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Politics as seen though the lens of science-fiction

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Politics as seen though the lens of science-fiction

Two classic novels appear to me to define very well the opposing political positions we generally refer to as “left-wing” and “right-wing” – or at least, the left and right-wing libertarian or anarchist positions. I’ll deal first with the left-wing position, as represented by “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is at one level an adventure story about a middle-aged male academic travelling from a place that resembles more than anywhere else, the Soviet Union, to a place that may be rather like the West. A physicist, who has developed a theory for a tremendous technological breakthrough, must travel from his technologically backward home country to a technologically  more advanced land, in order to secure further funding, get his theory validated and to obtain some form of engineering assessment as to the commercial possibilities for his theory. Can it be translated into a device allowing instantaneous – faster-than-light – communication?

He travels from a culture where there are no possessions – a place where the words of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” have for centuries been worked out in practice. So much so that the language used in that country no longer has any possessive pronouns. There are no possessions, no way of expressing even the concept of ownership. Think of the handkerchief scene in “Brief Encounter: A man could not say “use my handkerchief” but would have to say “use the handkerchief in this pocket”. It is a collective land; a communal country, an association of anarchists who believe in the primacy of the community and not the state itself. Her anarchist country, after centuries of this, is not a repressive dictatorship, but neither is it a liberal democracy. It’s not the Soviet Union; it is better than that. You can see similar ideas in her earlier work “The left hand of darkness” which is set centuries later – the principle that collectivism need not automatically lead to tyranny. I am unconvinced; perhaps better and wiser people than I can convince me otherwise. In “The dispossessed” you see the idea that community can work – it is an almost “Bennian” (as in the late Tony Benn) vision, that the community is better than the individual, and that the community and the state are more or less one. Le Guin’s world is one where – at least to my eyes – they have avoided totalitarianism, the “tyranny of the majority” and the so-called “tragedy of the commons” – where the individual does not in general act in the interests of the community.

Personally I think it is a utopian vision. I take F.A Hayek’s view that collectivism does in fact ultimately lead to tyranny – it is literally “The road to serfdom” (the title of Hayek’s book on this subject). To paraphrase Hayek I think that for collectivist politics and economics to survive in the long term, coercion and ultimately naked force would be required.

The other side of this essay on politics as seen through the lens of science-fiction is a novel that outlines the right-wing libertarian or anarchist position. We look now at Robert A. Heinlein’s “The moon is a harsh mistress”.  This short novel, set in 2075 but written in the 1950’s, tells the story of a revolution at a private sector penal colony on the moon. Convicted felons are transported, serve their sentence, and are then left to live or die on the moon – there is no return to Earth. The company running the prison makes no allowance for the former convicts, and in theory at least, does not care whether they live or die. They do in fact live and prosper in a network of caves under the surface, growing grain and other foodstuffs for the colony and for the prison. In fact, they grow so much grain that the company exports it at a huge profit back down to a hungry and wildly overpopulated Earth.

These ex-convicts survive in a society where there is no state, no welfare, and no rule of law, except what the company requires or provides. Yet it is an orderly and civilised place. Could that even be possible? Is Heinlein utopian in suggesting that such an anarchic arrangement could survive and prosper?

It all works well enough until the company levies a tax too much, a rule too far, and provokes a revolution. That is merely adventure and need not concern us here. The part that interests me is the story of the private sector judge.

A visitor from Earth is caught doing something considered worthy of death (in fact his crime is trying to hit on a girl, in a place where women’s rights are held absolutely sacrosanct); he is caught in the act by local people and is about to be lynched. Our heroes see this, intervene, and cause this man to be taken to “Judge X’s courtroom”. The mob agrees to put up the money to have the man tried in this entirely unofficial private sector courtroom, and agree to abide by the decision of the judge. The man is tried and acquitted. Why does the mob abide by the judge’s decision? We in the west struggle even with the concept of a private sector judge – why would you trust such a judge? But then again why not? Why would you trust a public sector judge? From the Bible down to the present day we have any number of examples of untrustworthy judges. For much of human history and even today in many places, the fact that a judge was or is a public sector employee has been and would be no guarantee of honesty nor even of impartiality.

American “anarcho-capitalist” theoretical economist Murray Rothbard asked this question: Who provides any given good or service? If it is the state, why? Is it the job of the state to provide goods and services?  This is a fundamentally American question, a question perhaps rooted in the American experience on the “frontier” in the 17th to 19th centuries, where for long periods in many places, there was no state – but some people prospered. Heinlein – a contemporary of Rothbard – puts this question in story form. To the modern 21st century mind, particularly in the UK and Western Europe, to even ask this question is offensive. I remember getting into very hot water socially after publicly quoting Barry Goldwater’s infamous phrase “It is not the job of the state to make men moral”.

The view of the French philosopher Rosseau was that the people are children that should not be allowed out on their own and need their hand holding – by the state. It is such a commonplace view as to be effectively the norm. It is not a view I share. I take John Locke’s view that the state is only a necessary evil.  

Thoughts on some recently read fiction

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Looking back across the last twenty books I have read, I find that most of them were non-fiction. I need to make the effort to read more fiction, but I find there is a greater risk with fiction, of a book proving to be unreadable – as we shall see shortly. Life is too short to read unreadable books.

I read John le Carre’s “Silverview“. I very much like Le Carre’s later work, and even his early Cold War stories are worth re-reading, though the politics and drama therein, if not the writing, have not aged well. A time will come when I have read all his books. “Silverview” has a few odd hostages to fortune. This one, I understand, was published posthumously and is effectively therefore, his last work. In “Silverview” the chief character is an English book-shop owner in his thirties, who does not recognise spoken Polish when he hears it, and who has ostensibly never heard of Noam Chomsky. I think it is impossible for a well-read and well-educated man of good family with a liberal arts background (as Le Carre’s characters always are) not to have heard of Noam Chomsky (say what you like about his politics and I won’t, here…) or to not be able to recognise spoken Polish. Notwithstanding all that, a very readable story.

I read “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern. I was drawn to the spine when I saw it in the shop. Then, reading the blurb, I was drawn in further still – and hooked. It was the phrase “labyrinth hidden far beneath the surface of the earth” that got me. Anything like that, I will read. I still occasionally re-read Jeff Long’s “The Descent” and “Deeper”, both deep horror thrillers about immense caves and strange lands far underground. Morgenstern has written something cross-genre. There’s aspects of fantasy – magic and weird immortal god-like characters. There’s also a thriller in there – the hero is running for his life throughout, chased by very modern and secular forces seeking to end his life. Very readable.

Then I read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Ruin“. This is the second novel in a series about mankind’s future out amongst the stars. It stuck in my mind because some of the problems in the story relate to language and translation. Not merely translating between different written scripts or alphabets: how do entirely different species communicate? How do humans, with good eyesight and hearing, communicate with intelligent spiders who cannot hear at all at human frequencies, but whose language is based on vibrations in their webs? And how do those two species, working together, communicate with squid – intelligent cephalods who cannot hear and use no writing at all? These space-faring squid communicate entirely through colour – nuanced and delicate splashes and blotches of colour. This reminded me of China Mievelle’s story “Embassytown” which also deals with the deep concepts of translation that go beyond mere written text.

Then I read my first novel by Neal Asher, “The voyage of the Sable Keech”. Asher is a prolific science-fiction writer and I have been seeing his work on the shelves for years. For some reason I have never pulled one off the shelf to buy and read. This one was effectively drawn at random from his extensive catalogue. Again, authors and publishers would do well to note the importance of the blurb on the back. That’s what sold me…ancient hive mind…virus…new drone shell…Asher’s work has immortals, viruses, some very dangerous animals, and is full of violence. Nearly as violent as Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon” trilogy about Takeshi Kovacs, and that’s saying something! I found Neal Asher’s crab-like aliens, the Prador, particularly unpleasant. But nevertheless, a great read by someone who surely knows about the craft of story-telling. I’ll be reading more of his work, and trying to learn from his technique.

Finally, I tried and failed to read Ben Bova’s “Mercury“. Bova strikes me as being of the first generation of science-fiction authors (that of the early-mid 20th century), yet somehow crossing over into the second generation. One cannot be sure if he writes hard science-fiction (following the physics) or soft (what used to be called “space opera”). Writing in 2005 though, he is spot-on and prophetic about the effects of climate change. I found his characterisation not even good enough to be called two-dimensional. His heroes and anti-heroes were wooden and unconvincing. I love nuance – you’ll find none in a Ben Bova novel. I finally put it aside after growing cross at his “New Morality” priests. It’s fair enough to be an ardent atheist and to allow dislike of religion or even Christianity to creep into the text, but characters, even baddies, or even priests, need to be convincing. Pantomime baddies belong in the pantomine: my suspension of disbelief fell off. TL;DR.

A full review of all my reading of 2023, will be forthcoming shortly!