The End of Utopia by Herbert Marcuse. Short summary

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The author declares the necessity to turn the world into the opposite of hell. Then there will be an end to utopian ideas and theories. At this time there is a need to discuss a new definition of socialism.

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The presence of any transformation of the technical or natural environment is determined historically. People are capable of turning the world into hell, and they are already moving in that direction.

The New Left is trying to do everything it can to turn the world into the opposite of hell. This will put an end to utopian ideas and theories that use the concept to condemn certain socio-historical possibilities.

The end of utopia means that the possibilities of society and the environment will no longer be considered an extension of the old or something existing with it in the same historical time. This distinction makes all previous history only a prehistory of humanity.

In the writer’s view, Marx’s idea of socialism was constrained by his idea of a continuum of progress, because of which it did not mean a decisive negation of capitalism. By the end of utopia Marcuse understands the need to discuss a new definition of socialism.