Explain the link between anarchism and utopianism. 15marks

Utopianism is the idea of the perfect society with the abolition of want, conflict and oppression. This is a core theme within anarchism due to their desire to achieve a utopian society without the need for an oppressive and unnecessary state.
Due to the end goal of anarchism it has to have a positive and optimistic view of human nature. Collectivist anarchists see humans as social creatures alike to the ideas of socialism which is where this branch of anarchism roots derived from. They believe that humans have the ability to be cooperative in their behaviour if there weren’t an oppressive state forcing people to be alienated from others. Individualist anarchists have roots from liberalism therefore they see the importance and hold a belief in enlightened human reason. However their positive view of human nature is a contradiction as Proudhon highlighted that corruption can be a part of everyone even if their core is morally enlightened. This shows that there is a clear link between utopianism and anarchism as anarchism is based on this idea of a perfect society.
The main achievement of anarchism is to form a stateless society as they see it as evil and unnecessary. Godwin disagreed with Hobbes view of human nature instead Godwin believed that it wasn’t human nature that was greedy and selfish but it was the sovereign state that is a corrupting influence on individuals lives. Therefore to achieve utopianism society cannot have the state as it is a corrupting force. To achieve the true form of human nature that will allow utopianism society must become stateless. Again this links back to the idea of a perfect society as their beliefs and means are all working towards utopia.
The two separate branches of anarchism have different ideas on what a utopian society would consist of. This is due to their