About author
Abstract. The years 1516, 1818 and 1917 mark three great events in the calendar of utopian speculation. The birth of Karl Marx and the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution are clearly intertwined. 1516 remains significant too, especially insofar as we see Thomas More’s aspirations culminating in the movement Marx founded. But did they? The paper considers the proposition that Marx sought a utopian form of sociability, then briefly assesses why Marx’s system failed to materialise after 1917, but then equally insists that if we can retrieve something useful from Marx, it is the utopian rather than the supposedly «scientific» component in his system which remains compelling.
Keywords: Karl Marx, Marxism, utopia, distopia, sociability.