just the tip of the iceberg? How many others, today,
think as they do? How many will, tomorrow? Could this scruffy lot be the
"don't knows" of the Gallup polls? Are these the solid core of
non-voters? How often does their "don't know" mean "won't tell"? And how
often does "won't tell" mean "fuck the lot of you"?

Why, oh why, won't all these people accept our "realistic",
parliamentary alternatives? Why don't they leave complicated things -
like their own life and death - to the professional politicians? If they
must have their Utopias, why can't they accept our standard models,
prefabricated, provided and priced by official society itself? We may
bemoan their apathy, but surely this is better than having them turn up
in hundreds at [May Day](May_Day "wikilink") and shout us down, or make
awkward comments about "[Vietnam](Vietnam_War "wikilink")" or "MPs'
salaries" or "old age pensioners" or other unpleasant subjects.

The press - although aware of the newsworthiness of the esoteric - is
less concerned about getting facts straight. They worship at the altar
of power. They are the mouthpieces of those who have arrived. And these
marchers are getting nowhere. They are all "weird" anyway. Why bore our
readers (and tax our own grey matter) by going into their beliefs more
fully? Our political vocabulary is limited, our knowledge of sects'
anatomy more limited still. We have so consistently got things wrong
when venturing to the left of the Communist Party that we had better
keep to safe ground. So let's tidy up reality a little. Let's just call
them all "beatniks", "anarchists", the "lunatic fringe". After all
Gaitskell called them "peanuts".

And what about the demonstrators themselves? The "balkanization" of
their respective Utopias is too obvious to deny. Geography and history
get muddled. For some Mecca is Moscow, for others Peking. Some live in
[Petrograd](Petrograd_Soviet "wikilink") (in
[1917](February_Revolution_\(Russia\) "wikilink")) - [others in
Barcelona (in 1936)](Spanish_Revolution "wikilink"). Internationals and
ideologies interpenetrate. Revolutionary Gods
([Marx](Karl_Marx "wikilink"), [Bakunin](Mikhail_Bakunin "wikilink"),
[Luxemburg](Rosa_Luxemburg "wikilink"),
[Malatesta](Errico_Malatesta "wikilink"), [de
Leon](Daniel_De_Leon "wikilink"), [Lenin](Vladimir_Lenin "wikilink") and
[Trotsky](Leon_Trotsky "wikilink")) jostle one another on the narrow
summits of a revolutionary Olympus. The truly godless are also
clamouring for room to breathe.

For some, this fragmentation has solely negative aspects. These groups
echo the views of the powers-that-be: dissent should be centralized,
co-ordinated, channeled along the lines of one particular revolutionary
development, which they alone, of course, have grasped. Everything else
is diversion and irrelevance. They alone are the conscious agents of an
Almighty Historical Providence. They alone have understood the "laws" of
history. They alone are carried forward by the historical floodtide.
Such groups are elitist to the core. They (and they alone) are potential
leaderships. Other groups are dangerous competitors in the permanent
auction for revolutionary clientele. The masses, by themselves, can do
nothing. They are but an amorphous infantry at the disposal of a
self-appointed general staff of revolutionary generals. That ordinary
people could themselves make history - and could make it in ways
unforeseen and unsuspected by the professional revolutionaries - would
never occur to the residual legatees of
[Bolshevism](Bolsheviks "wikilink"). History is thus turned upside down.
Monolithic conceptions of the road to "utopia" foreshadow Utopias in
their own image, i.e. monolithic to the core.

For others in the movement "men make their own history" - and in ways
much wider and fuller than is usually conceded. There is no one road to
utopia, no one organization, or prophet, or Party, destined to lead the
masses to the Promised Land. There is no one historically determined
objective, no single vision of a different and new society, no solitary
economic panacea that will do away with the alienation of man from his
fellow men and from the products of his own activity.

For groups holding such views the "balkanization of utopia" need convey
no disparaging overtones of incapacity or futility. Established society
is being corroded at many points, in many ways, *here* and *now*.
Hundreds of thousands are contributing to the process, both consciously
and otherwise: brick-planting policemen and lying
[Labour](Labour_Party_\(UK\) "wikilink") politicians, [young people
rejecting traditional sexual morality](Sexual_Revolution "wikilink") and
[students](Student "wikilink") questioning the categorical imperatives
of death "for Queen and Country", train robbers and "[Spies for
Peace](Spies_for_Peace "wikilink")" evading arrest month after month,
and well-paid trade union officials pontificating about the merits of an
"incomes policy" for their members. All are playing a worthy part in a
vast and essential process of demystification.

So are South Bank clergymen de-godding God and Catholic priests acting
as salesmen for Durex. So are Trots still building left-wings in the
Labour Party and calling on Labour leaders to *legislate* for [workers'
control](Workers'_Self-Management "wikilink"), while Labour MPs vote
themselves a £30 a week wage increase and thunder against those who
"rock the boat". So are French [Stalinists](Marxist-Leninism "wikilink")
supporting [de Gaulle](Charles_de_Gaulle "wikilink") and Chinese
Stalinists supporting the suppression of the [Hungarian
Revolution](Second_Hungarian_Revolution "wikilink"), [Negroes exposing
the whole fraudulent nature of the American judicial
system](Civil_Rights_Movement_\(USA\) "wikilink") and White House
politicians showing the world their notion of the ["rule of law" in the
Dominican
Republic](US_Occupation_of_the_Dominican_Republic_\(1965\) "wikilink").
So too, finally, are workers at Paisley using sit-in tactics and having
to be carried out by the police, while Labour leaders lambast latent
[Luddites](Luddites "wikilink"), confer baronetcies on the Brockways and
Sopers of this world and encourage the half-pissed platitudes of
"brother" Brown.

For those who hold that mass consciousness rather than a change of
leadership is an essential precondition of social change, the events of
the last few years can be viewed with reasonable satisfaction. Starting
from very different premises, various groups are making fundamental
critiques of established society. Some have been through the mill of
traditional "left" politics, others not. Some start from their
experience in production, others from their experience in the [anti-Bomb
movement](Peace_Movement "wikilink"), some from the total crisis of
culture and values in the admass society, and others still from the void
of their own daily lives. These critiques are slowly converging. They
are literally ploughing up every acre of established thinking, including
the so-called revolutionary ideologies. They are preparing a resurgence
of libertarian thought and action, based on more genuinely socialist
objectives than at any previous period of history. The era of closed
ideologies (including totalitarian "revolutionary" ideologies) is slowly
coming to an end. The cults of efficiency, of hierarchy, of production
for production's sake, of consumption for consumption's sake, of
organization for organization's sake, of "ever more" (of the same) are
slowly being subverted and replaced by genuinely human values.

The "balkanization of utopia" bemoaned by bourgeois and Bolsheviks alike
is therefore neither tragedy nor farce. It is the sole guarantee that
"utopia", if we ever get near to it, will be worth living in.

## External Links

  - [The Balkanization of
    Utopia](https://www.marxists.org/archive/brinton/1965/06/balkanization-utopia.htm)
    at [marxists.org](marxists.org "wikilink")