Review: Black Mass - John Gray

In Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, John Gray explains how Utopian thought recurs throughout human history and is as powerful a force today as it was in the Middle Ages.

After tracing the history of Utopianism though the ages via Sir Thomas More, John of Leyden, the Jacobins of the French Revolution and many others, Gray turns to the 20th century, where Utopianism dominated the main ideologies of Communism, Nazism and Maoism, leading to unparalleled disasters for humanity.  Gray quotes Leon Trotsky, "the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx.  And above this ridge, new peaks shall rise", amply demonstrating the belief common to all Utopians that there is no limit to human advance. 

Gray demonstrates that Utopians never shrink from violence and deceit to achieve their goals.  It is not enough to reform social institutions for society as it exists is beyond redemption:  the old order must be overthrown.  Peope who seem to be embedded in the old stability are seen as the enemy, and are treated with terror tactics each of which seems to go further in its viciousness (e.g. Stalin's treatment of the peasant class, as so able demonstrated by Orlando Figes in The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia ).