The Dispossessed: A Novel (Hainish Cycle)

Our group found this book fascinating to read and discuss. We may return to it again and read it in smaller sections as the whole book contains so very much! This was the sixth or seventh time I've read the book and find more and more wisdom each time I read it.

The book was thought provoking and subversive. Two worlds in the book Anarres and Urras are obvious analogy of US and Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the book, there is a quote "If you found a pack of explosive caps in the street, would you ‘share’ them with every kid that went by? Those books are explosives." when referring to one of the book that one of the character was trying to censor. This quote may be applied to this book itself. I noticed that this book was not translated into Korean until 2002, even though it was published in the height of the Cold War. There is reason for that.

Meditation on political structures and their implications for human flourishing as seen through the eyes of an ambitious, self-reflective physicist. The author balances detached political analysis with the struggle of one individual to find his way in competing societies. In doing so, she provides us empathy, perspective, and some varied perspectives on what a life well lived might look like. A remarkable book.

She introduces us to a world of orderly, communitarian anarchists (defined strictly as against centralized power) who have opted out of their hyper-capitalist home world and instead live on its moon. There are benefits to this communitarian world: they are a cooperative, self-regulating collection of folks that live and work together without status or power structures. They care for each other in a way that is simply impractical in, for instance, our society. There are costs: individual motivation and achievement have no place in society. The intuitive / emotional realm of the human psyche is purposefully suppressed. These sacrifices enable equality and fellow feeling and yet leave the reader feeling that this colony lacks not only trivial comforts, but some deeper wellspring of human creativity, feeling, and expression. You're thinking, geez is this Ayn Rand? It's not. It's simply the author pointing out that human thriving depends on multiple and contradictory values and conditions. There are tradeoffs and they impact different people differently. This communitarian world is both a utopia and stifling. Perhaps any utopia has drawbacks.

Then we visit the capitalist world. This feels familiar: technology has advanced, material comforts are many. And everyone is out to cheat everyone else and narrowly calculate what will make themselves best off. These folks have everything and yet they seem to exist in a state of restless competitiveness that they occasionally dull by overindulging in material extravagance. And the protagonists is permitted to see mainly the elites. He obtains only trace reports of the masses of workers who are compelled to do the work that supports the lives of the elites. We might view this state of society as reasonable, even familiar, were it not that we perceive it through the shocked and dismayed eyes of our communitarian narrator, for whom this focus on property and selfishness and the absence of caring for ones fellow man is nothing short of hell.

Then he returns home and with his newfound wisdom asks is this revolutionary communitarian planet actually living up to its ideals? He notices that power structures, abolished when the colony was founded, have seeped back in. A censor, for instance, might use his position to determine what sort of physics is practiced and thus to empower himself. These observations allow the author to transform what could have been a static comparison of two systems into a dynamic analysis of how systems over time.

The author shows us that these two simple ideal types - communitarian and capitalist - have changed over time and influenced each other. The communitarian society sprung into existence as a reaction to the capitalist one. It was founded by revolutionaries, but over time it has become run by bureaucrats who have figured out how to exercise their authority in a manner that is acceptable in their society. And thus sets the stage for the protagonists' next revolution.

The book ends with the reflection of an alien from a civilization that has existed for an impossibly long period of time. Long enough that their recorded history covers seemingly every permutation of political arrangement that one could try. This alien reflects "there is nothing new under the sun, but I have not personally tried these things and isn't the point of life to explore." Or something close to that.

Up to that moment, the author has delicately balanced our focus between (a) a dispassionate analysis of political structures and which one we ought to prefer; and (b) the personal journey of the main physicist character. Then she tells us that there is no (a) and gives us an authority who ought to know.

She does not resolve the fundamental tension: which of these societies should we choose? She nullifies the question. These societies are consequences of each other's excess and will likely always be so. You cannot choose between them. By choosing one you have implied the other.

She then turns her attention back to (b) the individual. She gives us someone from a civilization that has literally seen it all and provides a phenomenological answer: act where you are, with the information you have, toward ideals you understand. Inform yourself with history, but understand the world is still unfolding and you have a role in creating it. Be courageous. Explore. That sort of thing.

So that's the story. Other themes worth commenting on?

Le Guin uses the book to imagine how a handful of human characteristics might vary under different social/political conditions. Specifically, she wants us to consider how much of what we think of as human nature actually comes from the unique relationships to each other that we have under capitalism. She questions, for instance, whether human competition, subjugation, individualism, and gender roles might not all be expressed primarily because we exist within a government-supported competitive framework where the stakes are not only social status but also material wealth and our very survival. She concludes yeah we'd be pretty different under an anarcho-socialist arrangement. Probably, right?

I thought this was excellent and a more useful exercise than the last half dozen books I've read in which deluded scientific materialists seek to answer (not explore) similar questions based on a handful of isolated lab experiments and some anthropological data about how many skulls were cracked at different points in history. The reality she demands we recognize is this: human potential is limited at least in part by its environment and we can only imagine what our potential might be under other systems. Not only do we lack neutral observable subjects but even the vocabulary that a different society might use. And Le Guin helps us go on this imaginative journey in a way that feels personally true to the humanity that I know. She leaves us feeling that what holds us back is not the incapacity of the many but the unjustified certainty of the few.

Five stars. A call for more patient understanding of political change and a more expansive view of human potential.

Too much politics here for me. Le Guin has created an other worldly setting for this series and it doesn't quite work for me. The names are too similar. The background is less descriptive and more philosophical. I felt like I was reading a stilted allegory to warn against consumerism and other pitfalls if modern culture. This might all resonate with someone else but it was a bad fit for me.

I don't know. It's well-written. It's an eloquent and complete answer to Ayn Rand about the possibilities of cooperation- not perfect even if set-up perfectly, but better than greed and selfishness. At the same time, the characters are real and moving people. This isn't an empty allegory.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot I actually enjoyed in this book. I more or less just powered through it.