Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World:
A Phenomenological Analysis of the Power of Science Fiction.
Matías Graffigna
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Abstract
The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible
alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism
as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a
society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can
meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature.
In particular, I will take Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this
relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an
alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological
theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative lifeworld, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief
in the possibility of such an alternative society.
Imagination proves to be the necessary condition
of every attempt to bring about changes in the real world.
Aron Gurwitsch, Edmund Husserl’s Conception of Phenomenological Psychology, p. 720
The issue of an alternative to our current society is nowadays a very present and
pressing matter. While there are many ways to approach it, science fiction (from now
on, SF) literature has explored different types of dystopias and utopias as possible
forms of alternative societies. Even though these novels do not always aim to present
a literally attainable society, fiction itself offers a kind of experience that is not to be
found in writings of another nature, such as treatises or papers. In this paper, I wish to
analyze the experience of readers that engage with those novels that propose
alternative societies. I will employ to this purpose Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory, and I will focus my analysis on one case-study: Ursula Le Guin’s The
Dispossessed (2006). The novel portrays two planets that orbit their star together:
Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy vol.2 (2019)
© 2018 by Alfredo Mac Laughlin. ISSN 2573-881X
This article © 2019 by Matías Graffigna. Published 2019 December 1.
Original publication under a CC-BY-NC License by the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy.
Graffigna: Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World
Urras, a world quite similar to our own, where a capitalist society, with all its known
problems, coexists with a USSR kind of society. The other, Anarres, is Le Guin’s
presentation of an alternative society under the guise of an anarcho-communist social
organization.
Even though Le Guin’s more or less explicit sources of inspiration are to be
found in the anarchist movement—especially in the figure of Peter Kropotkin—and in
taoism, I understand her alternative society to be a fictional realization of Karl Marx’s
idea of communism. I will not engage here in discussions about capitalism, but will
rather take Marx’s critique as a starting point: capitalism, as any system based on
classes, exploitation and oppression, must be overcome if we are to live as equal and
free beings. The overcoming of capitalism was postulated by Marx as a next step in
history, one that we had to fight for to achieve. He named this next stage
“communism” and described it as a society without classes and without private
property. Nevertheless, Marx did not describe any further how this society would or
should be.
I will proceed as follows: in the first section I will introduce Husserl’s
phenomenological theory, to make the relevant concepts available to the reader. In
the second section I shall discuss Marx’s idea of communism, by offering some very
brief and general introduction of it, and by proposing a specific way of understanding
it, namely, as an undetermined concept. Finally, in the third section, I will move into
the case-study of The Dispossessed, to show how it presentifies in phantasy1 a
communist life-world. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to argue through
phenomenology that SF literature is a very powerful tool to think about communism
as the alternative to our current society. The aim is thus double: first, to offer the
phenomenological description of the experience of reading SF in which alternative
societies are presented and, second, to show that Marx’s undetermined idea of
communism is presentified in Le Guin’s work and can therefore be considered a viable
alternative to our society.
1. An Introduction to some Conceptual Tools of Phenomenology
Husserlian phenomenology is in itself a theory and a method. It claims to be a radical
philosophy (Husserl 1991, 48), in the sense that is sets out into the path of philosophy
without taking anything for granted, without accepting any presupposition, be it from
the pre-theoretical life or from the existing sciences and theories. The so-called epoché
demands that we suspend the general thesis of the reality of the world (1976, 63), that
is, that we begin our analysis without taking position regarding its existence and that
we perform a reduction to the sphere of our consciousness and experiences. The
principle of all principles (51) demands that we abstain from regarding anything as
true, unless we can bring it to original givenness. What that means is that for each
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region of being there is a corresponding way of givenness that grants us access to the
corresponding objects as they are. The clearest cases are sensory perception for the
material world and immanent perception (reflection) for acts of consciousness.
Meaning, that a material object is originally (truly, really) given to us, when we
perceive it; a “mental object” (Erlebnis), like an act or the correlate of an act as such, is
originally given to us through an act of reflection. Phenomenology is transcendental in
the sense that it holds the world and its objects to be constituted by consciousness. In
summary, everything that is, is the result of a sense-giving activity of the I based on
something given, where the transcendent world plays the role of the guiding thread.
1.1 Perception, Presentification and Phantasy.
The first conceptual distinction I wish to introduce, to help us in our analysis, is that
between empty and fulfilled intentions or propositions: when I am intentionally
directed to an absent object or state of affairs, that is, one for which I do not have an
intuition in the corresponding form, that intention is said to be empty. When the
object or state of affairs is given to me in the appropriate form of intuition, that
intention is thus fulfilled.
Not all intentions are to be fulfilled by perception. There is a different class of
acts that can operate as fulfilling-acts: presentifications. So, the second distinction to
be introduced:
•
•
Perception (Wahrnehmung): is the “mother-form” of acts. In perception an object
is given “in person,” “in the flesh” (leibhaft), originary and present. This does not
mean that it is given to me adequately or fully.
Presentification (Vergegenwärtigung): is the act in which an object is given, but
not presently, not in person (like in perception). Examples here are: recollection
(memory), phantasy, imagination, empathy.2.
The form of presentification that will be of relevance for the following analysis is
phantasy. In phantasy, we can think about anything in the mode of the “as if,” without
attending to actuality or, in Husserl’s terminology, in quasi-actuality. We can intend
without commitment to reality or truth, in what we call the neutrality modification:
thinking about something without positing its existence or truth, without judging if it
is or isn’t, just quasi-positing. It serves, as Husserl claims, as a form of clarification or
making something evident:
Here [in the quasi-actuality of phantasy] belongs what we normally call
clarification, bringing to clarity, it designates always a mode of making
[something] evident, of staging a synthetic way [that goes] from an unclear
intention to the corresponding prefigurative [vorverbildlichenden] intuition;
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namely one that implicitly carries within itself the sense: if it happened as a
direct, self-giving [intention], it would fulfill the intention in its being, verifying
it. The prefigurative intuition of this verifying fulfillment does not produce
actualizing evidence of being, but it does [produce evidence] of the possibility
of being of the corresponding content. (Husserl 1991, 94)3
As an example, think of how a complex experiment is designed: a series of
initial conditions must be given, a procedure described, arriving to propositions of the
form "if, under the circumstances, this and that were to obtain, then we would know
that..." and so on. In phantasy we build up these prefigurative intuitions that, based on
things we already know, enable us to think about things we do not yet know. We can
contemplate possibilities, necessities and impossibilities in pure phantasy, and move
to perception to find out what actually is the case. While phantasy alone cannot elicit
knowledge about the actual world, it is the source of knowledge for possibilities of the
actual world.
Phantasy can be “free” or “unrestricted,” or it can also be bound phantasy. Even
though free phantasy will always be restricted by our mental capacities, it extends
well beyond the limits of the world as we know it. I can, for instance, phantasize about
a planet or universe, where gravity does not apply. I picture in my mind pigs floating,
while leaves fall and stones swirl in between. If I were to do that with theoretical
purposes, I would soon arrive at the conclusion that “it cannot possibly be the case.”
But one could write a nice story about such a place; nothing prevents us from
entertaining these thoughts or images in our phantasy4. A bound phantasy, on the
other hand, is one that sets out to think, imagine or contemplate states of affairs that
are possible according to the laws of a given domain. The previous example
contravenes our knowledge of physics, but the notions of a space elevator or a Dyson
sphere, although today technologically impossible, seem to be products of phantasy
that respects the laws of physics (at least, we have not yet found concluding reasons
to deem them impossible)5. Regarding this distinction, Husserl claims:
If I have a pure phantasy, then I can make a supposition [Ansatz]. I think to
myself, that would be real. I can then think hypothetically, keep thinking,
extract necessary consequences, etc. But still, I would not have any relation to
reality. I do not simply dream, but I think that the dreamed world would be a
reality, and it pertains to it, that I hold fast to the dreamed, that I come back to
the same thing and that I hold it fast in its identical sense. (2009, 211)
This supposition one makes is precisely that our phantasy “could be real.” The
movement from free phantasy to bound phantasy consists in binding the original
phantasy to known elements of a specific part of the world, in order to determine
their possibility. This, as we said, does not guarantee any actual relation to reality,
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since for that we need more than phantasy (we need the corresponding acts that give
us the objects of the region in question); but it does bind us to the real, in the sense of
continuing the phantasy according to the laws and principles of the region in question,
and thus it offers the opportunity of considering the possibilities and necessities
contained in it. In this sense, Moylan’s description of one of the features of the socalled genre of critical Utopia (a genre under which The Dispossessed falls), recognizes
this property of boundedness:
Opposed to other fantastic forms, utopias and science fiction practice an
estrangement that is cognitively consistent with nature as it is known or with
the imagined natural laws in the particular text. That is, the estranged world of
utopia must appear realistic, must not partake of the impossibilities of the
supernatural or the naturally undoable. This textual game depends on the
author’s rhetorical ability to create a mode of discourse which allows her or
him to exaggerate, intensify, and extend scientific, technological, and social
conditions to their most extreme point while convincing the reader that
everything which occurs in the fantasy world is feasible. (Moylan 2014, 33)
1.2 The Life-World
The last concept I wish to introduce for our analysis is that of the life-world. Every
experience we have is always surrounded by a horizon of undetermined
determinability (Husserl 1976, 57), meaning: while I am directing my attention to a
specific object in my surroundings, other objects are there for me not being presently
thematized, but susceptible of receiving my full attention if I turn it to them. In this
way, the undetermined objects in my experience can always be further determined
through further experiences. The world is said to be the horizon of all horizons, the
all-encompassing horizon. Somewhere “between” the immediate horizon of a concrete
experience and the ultimate horizon of the world, we find the life-world as our homeworld (Heimwelt)6. On the other hand, the life-world is our ground, foundation for all
experiences:
The life-world is […] for us, the ones who live in it awake, always for us there,
being for us in advance, “ground” for all praxis, be it theoretic or non-theoretic.
(1976b, 145)
We learn and acquire our constitutions and senses from our life-world, from our
practical relation to what is out there for us. In this sense, it serves not only as
encompassing horizon, but also as foundation for our habits, understanding and
beliefs. It is also “a kingdom of originary evidence” (130), upon which the evidences of
our perceptions, memories, presentifications, verifications, inductions are grounded.
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Even though the life-world “has in all its relativities a general structure,” one “upon
which all that is relative is bound,” but “it’s not itself relative” (142), there are
different life-worlds, for example, for different cultures:
But when we end up in a foreign surrounding, with the Negroes in Congo or the
Chinese peasants, etc., then we hit upon the fact, that their truths, the facts that
stand for them certain and verified or to be verified, are by no means our own.
(141)
The life-world, then, as ground of our experience, is the complex whole of
senses, meanings, beliefs, habits, relations, possibilities and goals we acquire, that
serve as a basis for our life. From another perspective, these elements do not only
introduce us into the world, but also remain there through our entire lives as a frame,
as a horizon for all of our experiences. The life-world as such has its own ontological
structure, independent of any concrete case. As part of that invariant structure,
individuality appears: it is an essential trait of the life-world to manifest itself in
concrete forms, according to different factors, resulting so in different life-worlds.
Thus, we can speak of the life-world as being one and the same for all humans, while
at the same time acknowledging that each culture, at each time in human history, has
lived in a different life-world 7.
What we want to analyze in this context is precisely the relation between
phantasy and life-worlds. On the one hand, all that we phantasize is bound by our
experience, that has its roots in the ground of the real, actual life-world 8. Even in my
wildest phantasies I see colors and shapes, objects and events, there are language and
concepts, etc. All that I can phantasize is, to some extent, an object of possible
experience: because I am experiencing it through phantasy. Now, if I bind my
phantasy through specific known empirical laws, I can try to phantasize about
actualizable possibilities, that may in due course prove themselves as more than
possibility, or as impossible.
When the product of our phantasy is a whole fictional world, a whole society,
the question about its possibility is harder. But to answer this question is not
impossible. There are also laws that bind us: historical, sociological, biological,
economical, anthropological, etc. Even if each has a different status as a law, one can
strive to be bound by them in phantasy and try to build a coherent world (like so
many SF authors do so well). A successful phantasy about a world based on certain
theoretical ideas (i.e. Marx’s communism) can strengthen the belief in the possibility
of these ideas and also increase their desirability.
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2. The Marxist Idea of Communism
Marx dedicated most of his writing to an economic-political critique of human history,
focusing especially on its present stage of capitalism. Through his dialectics, he
showed how “the history of all societies until now is the history of class-struggle”
(Marx and Engels 1977, 462), a struggle that developed from the opposition between
slaves and masters, through that of lords and peasants, all the way to the present-day
bourgeois and proletarians.
As it is well known, Marx’s critique of capitalism does not end with the
description of the current system, but moves on into a proposal/predictive phase: the
revolution would take history to its next stage, a social organization which would no
longer be based on relations of exploitation and oppression, which he called
“communism.” Even though both he and Engels elaborated with some detail how this
revolution would occur and what the so called “dictatorship of the proletariat” should
aim to do once in power to reach communism, the concrete content of communism
itself was left rather unattended. It is indeed quite hard to find explicit statements
about the future communist society in the 43 volumes of the Marx and Engels
complete works. In The Communist Manifesto, the authors claim: “In this sense, the
communists can summarize their theory with one expression: abolition of private
property” (475). It is important to point out that the sense of “private property” meant
here concerns primarily, if not exclusively, the property of the means of production
and not, say, your toothbrush or shoes. What defines the communist society as such, is
the fact that no one owns the means of production and the resources themselves.
What happens to other forms of property remains an open issue to be discussed in a
more advanced phase of communism-planning 9.
thus:
Engels answers the question, “Of what kind must this new social order be?”
Above all, it will take the work of the industry and all branches of production in
general from the hands of the particular individuals, who create competition,
and for that purpose it will let all these branches of production be operated by
the whole of society, that is, for common calculation, according to common plan
and under participation of all members of society. It will, therefore, abolish the
competition and place the association in its stead. […] Precisely the private
property will have to be eliminated, and in its place will enter the common use
of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according
to common agreement, or the so called community of goods. (Engels 1977, 370;
my emphasis.)
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As we can see then, the abolition of private property would entail that of
classes and exploitation, turning production, the whole of economy, into a decision of
the whole of society, that shall proceed in such a way that shall bring about the
principle of: “each according to her capacities, for each according to her necessities!”
(Marx 1987, 21). In a more philosophical than economical note, Marx claims:
Communism [is understood] as the positive transcendence [Aufhebung] of
private property as human self-alienation and for that reason as real acquisition
of the human essence through and for the humans; because of that, as a
complete return of the human being for themselves as a social, that is, a
humane human being—a return that came to be consciously and within the
total richness of the present development. This communism is as an
accomplished naturalism = humanism, as an accomplished humanism =
naturalism; it is the true dissolution of the conflict between the human being
with Nature and with the human being; the true dissolution of the fight
between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation,
between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the
dissolved riddle of History and knows itself as this solution. (Marx 1968b, 536)
From the sharp critique of the capitalist society follows a clear conclusion: it is
from the relations of exploitation based on private property that basically most, if not
all, of the social evils and injustices plaguing our society stem. Therefore, it is only
logical that drastically changing these foundations would bring about an entirely new
society, where these contradictions are finally resolved, or dissolved. This, of course,
does not mean that new contradictions (or “problems”) will not arise. We do not know
that, but at least these—i.e., the ones we know today in our current society—would be
transcended.
Communism was, then, proposed to be a society with no classes and no private
property. As to what that means, how we can further determine this notion, we can
extract the following tenets from the previous quotations, that will serve in our
analysis of Le Guin’s book:
•
•
•
•
Administration of resources, industry, production by the whole of society, with
active participation of its members (instead of particular individuals).
Association or cooperation instead of competition.
Community of goods: common use of all instruments and products, according to
common agreement.
Capacities and necessities as criteria for distribution of goods and division of
labor.
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•
Transcendence of self-alienation and existential contradictions of the human
beings amongst themselves and towards nature.
There is also a very good reason why Marx was not more explicit about how a
communist society would be like: we do not know, and we cannot possible know a
priori. Our society is the product of history and of the material conditions of
production; the future society shall be the product of future material conditions and
the history that leads to it. Until they are realized, any claim about that society will be
no more than speculation—an exercise which Marx, in his scientific attitude, always
abstained from.
Marx and his followers had their reasons not to speculate or describe how a
communist society would be in its concrete determination. That does not mean, that
we cannot consider possible realizations of that very undetermined and empty idea of
a society without classes, state, exploitation, oppression, private property, and
existential contradictions. I believe that Anarres, Le Guin’s anarcho-communist
society, is one such realization of these undetermined concepts.
3. Science Fiction and Communism through Phenomenology: The Dispossessed
I do not wish to claim that Le Guin specifically set herself to illustrate Marx’s
communism. Her known influences in this matter are rather Kropotkin (1902) and
taoism10. The history of the relation between the movements of anarchism and
communism is a matter of its own, and I do not wish to engage with it here. Suffice it
to say, there undoubtedly is a compatible version of them: anarcho-communism.
While Le Guin might have taken her inspiration from multiple sources, I find that her
novel portraits enough elements of communism à la Marx, and these I intend to show
in the following.
I will continue by advancing my general thesis: I believe The Dispossessed—as
the chosen example amongst others—has the power to let its readers presentify in
phantasy Marx’s idea of a communist society, especially in that it creates a life-world
where these ideas are realized: the truths upon which the Anarresti stand are by no
means our own. If Marx’s idea of communism is, as I claimed, an undetermined one,
then Le Guin’s work is one possible determination of it. This is not to say that this
Anarresti society is the one and only determination, but through it, I claim, we gain
insight as to the possibility of communism in general.
Not only that, but in fiction we gain more than conceptual content. One could
theorize and offer different “models” of societies that would satisfy the idea of
communism, and even furnish them with very specific degrees of content. The
difference is, precisely, that the contents we gain in fiction are not only of an
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“intellectual” nature, but are lively contents. We get to stand in the shoes of an
individual who lives in such a society and, even more, that looks at one like our own
with his own eyes. This gives us the possibility, even if only in phantasy, of dwelling in
such a world. A helpful comparison for a very similar idea could be the difference
between a history textbook and a historical novel. While the former is usually more
accurate and intellectually informative, the latter has the power of putting us in the
time and place, and gives us a glimpse into life as it was then.
The whole capitalist society, especially considering globalization, can be
considered as a unitary life-world, in that enough common elements are present11. For
this reason, I find the creation of this anarcho-communist life-world so powerful: it
presents a completely different “ground” upon which our basic intuitions,
constitutions, common sense, praxis and the source of our evidence stand. That which
is “obvious,” undoubted and self-evident on Anarres are totally different principles
that our own, the horizons under which we live are completely different from the
Anarresti.
Let us dive into the case-analysis by reconstructing the setting: Urras, the
mother planet, offered their revolutionary “Odonians” (named after Odo, the woman
who lead them) the barren moon, Anarres, to inhabit, in exchange for never returning
and cutting all sorts of communications, except for some basic exchange of goods. The
novel begins some two hundred years after this, when the Odonian society is already
running under the principles of anarcho-communism. Our main character, Shevek, a
physicist who amongst others on Anarres begins to question some of the “new”
problems that appear, embarks himself in a journey to the mother planet, where he
faces for the first time, in person, capitalism and the state. Shevek’s knowledge of
Urras and, therefore, of capitalism and state-societies, has been up to that point empty
knowledge. It is through his experience in Urras that he fulfills those intentions and
gains intuitive knowledge of what is like to live in such a society. Shevek gets to
experience a capitalist society like our own as an anarcho-communist, while we,
capitalist citizens, catch a glimpse of anarcho-communism on Shevek’s Anarres.
The following passage is taken from a scene in which Shevek, during his stay in
Urras, is dinning at the house of a colleague, Oiie, with his wife and children. Shevek is
confronted by some of the usual questions a capitalist citizen might have, and Shevek
addresses them all with the spontaneity of someone who comes from another world. I
will quote in extenso, but offer my comments in between:
“But what,” Oiie said abruptly, as if the question, long kept back, burst from him
under pressure, “what keeps people in order? Why don’t they rob and murder
each other?”
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“Nobody owns anything to rob. If you want things you take them from the
depository. As for violence, well, I don’t know, Oiie; would you murder me,
ordinarily? And if you felt like it, would a law against it stop you? Coercion is
the least efficient means of obtaining order.” (Le Guin 2006, 126)
Here we find quite a clear affirmation of the anarcho-communist character of
Anarres: no property and no laws. “Nobody owns anything” seems quite a clear
example of the “community of goods” we found in the previous quotation from Engels.
On Anarres, goods are readily available to all its citizens. While people might hold
possession of things such as clothing items, tools or even jewelry (273), everything
one might need lays at the their disposal, rendering the idea of theft itself nonsensical.
While the absence of laws is an explicitly anarchist element and not technically a
Marxist one, the way in which Shevek considers the question itself is quite in line with
Marx’s notion of contradictions being solved, the “fight between necessity and
freedom” disappearing altogether. Anarchism and communism go hand in hand on
Anarres: in a socialized economy, there is no place for coercion.
Oiie hits again:
“All right, but how do you get people to do the dirty work?”
“What dirty work?” asked Oiie’s wife, not following.
“Garbage collecting, grave digging,” Oiie said; Shevek added, “Mercury mining,”
and nearly said, “Shit processing,” but recollected the Ioti taboo on scatological
words. He had reflected, quite early in his stay on Urras, that the Urrasti lived
among mountains of excrement, but never mentioned shit. (126)
Before getting to the most-important Anarresti socio-economical organization,
the scatological taboo deserves some mention. It would be far-fetched to claim that
such a taboo only exists within an oppressive society (like capitalism) and that it
would automatically disappear in anarcho-communism. Yet, so was the case for
Anarres. While this might not be necessary, the author explores this “higher-order”
element of the Anarresti life-world, as a society which, in general, does not have many
taboos. It is a society without written laws, a society without prohibitions and, in this
sense, not having such taboos seems a logical element: no one prohibits anybody else
of discussing any topic or mentioning certain things. On the other hand, it is also a
society without hierarchy and that, maybe, can also be seen in the Anarresti
“metaphysics”: there is no scale of being, with God on the top and feces at the very
bottom.
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Back to Shevek:
“Well, we all do them. But nobody has to do them for very long, unless he likes
the work. One day in each decad [a ten-day week] the community management
committee or the block committee or whoever needs you can ask you to join in
such work, they make rotating lists. Then the disagreeable work posting, or
dangerous ones like the mercury mines and mills, normally they’re for one half
year only.”
“But then the whole personnel must consist of people just learning the job.”
“Yes. It’s not efficient, but what else is to be done? You can’t tell a man to work
on a job that will cripple him or kill him in a few years. Why should he do that?”
“He can refuse the order?”
“It’s not an order, Oiie. He goes to Divlab —the Division of Labor office— and
says, I want to do such and such, what have you got? And they tell him where
there are jobs.” (126)
In this last part of the passage we learn some basic elements of Anarresti life
and especially of their socio-economical organization. A typical question is, then, who
does that, which no one wants to do? While the answer to that question in a capitalist
society like our own is simply “the dispossessed,” the proletarians, those who have to
choose between that and nothing, the Anarresti common sense and economical
system is quite different: everyone. In a similar way as it might happen in a private
household amongst a family or room-mates, where cleaning duties and other housemaintenance tasks might be equally distributed among the residents, the whole of
Anarres works that way: people have their “primary job,” that which they chose to do,
and rotational duties to cover the necessary work for the whole of society, from which
everybody benefits, and which everybody decides as necessary. If we take into
consideration that there is, indeed, no money, no market and that all necessary goods
are readily available, we can see how this society is indeed an example of communism.
If we add that there is no state and no police, no form of control through violence, we
see, again, the realization of anarchism as a form of social organization12.
Two of the “communist” determinations we extracted from Marx and Engels
are crystallized in this passage alone: there is no competition, mainly, because there is
nothing to compete for. Instead, the organization relies on the principle of association
or cooperation: necessary work is done by everyone, rotating the jobs that nobody
takes as a primary job. This is done, evidently, according to necessity, but also to
capacity (this being the second element): it is not only that necessary jobs are divided
amongst all members of society, but also that each member gets to choose which
necessary task she will perform, according to her capacities.
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One more question from Oiie:
“But then why do people do the dirty work at all? Why do they even accept the
one-day-in-ten jobs?”
“Because they are done together… And other reasons. You know, life on
Anarres isn’t rich, as it is here. In the little communities there isn’t very much
entertainment, and there is a lot of work to be done. So, if you work at a
mechanical loom mostly, every tenth day it’s pleasant to go outside and lay a
pipe or plow a field, with a different group of people… And then there is
challenge. Here you think that the incentive to work is finances, need for
money or desire for profit, but where there’s no money the real motives are
clearer, maybe. People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take
the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can—
egoize, we call it—show off?—to the weaker ones. Hey, look, little boys, see
how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing… But
really, it is the question of ends and means. After all, work is done for the
work’s sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life. The private conscience knows that.
And also the social conscience, the opinion of one’s neighbors. There is no
other reward, on Anarres, no other law. One’s own pleasure, and the respect of
one’s fellows. That is all. When that is so, then you see the opinion of the
neighbors becomes a very mighty force.” (127)
Oiie’s question is quite thorny and Shevek’s answer only a possible one
amongst many. This why-question reveals indeed a deep tension between both worldviews, between both of the life-worlds from which the characters come. Shevek could
have answered: “Well, because they do… that’s just the way it is,” or: “Because it is the
only way to guarantee freedom and equality, which are humanity’s basic principles of
social organization.” He could have also said something like: “Why, you see Oiie, when
you grow up, you will learn that in life you have to do things you don’t really like, so as
to get to enjoy other things you do like.” While, if we asked Oiie, why do only some
people take care of the “dirty jobs” in archich-capitalism, the answer could be:
“Because that’s the way it is,” or: “Because otherwise nobody would do these jobs”;
“Because they are forced to by necessity and coercion.” What this tension reveals is
precisely the underlying constitutive elements of the opposing life-worlds: the
anarcho-communist principles of economic equality and political freedom, against the
archic-capitalist ones of class-belonging and political coercion. For both cases, these
differences are given, and their reason for being goes beyond the rational
reconstruction that a given member of the corresponding society could give.
In the last passage we also learn about another fundamental element of the
Anarresti society. Le Guin takes the idea of a revolutionary society to be a society in
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permanent revolution, always changing and perfecting itself. That is one of the main
themes of the novel. In this case, the new contradictions the revolutionary main
characters face concern how the opinion of the others has come to play the role of
“replacing” the state and its laws13. There is, strictly speaking, no coercion, no
obligation, but the way in which you are judged by your peers and fellow citizens does
play indeed a determining role for the behavior of the individual. As it happens in our
society with “customs” and the so called “unwritten laws,” social order is maintained
to a great extent through the active control of its citizens and not much more than
denunciation and condemnation of not acceptable behavior. The role that social
morality plays on Anarres and on our current Earth are, of course, very different.
While for us it would not amount to a decisive factor at the level of social theory or
political thinking, the absence of any other form of coercion or oppression on Anarres
makes these invisible laws, this incipient stagnant bureaucracy, a locus of
contradiction and conflict with personal freedom. Even though the freedom that the
Anarresti experience is much greater than our own, these new conflicts go to show
that humanity’s ideal of total freedom is not yet fully realized.
This social organization has its corresponding ideological elements. Or, in our
phenomenological terms, we have certain acquired beliefs that make up the ground
upon which the Anarresti stand, the obvious, indubitable truths that shape our
understanding of reality itself, and social reality in particular, which are learned by
every Anarresti. These, in turn, operate not only as ground, but also as horizon for
everyday experience and, ultimately, also play a defining role in determining the
objectives and ideals of the members of society. Let us take a close look to three
Odonian maxims or mottos, taken from Odo’s fictitious writings, that stem from the
“revolutionary time” (before the Odonian left Urras for Anarres) and that clearly
reflect a sort of dialectical thinking, in the sense that they are responses or
interpellations to an archist, capitalist society:
“To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws. The Social
Organism.” (Le Guin 2006, 118)
This first motto has a different meaning for Odo as it has for her successful
followers. To her, it is the answer to the state of affairs she has before her. It is
something that we might say today in the face of our current society: it is, indeed, the
state and the capital that create crime and criminals. The capital pushes people to the
extreme through inequality and then the state, as an oppressive institution,
prosecutes the victims of the system by means of effective violence. But what meaning
could this statement have for the Anarresti themselves, who have no experience of
crime nor state nor property and yet have memorized these words? It is, for them,
clearly an empty proposition. Still, it serves as a founding base that gives meaning to
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their own social organization: we do it this way, because otherwise we would not have
freedom and equality. State and capital are absent enemies, threats, that loom about,
across the abyss of space. This maxim, then, serves the purpose of justifying their own
social order as the best possible, although still in opposition to the previous system of
archist capitalism. While the motto itself seems to suggest primarily that one can only
steal if things are owned by someone else, there is another meaning present: owning is
stealing. This strong and fundamental opposition to private property is a paradigmatic
element of the Marxist understanding of communism, it is the abolition of private
property itself what defines the passage to a communist society.
At another level, the reminiscence of archist capitalism still remains as a
present horizon within Anarresti society. Words such as “profiteer” and
“propertarian” are used as insults, in a general and unrelated manner, or to point out
specific egoistic or possessive behavior. I mentioned that a trade agreement of sorts
still exists between both planets, which is a matter of concern for many: “Every
generation, every year, in the PDC [Production and Distribution Committee] debates
of Abbenay [Anarres’ capital city], fierce protests were made: ‘Why do we continue
these profiteering business transactions with warmaking propertarians?’” (Le Guin 79,
my emphasis). This reference to Urras as an evil place is an ever-present horizon for
the Anarresti. On the one hand, because they came from Urras, on the other, because
Urras is still there. The meaning of this horizon is very well represented in the
following passage, where Shevek has the opportunity, for the first time during his stay
on Urras, to talk to a member of the working class:
The conversation went on. It was difficult for Shevek to follow, both in
language and in substance. He was being told about things he had no
experience of at all. He had never seen a rat, or an army barracks, or an insane
asylum, or a poorhouse, or a pawnshop, or an execution, or a thief, or a
tenement, or a rent collector, or a man who wanted to work and could not find
work to do, or a dead baby in a ditch. All these things occurred in Efor’s
reminiscences as commonplaces or as commonplace horrors. Shevek had to
exercise his imagination and summon every scrap of knowledge he had about
Urras to understand them at all. And yet they were familiar to him in a way that
nothing he had yet seen here was, and he did understand. (239)
In this sense, then, this life-world component has also the goal-meaning of
determining the place to where no one wants to return. In Shevek’s case it goes a step
beyond, constituting a personal revolutionary goal of interacting with Urras, if not to
bring the revolution itself, at least to restore communication and that possibility.
These archic-capitalist commonplaces are not at all such for an Anarresti like Shevek,
but the reason why they are more familiar to him than the things he had seen up to
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that point is, that that is what the Anarresti learn about Urras: they learn about its
dark side, about its horrors. Before talking to the servant Efor, Shevek had only
experienced “the beautiful side” of Urras, since he had been invited and received by its
government, and had only been shown how rich people live. The estrangement Shevek
experiences in the face of these “commonplace horrors” goes to show how there is
nothing “normal” about them. These horrors are known to us, ever present and, in this
sense, normal. But Shevek’s point of view, as an Anarresti stemming from an anarchocommunist life-world, comes to challenge this passive acceptance.
The second motto is also a motto that answers to a previous state of affairs, but
one with much stronger practical meaning for the present:
“Excess is excrement,” Odo wrote in the Analogy. “Excrement retained in the
body is a poison.” (Le Guin 2006, 84)
While the first quoted maxim has a rather founding character, the notion of
excess plays, in contrast, a role in everyday life. Now, what is excess? This maxim is a
dialectical response to capitalism, because the notion of excess itself stems from a
hyper-consuming capitalist society, where consumption and accumulation constitute
the sense of the lives of its people. Therefore, in Anarres, excess becomes just about
anything that goes beyond the threshold of the necessary. Having, or we should say,
using more than what you need is a social practice which is frowned upon, when that
is a possibility for the individual; and it is simply not possible, when referring to the
product of the social organization itself:
To say “this one is mine and that’s yours” in Pravic [the invented language the
Anarresti speak], one said, “I use this one and you use that.” (50)
Thus, for example, in the very beautiful description of Abbenay (83-85), it is
explained how lighting and heating are set to the bare minimum, going along with
daytime and seasons, not because it “was short of power, not with her wind turbines
and the earth temperature-differential generators used for heating; but the principle
of organic economy was too essential to the functioning of the society not to affect
ethics and aesthetics profoundly” (84). Here we can see how this motto determines
the life-world of the Anarresti, even beyond their material reality. It is, at least in this
and others examples, not the scarcity of Anarres what pushes to a conservative use of
resources, but the plain belief that excess is wrong, since it is a distinctive trait of the
society they sought to overcome and transcend. In this way, incurring in behavior that
may be deemed “excessive” is severely condemned by fellow citizens. This principle
makes up a strong value, present in the horizon of all the Odonians. It is their
common-sense to use as much as needed and not more, and that even beyond rational
justification. Scarcity might play a role at times, as well as a rejection of luxury, but to
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condemn excess where there is enough for everyone, reflects an acquired value, taken
to be true and operating in everyday life.
The final example goes beyond the dialectical response to archist capitalism
and raises itself to a true universal principle, also in a positive sense (not just as the
negation of an element of capitalist society):
“The means are the end. Odo said it all her life. Only peace brings peace, only
just acts bring justice!” (250)
In our real world, the means-ends dilemma is an open discussion, one that
pertains to the whole spectrum of the political divide (from right-wing neocon fascists
that will bomb a population out of existence to get oil, to radical Anarchists and
Marxists who support armed violent revolution). Neither accepting that “the end
justifies the means” nor the denial of this proposition are obvious truths for our
society. I do not wish here to argue in favor of this Odonian motto, but I do believe
that the notion that the end can justify the means is, indeed, one very proper of
societies based on exploitation. The idea that I can have a good, valuable end through
“evil” or inadequate means goes only to show the true nature of the end I sought,
especially when that which is used as a means is a human being. Be that as it may, this
Odonian proposition is no matter for debate in Anarres, it is, in contrast, a self-evident
truth that every Anarresti knows to be so, and one that guides them in the practical
decisions of every-day life. A good example for this can be seen at the end of the first
quoted passage: the reason why the Anarresti do the necessary jobs lies, to a great
extent, on the means-ends logic. Work is a mean to an end, but the work is in itself an
end. Work is done for its own pleasure and for the result of the work itself, and not for
an external end, like money or profit:
Odo wrote ‘A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of
economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and
the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The
delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the
good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well
—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of
sociality as a whole.’ (Le Guin 2006, 209)
Odo wrote these words before seeing Anarres come to be. We could claim the
same thing today, without knowing if it would ever be true: thus, Anarres comes to
presentify a society where this is, indeed the case. The great importance ascribed to
work in Odonian thought, as a case of the means-ends identification and, in general, as
a topic of its own, can easily be traced to one of Marx’s core thoughts: capitalist labor
is alienated, in that it produces the distinction between use-value and exchange-value,
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in that the producers are not the owners, in that the end of the activity is separated
and, therefore, alienated from the activity itself:
The capitalist does not produce a commodity for its own sake, nor for the sake
of its use value, or his personal consumption. The product in which the
capitalist is really interested is not the palpable product itself, but the excess
value [Mehrwert] of the product over the value of the capital consumed by it.
(Marx 1964, 51)
On the contrary, in a communist society work would become solidary, an end
in itself, an expression of our being, a free act. “Were we to produce as humans,”
[I would] have achieved, in my individual life-expression immediately your lifeexpression, that is, [I would] have confirmed and realized in my individual
activity immediately my true, human essence, my communal-essence
[Gemeinwesen]. (Marx 1968a, 468)14
The means-end identification makes up a very strong component of the
Anarresti horizons, which determines the way in which they think about practical
matters, even at a pre-reflective level. It is quite common in discussions about
philosophy or science, to face the question “and what is the use in that?” Such an
intuitive response would never appear on Anarres. The idea that one can separate
meaningful human work from an external purpose for it, is simply nonsense. “To say
that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on
this pulley it will lift the weight on that one” (Le Guin 2006, 191). This does not mean,
of course, that separation itself of means and ends is incomprehensible. The
possibility of erring in action by choosing the wrong means to an end stays present,
and appears at the level of reflection upon one’s life and decisions. As we can see in
this example, referred to Takver, Shevek’s partner, who, when being pregnant, was
moved to actions and thoughts she would later condemn, precisely, as violations of
this very principle:
That sacrificiality was what Takver had spoken of recognizing in herself when
she was pregnant, and she had spoken with a degree of horror, of self-disgust,
because she too was an Odonian, and the separation of means and ends was, to
her too, false. For her as for him, there was no end. There was process: process
was all. (281)
These three mottos have a common element I wish to highlight. As we saw, the
life-world is always already there for us, we are born into it, and we inherit from it,
amongst other things, these very basic truths about reality that remain as everpresent elements of our horizons. This is the case for us, real humans living in 21st
century capitalism, as it is true for the fictional Anarresti. To some extent, this is also
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true for us readers, who engage in a conscious reading of a good SF piece. I mean:
when we read a novel such as this, we are also thrown into this unknown life-world,
with its truths, practices and evidences. The author does not justify the elements that
compose this life-world (in the sense of arguing, as if it were a treatise on social
theory; or trying to show why these maxims are, indeed, true), any more than our
educators and institutions justified the truths they taught us as such. This Anarresti
life-world is given to us, in an analogous manner as the very world in which we live in
is given to us. This, I believe, is a fundamental element that makes to the power of SF
as a genre, that allows for interesting political thinking. Free from the constraints of
technical discourse, the author can readily show us a possible world and, to some
extent, “force us” to accept it as given. Then, the very wholesome and coherent society
proposed by Le Guin follows as very possible. One might, of course, be a skeptical
reader and refute or deny each of the elements of the novel as they come along. Such
practice, though, precludes understanding, be it in fiction or science. Unlike how it is
regarding our actual life-world, we can resist foreign ones, be them real (from other
cultures, places and times) or fictional, from the SF genre. But still, I believe The
Dispossessed replicates the given character of the fundamental elements of the lifeworld it creates, offering the reader the chance of playing along with the proposed
world, precisely by accepting, even if only in the neutrality modification of phantasy
—that is, without really taking a position, agreeing or disagreeing, just “entertaining
the thought”—these given truths that constitute the alternative life-world being
portrayed, and thus live in the presentification in phantasy of a possible anarchocommunism.
4. Conclusion
The need for alternatives to our current status quo has become very present. Yet,
thinking about meaningful alternatives is no easy task. In this article, I have focused
my discussion in one particular alternative: Marx’s idea of communism. Be it for its
long controversial history in the 20th century, or for the lack of content that
characterizes Marx’s original presentation, communism does not usually appear in the
contemporary political discourse as a viable path; rather the opposite, it is quickly
discarded as a “failed project” or a “naive utopia.” My argument against these notions
consists in recuperating the original spirit of Marx’s communism, by understanding
that his model was an undetermined one. If we share the Marxist critique of capitalism
(or societies of exploitation in general), then the true alternative to them should be, if
only by definition, such a society where exploitation, inequality and oppression are
not systemic elements.
But what does that mean? How would such a society look like? Is it really
possible?
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These are very serious questions in need of different types of answers. One
possible way to face this challenge, or so I have argued, is through the means of the SF
genre. I believe SF to be a very powerful tool to think about alternative societies in
general, and communism in particular. The reason for this can be made clear through
Husserl’s phenomenological theory: bound phantasy is the means through which we
can create new worlds, while still holding them to the standards we set up for them:
while phantasy in general allows for the human capacity of creating fiction, it also
allows for the binding of such fictions to known truths about the world. The product of
such an exercise is, therefore, a coherent and wholesome work, that is not only
“internally coherent” but also holds a relation to the actual world as we know it. In
particular, what fiction like The Dispossessed creates is a life-world, a new whole of
truths, habits, practices, evidences and material realities upon which the fictional, but
seemingly possible characters, stand and live.
The wholeness and boundedness of The Dispossessed—as the case-study I
chose—serve, then, as a means to presentify Marx’s empty and undetermined idea of
communism. On the one hand, because phantasy, as a form of presentification, serves
to bring to intuition propositions that are otherwise empty, devoid of content. Of
course, one novel cannot possibly presentify the whole of a society or life-world, nor
does it intend to. But it does bring totally empty ideas to some degree of intuitiveness,
which can be crucial to understand matters such as social-political theory and maybe
even political practice. On the other hand, the fact that this undetermined idea gains
one possible determination through a coherent and bounded phantasy shows,
precisely, that such thing could be possible: that the very general demand of having a
society without property and classes can be exemplified in a social organization, in
habits, science, art, language. The different elements of the life-world are shown in the
novel, and their interplay is built not as a mere free fantasy, but as a coherent whole,
bound to our knowledge of human history, nature and society. The Dispossessed
illustrates not a child’s dream, nor a merely thinkable scenario, but a very powerful
possibility. And such alternative possibilities can play a defining role in our political
thinking, because, after all, “revolution begins in the thinking mind” (Le Guin, 280).
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Werke. Band 4, edited by the Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der
SED, Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Gurwitsch, Aaron. 1957. “The Last Work of Edmund Husserl.” Philosophy and
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Gurwitsch, Aaron. 1966. “Edmund Husserl’s Conception of Phenomenological
Psychology.” The Review of Metaphysics, 19(4). 689-727.
Husserl, Edmund. 1976a. Hua III/1: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und
phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die
reine Phänomenologie (Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure
Phenomenology), edited by Karl Schumann. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1976b. Hua VI: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Phänomenologie (The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Philosophy. An Introduction to Phenomenology), edited by
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Husserl, Edmund. 1991. Hua I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge.
(Cartesian Meditations and the Paris Lectures), edited by Stephan Strasser.
Dodrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund. 2009. Hua XL: Untersuchungen zur Urteilstheorie. Texte aus dem
Nachlass (1893–1918). (Investigations Pertaining to the Theory of Judgment.
Texts from The Estate), edited by Robin Rollinger. Dodrecht: Springer
Science+Business Media
Kropotkin, Peter A. 1902. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure
Phillips & Co.
Le Guin, Ursula K. 2006. The Dispossessed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Marx, Karl. 1964. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Dritter Band. Buch III:
Der Gesamtprozeß der kapitalistischen Produktion (The Capital. Critique of
Political Economy. Third Volume. Book III: The Whole Process of Capitalist
production). In MEW25, edited by Friedrich Engels. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx, Karl. 1968a. “Auszüge aus James Mills Buch‚ ‘Elemens d’ économie politique’”
(Excerpts of James Mills' Book “Elemens d’ économie politique”). In Werke.
Band 40, edited by the Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED.
Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
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Marx, Karl. 1968b. Ökonomische-philosophische Manuskripte 1844 (Economicalphilosophical Manuscripts 1844). In Werke. Band 40, edited by the Institut für
Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx, Karl. 1987. Kritik des Gothaer Programms (Critique to the Gotha Program). In
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SED. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. 1977. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
(Manifesto of the Communist Party). In Werke. Band 4, edited by the Institut für
Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Moylan, Tom. 2014. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian
Imagination. Bern: Peter Lang.
Niven, Larry. 1970. Ringworld. New York: Ballantine Books.
Robinson, Kim. S. 1994. Green Mars. New York: Bantam Books.
Walton, Roberto J. 2003. “On the Manifold Senses of Horizonedness. The Theories of E.
Husserl and A. Gurwitsch.” Husserl Studies 19: 1–24.
Notes
It is the standard use in the phenomenological literature to write “fantasy” with “ph,”
“phantasy.” I will do this as well when I am using the concept in the technical
phenomenological sense, while spelling “fantasy” when I am not using it in the technical sense.
1
Examples outside the domain of the material world can quickly turn rather technical and
complex. For example, mathematical objects such as numbers are given through acts of
counting and collecting; abstract objects are given through acts of abstraction and
generalization.
2
3
All quotations from texts originally in German are my own translations.
This can serve to illustrate the difference between internal coherence and boundedness: a
story may be perfectly coherent, in that it sets its own rules and principles and abides by
them, without these having any reference to the world as it is, in other words, without binding
them to specific known principles. The genre of magic realism could count as a good example
for this.
4
Think, for example of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, where the Dyson sphere (or a version of it)
comes to life in a manner that aims to be bound by physics.
5
6
For a detailed discussion of the concept of horizon, see Walton 2003.
7
Cf. Husserl 1976, Part III.B and Gurwitsch 1957.
Cf. Walton 2003, 12. “Even if I can freely phantasy on the world as actually experienced
world, ‘I am tied,’ as Husserl says, ‘to the form of nature and the apperception of nature.’ (Hua
XXIII, 562) On the other hand, worlds of imagination, may be conceived of as alternative
8
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possibilities with reference to which the real world is to be transformed, and, when so
appropriated as habitable worlds, contribute to a refiguration of reality.”
As a nice example of “communist-like” planning, the following passage from Kim Stanley
Robinson’s Green Mars may serve to illustrate the difference between both senses of private
property. The scene takes place in the context of a conference, where a declaration as to how
Mars should be organized was produced:
9
“We have to argue all of it! Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have
to argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the
economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you—
anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. No! If you want to make the
minimum-state case, you have to argue it from the ground up.”
“But,” Mikhail said, “I mean, inheritance law?”
“Sure, why not? This is critical stuff! I say there should be no inheritance at all, except for a
few personal objects passed on, perhaps. But all the rest should go back to Mars. It’s part
of the gift, right?”
“All the rest?” Vlad inquired with interest. “But what would that consist of, exactly? No one
will own any of the land, water, air, the infrastructure, the gene stock, the information pool
—what’s left to pass on?”
10
Coyote shrugged. “Your house? Your savings account? I mean, won’t we have money? And
won’t people stockpile surpluses of it if they can?” (1994, 403-404)
On this issue, cf. Moylan 2014, 87-92.
This does not mean, of course, that the whole world is the exact same life-world.
Differences are obviously present and, as we mentioned, different cultures and forms of social
organization amount to different life-worlds. What I wish to claim here is that the relations of
production in the world are capitalist and that the different life-worlds make up one unitary
capitalist life-world.
11
A more exhaustive description of Anarres in economical, political and social terms can be
found in Moylan 2014, 91-95.
12
It is worth noting, that even though the issue of State and law is a rather political one and
thus, more closely connected to anarchism, the understanding of the revolution in terms of
the development of contradictions striving to its resolution, clearly stems from a Marxist
conception of how society progresses.
13
Cf. also Marx 1968b, 516-518 for a relevant description of human work in comparison to
what animals do.
14
Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy
Vol. 2: 2019
23
Matías Graffigna