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Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarc
by ahhhhnoooo 9mo ago
Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)
Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.
- vogtb 9mo agoSame. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.
- CSMastermind 9mo agoNot sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it. I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.
- Tossrock 9mo agoIndeed, sci fi has always been a way for KSR to explore and animate his politics. But he's so skilled a writer that the spectacle and incredible technical detail of the sci fi wrappings can obscure subtlety of the political philosophy (as it should be, imo).
- the_biot 9mo agoAgree, except I thought his political views were rather more obvious, to the point that it's a little annoying (IMHO of course). I'd describe it more as hard-left than anarchism, too.
- strogonoff 9mo agoWhich sci-fi series give proper anarchist culture a shot, other than the Mars trilogy?
- ahhhhnoooo 9mo agoBecky Chambers work, Ursula LeGuin's work (particularly The Dispossessed), The Culture series by Banks, Murderbot by Wells.
- strogonoff 9mo agoI am into Banks but have not thought of Culture as anarchist, interesting!
- dominicrose 9mo agoIsn't that dangerous, to write about a fictional society that works while being based on ideas that don't work in real life?
- arethuza 9mo agoDidn't seem to stop Ayn Rand? - To be clear I wouldn't want to either KSR or Rand publishing anything they wanted!
- arethuza 9mo agoOops = I missed "stop" out of that comment!
- FearNotDaniel 9mo agoWhile you’re at it call Netflix and tell them that marrying a European prince at Christmas isn’t a viable option for most big city career girls. Fiction must be realistic at all times with no idealism or escapism, got it.
- dominicrose 9mo agoWhile accepting that freedom of expression is important I just wouldn't recommend anti-capitalist fiction. Against totalitarism seems better.
- n4r9 9mo agoThis post neatly encapsulates the phrase "It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism".
- dominicrose 9mo agoThere are varying degrees of capitalism, right? If someone thinks it's unfair that his boss earns 100% more than him, then maybe 50, or 25% or even 10% would be fair? Trying to flip an imperfect system upside down doesn't seem right to me.
- api 9mo agoGoing off on a huge nerdy tangent but... people think that about anarchism because the violent dystopian image is what you would actually get in most scenarios. Anarchism is the politics of ignoring game theory. If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is incredibly hard, and that most highly cooperative states are highly unstable. A small number of defectors can easily collapse the whole system back to a more stable tit-for-tat or all-defect state. All-defect states, meanwhile, are often stable. This probably explains why it took billions of years to get multicellular complex life. It took billions of years for evolution to figure out how to make something that doesn't instantly defect. It's related to the second law of thermodynamics. An all cooperate state is highly ordered, and thus higher energy and prone to collapsing into a lower energy less ordered state. A living system that wants to be all-cooperate is going to have to expend huge amounts of energy to maintain that state, which leads me to the final problem with anarchism: most anarchists I've read or met are at least to some degree anti-growth / anti-industry / primitivist types. That math doesn't math. If you want a society where everyone cooperates and is taken care of, that society is going to have huge energy needs, much larger than totalitarian-slum or crime-ridden-hellhole. I mean, poor people use less energy for starters. Dead people use even less. The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.). They can create an all-cooperate utopia by using embarrassing amounts of energy to not just police and stamp out defection but render it unnecessary to begin with.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- n4r9 9mo agoBanks' Culture series is certainly in this vein. In a post-scarcity society not only is there no limits on energy, but there is very little additional benefit to gain from violence to others. A potential counter to your post would be LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", where a resource-strapped planet-mining society maintains an anarcho-syndicalist society without private ownership, centralised government, or military forces. The likelihood of defection is minimised by firstly the values passed onto younger generations in their education system, and secondly the lack of actual benefit (since few people would follow you and there's not much material wealth or power to gain). Perhaps this is the "other extreme" in which anarchist principles can be explored.