Albert Hirschman

In Utopia For Realists, Rutger Bregman invokes the economist Albert Hirschman to explain the predictable life-cycle of any utopian idea. Per Bregman’s quote, Hirschman held that “utopias are initially attacked on three grounds: futility (it’s not possible), danger (the risks are too great), and perversity (it will degenerate into dystopia).” But Hirschman also observed that “almost as soon as a utopia becomes a reality, it often comes to be seen as utterly commonplace” — Bregman’s frame for why “the great milestones of civilization always have the whiff of utopia about them at first.”

The Overton Window concept page picks up the same Hirschman observation as one tracing of how the band of “politically acceptable” ideas moves: today’s radical, once enacted, quickly looks ordinary.

Context: Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) was a German-born economist and social theorist. The futility/danger/perversity triad comes from his 1991 book The Rhetoric of Reaction, which catalogued the recurring argumentative forms used to oppose progressive reform. He is also widely known for Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

Where this appears

• Utopia For Realists — his three-part anatomy of how every utopia is first attacked (futility, danger, perversity), then normalized
• Overton Window — cited as describing the same band-moving dynamic by which radical ideas become commonplace