Man has always dreamed of utopian societies and, in a few instances, all of which failed, has even tried to implement these dreams in experimental societies. Despite Marx's denunciation of utopian socialism, there was nevertheless a utopian strain in his thinking, as demonstrated in his 1844 Paris Manuscripts. Utopianism, however, is not limited to socialist or Marxian schemas. In a real sense, the pure theory of competitive capitalism is the biggest utopian dream of them all.

Modern socialism, moreover, at least in the West, bases its ultimate hope for liberation on the technology pioneered by liberal and advanced capitalist societies. Early Russian anarchists, of course, would have none of this. They were “Believers without God, Heroes without phrases,” ever-prepared to leapfrog the dialectic into utopia. Even among confirmed Marxists there were those who, like Lenin and even Rosa Luxemburg, were at bottom hardheaded pragmatists quite prepared to trim their Marxian sails when the revolutionary potential suddenly and unexpectedly became a reality.