Personal utopias and the dispossesed

The past updates on this blog about our Masterclass mentioned books that critically assessed the State, the functions of the State and what the goals of the State ought to be, or potentially could be – both to the horror and awe of people. Assumptions were shattered and possibilities explored; in the backdrop of a religion-changing England, one Thomas More explored the importance of ‘a’ religion ; Looking Backward and The Iron Heel both were written with the Communist Manifesto in mind. But it is an offspring of Marxism, and a last assumption that we still have left hanging in our mind in our recent encounters with utopia’s that Ursula K. Le Guin tries to examine – and maybe even do away with – in her fantasy landmark The Dispossessed.

Published in 1974, at the height of the Cold War, Le Guin shows us a possible third way away from the capitalist structure of America and the state-run enterprise of the USSR: a Stateless society. In The Dispossessed, the idealist anarchists, following the teaching of a certain ‘Odo’, leave the planet of Urras to form an utopia on its moon, Anarres. Urras, in turn, mirrors our world during the Cold War: A-Io is a wealthy nation driven on capitalism, with a clear hierarchical system based on the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. In Thu, they chose to follow the teachings of ‘Odo’, centered on freedom and equality, towards a authoritarian State ruled in name of the proletariat. These nations even fight proxy wars over nations that follow their ideological structure, as becomes apparent when in the second half of the book war breaks out in Benbili.
The society of Anarres is based on anarcho-syndicalism: the idea that you should not be a ‘slave to the wage’, but rather work for your needs. To this end, the Anarresti abandon the concept of ‘ownership’. You do not own your goods, as ownership means that you have control over that product, and can decide which people can and cannot use this product. This is problematic as this creates a power imbalance (opposing egality) and does not necessarily distributes goods according to what people actually need. Therefore, you do not own things on Anarresti, but you take what you, as an individual, need to survive. As a consequence, a societal norm exists that you also actively contribute towards the production of goods that can meet the needs of society. The anarchists furthermore eradicate ownership so completely that they construct a language, Pravic, that does not know these concepts in words. The usage of possessive pronouns, for instance, is eradicated. At birth, one is separated from its parents in order not to feel attachment, or stake a claim upon their parents. Characters stress that Anarres is a voluntarily society: all the work that is done, is done because the people want do these specific jobs (egoistically) or feel that they have a certain skill or aptitude towards a certain type of work that would suit the community (altruistically). The first mode of reasoning, however, is cancelled out by the societal norm which deems ‘egoizing’ to be the worst possible act.

The book is written as the story of the anarchist Shevek, a brilliant scholar of physics, who comes to visit Urras in an attempt to understand the society that his people have left behind and broke contact with. A second storyline unfolds in which his motivations for leaving Anarres – at least temporarily – become clear, and the tensions within this utopian society unfold.
Because it seems that a certain form of centralization is unavoidable when you effectively want to distribute goods and labours, and when you need to deal with foreign nations, and therefore a certain power imbalance will necessarily be created, and that issues arise when the economical and the collective take precedence over the social and individual desires, as humans value emotional ties more than ties towards the collective. But, more importantly, le Guin shows the problematic aspects of dogmatic reasoning. Shevek’s first inquiries into physics are frustrated by the senior physician, whose theory were developed in a conflicting field with Shevek’s, and therefore denies these theories publication. Discussing the social norm of collective altruism is also considered a taboo and frowned upon: challenging the status quo is straw manned as ‘egoizing’ by most people in Anarresti society. But also on Urras freedom of information is ostracized, with the newspapers being considered fodder for the lowly educated, and the upper class relying on insider information and mouth-to-mouth storytelling (One could argue that in this way the upper class ‘possesses’ information as well as material goods). This creates problems as it tempers the revolutionary spirit, it tempers the critical reflexion of the ideals that made the Anarresti go to Anarres in the first place, and it allows ideological flaws within the system to be sustained. In this way, le Guin shows us the problem of dogma in the era of McCarthyism.
Another pressing and prevalent problem in The Dispossessed deals with resource scarcity. Halfway through the book Shevek mentions that Odo’s ideas were specifically written with the resource-abundant planet of Urras in mind. In contrast, Anarres is a planet plagued with droughts, infertile soil and a lack of natural resources and biodiversity. This forces the anarchists to put the economical above the social ; it is a necessary evil for survival, because if you don’t co-operate, we all will die.

The question, however, is whether resource abundance would solve this problem. Le Guin remains vague on this, but I suspect myself that this is not the case: as the social norm against profiteering is more effectively coerced in times of need, when you realize the consequences of going against that norm directly, it could logically follow that people would not be so much bothered by the norm when they could leave the society and start ‘profiteering’.
But is this ‘third way’ then doomed to fail? No, not in the way that it is worse than the options known to men in 1974, or maybe even today. Because the Dispossessed does not deny – and certainly spends a lot of time in pointing out – the flaws that capitalism and communism have. The interesting omission, of course, is the role of liberal democracy within le Guin’s framework, as this form of government now used by an enormous amount of countries in the world is lacking in voice in this narrative. However, ‘liberalism’, might be the victorious voice in the end. Because the reader, having realized the imperfections of these State systems, is then introduced to the Hainish. This old alien society, the presumed ‘ancestor’ of the human civilizations, has ‘tried’ all State forms, and they too realized the imperfections of all systems. Their solution is daunting: the individual Hainish can all choose to try out the system they think suits them best. It is a solution that does not only need the eradication of a State, and of a social contract binding you to a State or society. It needs the dismissal of emotional ties, it needs to dismiss that we have a moral obligation towards caring for people who cared for us, or for the survival of the ones near to you. Le Guin’s final suggestion is that individuals need to be free in order to choose ones personal utopia.

Daan Welling, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.