Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, originally published in 2014, was written by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. As a writer for the Dutch online journal De Correspondent, Bregman gained attention for advocating a universal basic income, an idea also associated with French economist Thomas Piketty.

After publishing a series of essays on the topic, Bregman decided to write a book on how contemporary ideas are often dismissed simply on the basis of their being utopian. He finds this problematic both because it assumes that anything utopian is by definition impracticable, or even dangerous, and that this assumption marginalizes proposals, leading to their dismissal for the sole reason that they propose major changes to existing structures. The book’s title is meant to soften the imagined tension between an idealized vision of how things could or should be and a grim recognition of how they are. Without downplaying the seriousness and complexity of modern problems, Bregman commits to the proposition that ideas can be powerful enough to generate immense changes—and that among the most important ideas is humans’ capacity to improve their condition.

This summary refers to the English translation of the Amazon Kindle edition (New York: Hachette, 2018).