Anarchist novels, part 1: The Dispossed by Ursula Le Guin
What is an anarchist novel? Even if we include those that merely feature an anarchist main character, or an anarchist mode of thought, the list is fairly short. Caleb Williams by William Godwin, penned some two-hundred years ago might qualify as the first case in point. The Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy is also often mentioned. Then there are several modern examples, especially within the genre of cyberpunk. However, if we limit the definition to stories that describe an anarchic society, the list shrinks down considerably. I can only think of two examples: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. And since Le Guin considers her book to be the first to deal with the topic of an anarchist society [reference required], I can only assume that she would opt for an even shorter list. Or maybe she excludes The Moon on the grounds that it describes an anarchist revolution, that once it has succeeded in overthrowing the old guards, quickly adopts a parliamentary system.
The Dispossessed is certainly the only novel I know of that deals extensively with the structure and functioning of an anarchic society. That society is the colony of Anarres, the younger sibling of a binary planet system. The Odonians, as they call themselves after their founder Odo, left the other planet, Urras, some one hundred and seventy years before the story starts. In that time, and under the influence of the harsh conditions on Anarres, the society has lost its revolutionary fervor, become rigid, while broadly clinging on to its anarchic principles. The person, or should be say the myth of Odo, whose writings form the guiding principles, some would say laws, of the society therefore has a double function: her inheritance keeps the society together, but it also means that it does not feel able to move on.
Although it is easy enough to criticize Le Guin for basing her fictional society on the writings of one person, it does give the story a backbone that might otherwise be lacking. What's the sense in presenting a society that works, where all the normal mechanisms of power are absent? There's another way Le Guin simplifies the situation: the society occupies a planet and lives in almost complete, self-imposed isolation from the rest of the universe. In this way, the revolution (that actually took place back on Urras), can be safeguarded against counterrevolutionary forces, at least external ones. But this artificial situation is put to good use in the unraveling of the story.
The way that Le Guin introduces the conflicts that drive the story along cleverly plays on the readers' conceptions, whether they are anarchists or not. Nowhere is this more clear than when she reveals the underlying tensions in Odonian society. For the first one hundred or so pages, the society is presented as it is. At the point when I could no longer suspend my disbelief that a society like that could exist, it is revealed, through the opinions of a small band of dissidents, that the utopia that it claims to be is not all it appears. While there are no leaders and laws on Anarres, there are administrative structures that have taken on some of their functions. But the main deviation from a truly anarchic society is the way that social disapproval works to limit the freedom of anyone who sticks their head too far above the parapet, a way of coercion that is in some ways more cynical than the rule of law, and merely another guise of the dictatorship of the majority, or even an insistent minority: "We fear our neighbour's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice." (p 286). This clever double take came just in time to stop me from losing interest; in fact, the books became much more enjoyable from this point on.
One person who experiences this conflict most keenly is the book's main character, Shevek. He is a physicist, whose theories are more and more seen as anti-revolutionary (historical parallels abound). His attempts to share his theoretical findings with the rest of the universe meets with increasing resistance, as it breaks a taboo based on the Other.
Refreshingly, the novel provides no easy answers, and the tensions at the heart of the story are never satisfactorily resolved. By doing this, although the initial problems are posed as a dialectic (a play between two diametrically opposing forces), Le Guin refuses to shoehorn the reader into one camp or the other. Instead, she reveals the continual struggle that underlies all societies, that are constantly renewed and cast into new paradigms.
Some quotes (all page numbers refer to the British 2006 Gollancz edition, the one with the anarchist cover):
The Dispossessed is certainly the only novel I know of that deals extensively with the structure and functioning of an anarchic society. That society is the colony of Anarres, the younger sibling of a binary planet system. The Odonians, as they call themselves after their founder Odo, left the other planet, Urras, some one hundred and seventy years before the story starts. In that time, and under the influence of the harsh conditions on Anarres, the society has lost its revolutionary fervor, become rigid, while broadly clinging on to its anarchic principles. The person, or should be say the myth of Odo, whose writings form the guiding principles, some would say laws, of the society therefore has a double function: her inheritance keeps the society together, but it also means that it does not feel able to move on.
Although it is easy enough to criticize Le Guin for basing her fictional society on the writings of one person, it does give the story a backbone that might otherwise be lacking. What's the sense in presenting a society that works, where all the normal mechanisms of power are absent? There's another way Le Guin simplifies the situation: the society occupies a planet and lives in almost complete, self-imposed isolation from the rest of the universe. In this way, the revolution (that actually took place back on Urras), can be safeguarded against counterrevolutionary forces, at least external ones. But this artificial situation is put to good use in the unraveling of the story.
The way that Le Guin introduces the conflicts that drive the story along cleverly plays on the readers' conceptions, whether they are anarchists or not. Nowhere is this more clear than when she reveals the underlying tensions in Odonian society. For the first one hundred or so pages, the society is presented as it is. At the point when I could no longer suspend my disbelief that a society like that could exist, it is revealed, through the opinions of a small band of dissidents, that the utopia that it claims to be is not all it appears. While there are no leaders and laws on Anarres, there are administrative structures that have taken on some of their functions. But the main deviation from a truly anarchic society is the way that social disapproval works to limit the freedom of anyone who sticks their head too far above the parapet, a way of coercion that is in some ways more cynical than the rule of law, and merely another guise of the dictatorship of the majority, or even an insistent minority: "We fear our neighbour's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice." (p 286). This clever double take came just in time to stop me from losing interest; in fact, the books became much more enjoyable from this point on.
One person who experiences this conflict most keenly is the book's main character, Shevek. He is a physicist, whose theories are more and more seen as anti-revolutionary (historical parallels abound). His attempts to share his theoretical findings with the rest of the universe meets with increasing resistance, as it breaks a taboo based on the Other.
Refreshingly, the novel provides no easy answers, and the tensions at the heart of the story are never satisfactorily resolved. By doing this, although the initial problems are posed as a dialectic (a play between two diametrically opposing forces), Le Guin refuses to shoehorn the reader into one camp or the other. Instead, she reveals the continual struggle that underlies all societies, that are constantly renewed and cast into new paradigms.
Some quotes (all page numbers refer to the British 2006 Gollancz edition, the one with the anarchist cover):
"[N]o society can change the nature of existence." (p 53)
"We suffer, but not enough. And so we suffer for nothing." (p 53)
"It is of the nature of ideas to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on." (p 63)
"Your habit of approaching everybody as a person, an individual, won't do here, it won't work. You have got to understand the powers behind the individual." (a socialist warning Shevek against the capitalist system, p 119)
"They think if people can possess enough things they will be content to live in prison." (the same socialist, p 120)
"[C]oercion is the least efficient way of obtaining order" (p 129)
"You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them." (p 143)
"Only the individual [has] the power of moral choice." (p 289)
posted by Platypus Bill at
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