Hahaha.

Ha!

Indeed, Thomas is probably right to suggest that non or anti-capitalist systems will always be “essentially a doctrine of racial socialism, premised upon natural patterns of life [and] labor” as those patterns are enabled by a particular geographic space and a particular group which has, for generations, inhabited that space (paging Jared Diamond!).

The theme behind every Utopian story (from The Beach to the books on my shelves about New England Utopian societies) is that Utopia can remain Utopia only if its inhabitants are homogenous, high-trust, and not prone to over-breeding or inviting in outsiders. So, at least Thomas understands what it takes to be Utopia (population removal and lots of guards at the borders), whereas your run-of-the-mill academic socialist isn’t even operating in reality, convinced, as s/he is, that Capitalism is the only thing keeping black and Mexican gangs in South L.A. from joining hands in high-trust solidarity. (The irony is that capitalism and its diversions are precisely why L.A. can exist at all; I’d say that L.A. and its surrounding suburbs is as good as it gets in terms of racial harmony. It’s nothing less than a capitalist miracle that the tribal violence of South L.A. doesn’t play out everywhere else in the California Southland.)

Of course, Utopia, once achieved, is by definition stagnant. Utopias will never colonize the stars or hasten the Singularity. Socialist attempts to create welfare Utopias are both stagnant AND unsustainable; put some liberal arts professors and Jezebel editors in charge of a country, and the country will have a lot more to worry about than its technological failures.