UTOPIA REVIVED?
Parag Khanna’s Technocracy in America and Thomas More’s Utopia
Keywords:
Democracy, Ethical systems, Isegoria, Info-State, Popular Will, Technocracy, UtopiaAbstract
Utopia is a recurrent motif in history. Starting with Plato’s Republic and through the works of numerous other thinkers, philosophers undertook bold endeavours of imagining entirely new societies beyond the existing ones. Despite utopia borders on dystopia and many of its features were embodied in the 20th century totalitarian regimes, it is premature to declare the Utopian vision dead. The American author Parag Khanna in his book Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) offers a sharp critique of contemporary democracy and favours a form of digital technocracy, which he calls 'Info-State' instead. In this paper, I argue that Khanna’s political model is strikingly similar to the iconic Utopia – the treatise of Sir Thomas More (1517) – and is based on the same underlying philosophical and ethical assumptions. The attempt to resurrect the utopian vision and present it as a viable alternative to liberal democracy can pose a danger to liberty, in the same fashion as it inspired totalitarianism before.
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