For some the quest for an idyllic life is more than a vision; it demands to be realized. Thomas Fair compares it to the monster in the film Forbidden Planet, arising in a perfect world created by intelligent beings; a destructive beast that is a product of their own hubris. Fair goes back to the French Revolution and its attempt to completely alter social structure and tradition. The Paris Commune and the writings of Marx and Engles pointed utopian thinking, by then known as Socialism, straight into the twentieth century. The horror of the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and the Communist Chinese are well documented. Tens of millions died and countless others fell victim. Fair distills its main concepts, highlighting the testimony of victims as well as the assertions of perpetrators. Yet despite its failures, intellectuals and activists still clamor for the utopian fantasy, Fair insists that a just and equitable world is possible, when free, open trade and individual liberty protected by law are core elements. Passionate and exhaustively researched, Fair's everyman approach offers important arguments needed to halt the elements of society that impose their own impossibly perfect world.
