The concepts of ideology and utopia, at least since Marx, have regularly been understood in pejorative terms. Ideology is understood in terms of distortion or dissimulation. It is taken to be a fundamentally, and more or less dangerously, defective way of responding to the world. Utopia, on the other hand, is understood in terms of fantasy, or dreaming. It is taken to be a way of refusing to respond to the world as it is, a way of withdrawal from the world. To be either an ideologue or a Utopian is regularly thought to be infected with a social or political ill.