Praxeology of social utopia: protest-project-practice

Abstract

This article analyzes the phenomenon of utopia as a social alternative in the aspect of its praxeological specificity. Confidence in the idea of the utopian due and despair, justified by dissatisfying real, comprise the existential basis of protest state of mass consciousness. The ideological stimulus to social protest becomes the utopian project that produces a trend to practical development of ideal sociality. Systematic functionality of these praxeological elements of utopia substantiates the goal of determining the specificity of correlation between anti-system protest, socially-constructive project, and practice of social transformation. Anticipatory reflection of reality in utopia reveals the synergetic principle of determination by future, according to which the utopic constructs as trends already exists in the present. Their activation on the level of individual and public consciousness is common for the situation of social entropy and chaos; and socio-utopian ideal manifests as an attractor of protest movement. Faith in its realization is explained by the “Principle of Hope” of Ernest Bloch; while precaution for the risks of “social engineering” is reflected in the ideas of Karl Popper and Karl Mannheim. The conclusion is made on the dual nature of praxeological element of the utopia. The first aspect implies that utopia is an anti-system protest as the denial of real, and simultaneously, it is a socially-systemic project as creation of “better”. The second aspect of dualism means that utopia is a project that transforms public consciousness, and a practice that transforms social being. The presence of direct correlation between the intensity of development of utopian ideas and the level of sociopolitical self-organization is established. The reverse correlation is characteristic for the political ideology. Along with humanistic optimism of the utopia, the author determines the risk of “denying denial”: practical implementation of utopian project formed within the framework of social protest, denies the utopia itself.