Editing Technological utopianism (section)

===From the 19th to mid-20th centuries===

[[Karl Marx]] believed that [[science]] and [[democracy]] were the right and left hands of what he called the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. He argued that advances in science helped delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the [[Christian Church]].<ref name="Hughes 2004">{{cite book| author = Hughes, James | title = Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future | publisher = Westview Press | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-0-8133-4198-9 | author-link = James Hughes (sociologist)}}</ref>

19th-century [[Classical liberalism|liberals]], [[Socialism|socialists]], and [[Republicanism|republicans]] often embraced techno-utopianism. [[Radicalism (historical)|Radicals]] like [[Joseph Priestley]] pursued scientific investigation while advocating democracy. [[Robert Owen]], [[Charles Fourier]] and [[Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon|Henri de Saint-Simon]] in the early 19th century inspired communalists{{who?|date=May 2022}} with their visions of a future scientific and [[technological evolution]] of humanity using reason. Radicals seized on [[Darwinism|Darwinian evolution]] to validate the idea of [[social progress]]. [[Edward Bellamy]]'s [[Utopian socialism|socialist utopia]] in ''[[Looking Backward]]'', which inspired hundreds of socialist clubs in the late 19th century [[United States]] and a national political party, was as highly technological as Bellamy's imagination. For Bellamy and the [[Fabian Society|Fabian Socialist]]s, socialism was to be brought about as a painless corollary of industrial development.<ref name="Hughes 2004"/>

Marx and [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]] saw more pain and conflict involved, but agreed about the inevitable end. [[Marxism|Marxists]] argued that the advance of technology laid the groundwork not only for the creation of a new society, with [[social ownership|different property relations]], but also for the emergence of new human beings reconnected to nature and themselves. At the top of the agenda for [[Empowerment|empowered]] [[proletarian]]s was "to increase the total [[productive forces]] as rapidly as possible". The 19th and early 20th century Left, from [[Social democracy|social democrats]] to [[Communism|communists]], were focused on [[industrialization]], [[economic development]] and the promotion of reason, science, and the idea of [[Progress (history)|progress]].<ref name="Hughes 2004"/> 

According to historian Asif Siddiqi, technological utopianism was a "millenarian mantra" in the [[Soviet Union]] from its inception.<ref name=Siddiqi>{{cite book|last=Siddiqi|first=Asif|title=The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957|date=2010|pages=5, 98|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0521897600}}</ref> The [[Bolsheviks]] imagined "a world of magnificent factories and mechanized agriculture that produced all of society's necessities," a new socialist machine age.<ref name=Josephson>{{cite book|last=Josephson|first=Paul|title=Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism, 1917–1989|date=2010|pages=61-63, 123, 159|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=978-0801898419}}</ref> Siddiqi writes that "this obsession with the power of science and technology to remake society was partly rooted in crude Marxism, but much of it derived from the Bolsheviks' own vision to remake Russia into a modern state, one which would compare and compete with the leading capitalist nations in forging a new path to the future."<ref name=Siddiqi/> From the 1930s onwards, Soviet technological utopianism embraced a populist view of technological achievements, which Siddiqi summarizes as "technology for the masses."<ref name=Siddiqi/> Soviet science fiction was heavily focused on future technology, and often depicted a convergence between technological utopia and socialist utopia.<ref name=Siddiqi/> 

Sovietologist Paul Josephson argued that most strains of Soviet technological utopianism emphasized technology was apolitical, "serving the profit motive and the industrialist under capitalism, but benefiting all humanity under socialism."<ref name=Josephson/> To avoid technological dependence on capitalist states, the Soviet Union and other socialist governments influenced by its narratives sought to create domestic technological innovations, supported by autarkic engineering communities and supply chains.<ref name=Josephson/> 

Some technological utopians promoted [[eugenics]]. Holding that in studies of families, such as the [[The Jukes family|Jukes]] and [[Kallikaks]], science had proven that many traits such as criminality and alcoholism were hereditary, many advocated the sterilization of those displaying negative traits. Forcible sterilization programs were implemented in several states in the United States.<ref>Haller, Mark ''Eugenics: Hereditarian attitudes in American thought'' (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963)</ref>

[[H. G. Wells]] in works such as ''[[The Shape of Things to Come]]'' promoted technological utopianism.

To many philosophers, the horrors of [[World War II]] and the [[Holocaust]], as [[Theodor Adorno]] underlined, seemed to shatter the ideal of [[Condorcet]] and other thinkers of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], which commonly equated [[scientific progress]] with social progress.<ref name="Adorno1983">{{cite book|last=Adorno|first=Theodor W.|title=Prisms|url=https://archive.org/details/prisms0000ador|url-access=registration|access-date=31 March 2011|date=29 March 1983|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0-262-51025-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/prisms0000ador/page/34 34]}}</ref>