The one thing that's always avoided in these discussions is that Utopia isn't a beautiful paradise where everyone lives in harmony. Utopia is a Spartan environment where everyone works hard, and is given their lot to survive. Money is not an object and is not desired, because each has what they need--not what they desire. Desire is lost. Utopia is a Stalinist dreamscape, where property doesn't exist, everything is warehoused, and slavery is a feature of everyday life. I don't know how More's Utopia ever became as desirable as Eden, but obviously whoever made this leap had never read even a cursory synopsis of it. I guess my point is that dystopia needn't be a word, because Utopia resembles it remarkably.
I think that is an important point. I don't personally believe utopia is a phenomenon that can exist for humans in reality. What I mean by "utopia" having function in the genre of science fiction, is simply that optimistic and imaginative narratives of the future can literally be used as tools to increase the probability of human social/technological progress.