After liberalism, or the return of the political as utopia - Liberal ideas of "future" and utopian critique of power

Starting from an excursion into philosophy of history inspired by Marx, this article deals with the problem not to mistake the present liberal-democratic regimes as an end of history. Despite their strong focus on the present, liberal concepts of power - unlike conservatives - allow utopian thinking, However, under the ideological cloak of "freedom" they themselves easily turn into totalitarian tendencies, and thereby evoke utopian critique of power anew. The ideological restrictedness of liberal concepts of the future will be shown by analysing the current rhetoric of "modernization", the so-called trend research and the normative model of a minimal state by the libertarian thinker Robert Nozick. Based on the resulting considerations regarding the current function of utopias, I will sketch out a range of scenarios how utopian thinking is rooted in the current horizons of politics, theory, and popular culture and where it could lead us, a critical encounter with these tendencies provided.