From Anarchist Studies Network
Often called idealists, dreamers, unrealistic, anarchists have a complex relationship to the future. We imagine it, theorise it, work for it. We try to bring it to the present. We draw blueprints of what it might be like. We nurture connections that reflect our hopes. We imagine new worlds, living in the future whilst changing the present. However, utopian thought can be considered both an incentive and a discouragement to action. Its complexity and relationship to the future is particularly meaningful for anarchists. After all, how can political thought be fully understood without projecting ourselves and collectively into the future? Anarchist utopias from the early News Of Nowhere (William Morris, 1890) to The Dispossessed (Ursula K Le Guin, 1974) and other recent fiction has underlined the role of imagining the future in order to build a better world.