From: Dan Clore Subject: Anarchist & Libertarian Socialist Societies in Utopian & Science Fiction Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:42:46 GMT Organization: www.onlynews.com This is just what I have so far. Additions and corrections requested. Anarchist and Libertarian Socialist Societies Depicted in Utopian and Science Fiction: An Incomplete List in Vaguely Chronological Order by Dan Clore Introduction The utopian literary tradition contains few works describing anarchist and libertarian socialist societies. Considering the widespread popularity that anarchism has held at certain times and places, and its even greater popularity among writers and artists than among the general population, this may come as a surprise. Despite this popularity, however, most anarchist writers have not described their ideal society in their works. Representative might be Franz Kafka, who belonged to an anarcho-syndicalist group. It is doubtful that Kafka wished to live in the world of The Trial. George Woodcock attempts to explain this state of affairs in his study Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962): "In fact, the very idea of Utopia repels most anarchists, because it is a rigid mental construction which, successfully imposed, would prove as stultifying as any existing state to the free development of those subjected to it. Moreover, Utopia is conceived as a perfect society, and anything perfect has automatically ceased growing; even Godwin qualified his rash claims for the perfectability of man by protesting that he did not mean men could be made perfect, but that they were capable of indefinite improvement, an idea which, he remarked, 'not only does not imply the capacity for being brought into perfection, but stands in express opposition to it.'" Marie-Louise Berneri's Journey Through Utopia appeared posthumously in 1950. This work combines a critical study with excerpts from the books under discussion, some of which are not otherwise available in English. Berneri was an anarchist, and many of the statist utopias she includes receive harsh treatment at her hands. J.O. Bailey, writing in Pilgrims through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction (1947), saw fit to say that "The ultimate goal of socialism, as it is described in scientific fiction, is self-disciplined anarchism." His survey of such works makes it clear, however, that few of them actually describe this goal, as opposed to the socialist state intended as its precursor. The most important of those that do so is undoubtedly H.G. Wells in Men Like Gods. Meanwhile the science-fiction genre became codified and the utopian genre faded into next to nothing. SF now became the province of the pulp magazines, and the atmosphere there was not congenial for positive discussions of anarchism or libertarian socialism. Hugo Gernsback's magazine Amazing Stories, for example, gave its official endorsement to technocracy, a utopian movement which advocates giving total over society control to engineers. While some of the ideas of this movement are attractive - such as reducing the workweek to ten hours - we have now seen far too many examples of appointed experts wreaking havoc on the world to trust such a plan. Nonetheless, such scientific state planning remained a staple of science fiction; while it has decreased in the meantime, it is not dead yet. Some change in this state of affairs began in the 1950s and burgeoned in the 1960s. Not only had science fiction once again become important in the book as well as the magazine market, but the magazines themselves proliferated in number beyond reason, so there was a ready market for practically any viewpoint. Leftist ideas now began to appear with some regularity, fueled by the reaction against cold war anti-communist paranoia as well as the 1960s' resurgence of interest in leftism. Despite this, most works of this ideological bent did not describe anarchist or libertarian socialist societies, instead concentrating on capitalist dystopias. Nightmare worlds ruled by corporations now became a staple cliché of the genre. Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants (1952) is the best-regarded work in this subgenre. Michael Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers" (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3998/Moorcock.html ), written in 1977, describes his experiences as an anarchist editing New Worlds, a government-supported science-fiction magazine that combined SF with avant-garde writing under his direction. Unfortunately it is basically just a rant accusing writers such as Heinlein, Lovecraft, and Tolkien of being crypto-fascists, and it is often factually inaccurate as well as polemic. Very few of the anarchist writers he mentions wrote works describing anarchist societies. Increasingly in the 1970s and up to the current day libertarian capitalism has been a common theme in science fiction. Typical of this trend is the Libertarian Futurist Society (http://lfs.org/ ). They give out the annual Prometheus Award for "best libertarian novel" and a "hall of fame" award for older libertarian works. Despite their own ideological orientation they have given several of these awards to socialist works. In the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s, anarchist and libertarian socialist societies began to be published with fair regularity. Not only have mainstream publishers put out works by the likes of Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod, but small press outfits such as III Publishing have also begun to bring out such works. With the resurgence of public interest in anarchism this trend will likely continue. The anarchist side has shown interest in science fiction, as shown by the journal Anarchist Studies (http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/AS.html ), which included five articles on anarchism and science fiction in Volume 7, No. 2. Likewise, Bob Black, in Beneath the Underground (1994), has described science-fiction fandom as a utopian current: Since the 1930s, SF fans (fen, in their patois) have been numerous, participatory and lowbrow, more so, in fact, than the Punks ever were. In the United States alone, where their activity is greatest, there are tens of thousands of active fen who migrate from one science fiction convention to the next, who share a common literary tradition and vocabulary, who publish innumerable APAs (amateur press association), i.e., reader-written periodicals. As an instrumentality of participatory democracy, the APA puts the Punk rock gig in the shade. SF fandom even has an explicitly utopian spin very different from what arty types like Home are used to. Fen are often hackers and computer pirates, always sympathetic to those who are, technophiles who debate and dream about the High Frontier, cryonics, robotics, Artificial Intelligence and nanotechnology. Some are interested in utopian currents Home might consider dystopian (as I do) if he stooped to acknowledge their existence, like laissez-faire libertarianism. But one man's meat has always been another man's poison. Where the Lettrist/Situationist Ivan Chtcheglov prophesied that everyone will live in his own cathedral, a self-styled lunatic-fringe libertarian like Mike Hoy wants everyone to live on his own asteroid. Neither is objectively more utopian or more ridiculous than the other. Each has an allure as we progress toward the point where everyone will live in his own dumpster. Black further notes that some members of the marginals milieu (which is largely anarchist) have invented "joke religions" largely based on science fiction, including the Discordians and the Church of the SubGenius, not to mention the revival of the Moorish Orthodox Church, which for a time published the Moorish Science Monitor. Science fiction writers have participated in all three of these "jokes". The crossover between the two does not stop there, as cyberpunk writers Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner put out the marginals zine Cheap Truth, and both acknowledge the influence of marginals writers such as Black on their work. This has taken us rather far from the theme of anarchist and libertarian socialist societies portrayed in science fiction, but it seems worth mentioning considering that this reveals one mode through which individuals add an anarchistic dimension to their own lives in the here and now. I have not read the majority of the works in the following list, and relied primarily on secondary sources for information. Some items are included that may seem questionable, but were listed anyway as of interest for one reason or another. There are a few listed which I have seen referred to as anarchist or libertarian socialist utopias, but for which I have not found a more detailed description. I use the term "libertarian socialist" as a broader term than "anarchist", to include related anti-authoritarian socialist currents. Please send any additions and corrections to clore@columbia-center.org The List François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel. The noble members of the Abbey of Thélème live by the motto "Do what thou wilt". Cyrano de Bergerac, Other Worlds: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun (published posthumously in 1657, first unexpurgated edition 1920). ? Gabriel de Foigny, A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis; or, The Southern World (1676). The hermaphroditic inhabitants of Australia have no state, no property, no religion, and no family. Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (published posthumously in 1796). Fictional depiction of the inhabitants of Tahiti as stateless, naked natives copulating under the sun. Captain Charles Mission (pseud: Daniel Defoe), The General History of the Pirates (1724-28). Includes an account of Libertatia, a pirate colony in Madagascar run along libertarian socialist lines, along with a purely anarchist breakaway colony. This account may or may not be fictional, though the rest of the book is nonfiction (see Peter Lamborn Wilson's Pirate Utopias). Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Assassins" (1814). The isolated valley of the Assassins, who appear to be Godwinian anarcho-communists, receives its first visitor in centuries - the Wandering Jew. The Assassins have also been used as libertarian forerunners by William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson. Charles Fourier. Usually considered the founder of libertarian socialism, Fourier deserves mention here because his writings often contain fantastic elements. Once Fourier's socialism is established, men will grow to seven feet tall and live 144 years. The moon will be replaced by five new satellites, each a different color, and some Saturn-like rings, which will allow it to once again copulate with other planets, which will all move closer to the earth in order to engage in this planetary orgy. The oceans will turn to lemonade. One idea frequently attributed to Fourier, however - that men will grow prehensile tails with an eye and a finger on the end - is apparently really the invention of a satirist. Fourier often uses a semi-fictional form to describe his ideal society. Joseph Déjacques, L'Humanisphère: utopie anarchique (The Humanisphere: An Anarchistic Utopia) (1858-61; first unexpurgated edition 1971). A walk-through description of the world in the year 2858, after the abolition of the state, religion, property, and the family. Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done? (1862; first book publication 1905). Libertarian socialist utopia. Jules Verne. This author was friends with leading anarchists including Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus. A number of his works show sympathy to anarchism and libertarian socialism. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) the anarchist Captain Nemo is "first among equals" on the Nautilus, a submarine. The Survivors of the "Jonathan" (book publication 1909; translated in two volumes as The Masterless Man and The Unwilling Dictator). Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race; or, The New Utopia (1870). The narrator discovers a society living in caverns deep underground in this satirical novel. This society is organized along lines that satirize Charles Fourier and other libertarian socialists; work is assigned according to personal taste, for example, so that children - who of course love to smash things - are given the job of destroying the dangerous giant reptiles that inhabitant wild parts of the underground world. Work is accomplished through the use of Vril, a sort of sexual energy force, through which the Vril-ya (as they are known) can power machinery and fly. Any one of them could also use it to destroy any others, or even the entire race, so none of them can take power over the others. William Morris, News from Nowhere: or, An Epoch of Rest (1890). A sleeper awakes in a future libertarian socialist society very similar to the Middle Ages. It is worth noting that Morris was writing against the primary (statist) current in utopian fiction, and in particular against Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. This is the best-known anarchistic utopia. Also A Dream of John Ball (1886-87). Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1890). Wilde's vision of anarchism. George Griffith, The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (1893). An anarchist invents the airplane and puts this at the disposal of Terrorists. They bomb the existing governments out of existence, and maintain the world's new socialist-anarchist society by coming out of hiding in Aëria, their African stronghold. In the sequel, Olga Romanoff; or, The Syren of the Skies (1894), which takes place in 2030, a hundred years after the events of the preceding novel, the descendant of the last Tsar manages to discover the secret behind advanced technology like airplanes and submarines. Just as she has nearly attained world domination, the Aërians receive news from Mars that a comet is about to strike earth. They go into hiding underground, and return to rebuild their anarchist society after the comet wipes out all life on the surface. Edward Bellamy, Equality (1897). This sequel to the authoritarian socialist utopia Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) attempts to revise it in accord with libertarian criticisms. L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In the sequels Oz gradually evolves into a state socialist utopia. It's worth citing the series here because it reveals how conceptions have changed, as Oz has an interesting mix of authoritarian and libertarian features (Baum was influence both by Bellamy's Looking Backward and by Morris's News from Nowhere). In the sixth novel, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Baum writes: There were no poor people in the Land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property belonged to the Ruler [the Fairy Queen Ozma]. The people were her children, and she cared for them. Each person was given freely by his neighbors whatever he required for his use, which is as much as any one may reasonably desire. Some tilled the lands and raised great crops of grain, which was divided equally among the entire population, so that all had enough. There were many tailors and dressmakers and shoemakers and the like, who made things that any who desired them might wear. Likewise, there were jewelers who made ornaments for the person, which pleased and beautified the people, and these ornaments also were free to those who asked for them. Each man and woman, no matter what he or she produced for the good of the community, was supplied by the neighbors with food and clothing and a house and furniture and ornaments and games. If by chance the supply ever ran short, more was taken from the great storehouses of the Ruler, which were afterward filled up again when there was more of an article than the people needed. Every one worked half the time and played half the time, and the people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play, because it is good to be occupied and to have something to do. There were no cruel overseers set to watch them, and no one to rebuke them or to find fault with them. So each one was proud to do all he could for his friends and neighbors, and was glad when they would accept the things he produced. You will know, by what I have told you here, the Land of Oz was a remarkable country. I do not suppose such an arrangement would be practical with us, but Dorothy assures me that it works finely with the Oz people. In Oz, furthermore, there is no police force and the Royal Army of Oz has but a single soldier. Oz is contrasted to contemporary America. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em never recover financially from the loss of their house in the first volume's cyclone, and by the sixth volume the bank forecloses on their farm. Fortunately Dorothy is able to convince Ozma to bring them to Oz to live. H.G. Wells. This author was a Fabian socialist is well known; he believed, however, that state socialism would and should develop into a stateless society (he novelized his experiences with those in the Fabian Society who disagreed about this in The New Machiavelli (1911)). In A Modern Utopia (1905) Wells attempts to outline a practical plan that would eventually reach this goal; there he says that "Were we free to have our untrammelled desire, I suppose we should follow Morris to his Nowhere, we should change the nature of man and the nature of things together; we should make the whole race wise, tolerant, noble, perfect - wave our hands to a splendid anarchy, every man doing as it pleases him, and none pleased to do evil, in a world as good in its essential nature, as ripe and sunny, as the world before the Fall." Rule in this utopia will be a class self-chosen from among those ready for anarchism, which Wells calls the Samurai. In The World Set Free (1914) an atomic war is followed by the worldwide adoption of socialism; eventually the World State only meets once a year to congratulate itself on how well things are going. In Men Like Gods (1923), some individuals from this earth visit a parallel universe where humanity is around three thousand years in advance of us; this society has reached a fully stateless state. In Star-Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (1937), a character hypothesizes that Martians ("Some of you may have read a book called The War of the Worlds - I forget who wrote it - Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, one of those fellows") are bombarding the earth with cosmic rays in order to create beneficial mutations. It is further hypothesized that these newly Martianized humans will bring about a libertarian socialist society through assassination and sabotage. However, "It would be anarchism, I suppose; it would mean 'back to chaos,' if it were not true that all sane minds released from individual motives and individual obsessions move in the same direction towards practically the same conclusion." Robert Blatchford, The Sorcery Shop: An Impossible Romance (1907). Fantasy novel influenced by News from Nowhere. Cassius Minor, The Finding of Mercia (1909). C.R. Ashbee, The Building of Thelema (1910). Utopian romance influenced by William Morris. Algernon Pentworth, The Little Wicket Gate (1913). Unitas, The Dream City (1920). Describes a socialist-anarchist utopia called Delectaland. A.V. Chayanov, The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia (1920; translated 1976). Libertarian socialist utopia. The translation appeared in the Journal of Peasant Studies. Ganpat (pseud: Martin Louis Gompertz), Harilek: A Romance of Modern Central Asia (1923). E. Winch, The Mountain of Gold (1928). A tribe of Brazilian anarcho-communists. H.P. Lovecraft, "The Mound" (1929-30). Several of Lovecraft's works - e.g. At the Mountains of Madness (1933) and "The Shadow out of Time" (1934-35) - feature extraterrestrial races with state socialist societies, which he somewhat idiosyncratically refers to as "a sort of fascistic socialism". These represent Lovecraft's own ideal. In contrast, the mound-dwellers have a decadent, "semi-anarchical" society. This story was probably influenced by Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race, which it resembles in a number of respects. Olaf Stapledon. One of the most important figures in the history of science fiction, Stapledon (like Wells) was a democratic socialist, who believed (also like Wells) that state socialism would develop into a stateless society. In Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937) this development is briefly portrayed. Aldous Huxley. This author's Brave New World (1932) stands with Yevgeny Zamiatin's We and George Orwell's 1984 (1949) as one of the three greatest dystopian works. (By some strange coincidence, all three of these are by authors sympathetic to libertarian socialism.) In Brave New World Revisited (1958) he presents libertarian socialism as an antidote, mentioning anarcho-syndicalism as one possible model. Island (1962) presents Huxley's own anarchistic utopia. Stanley Weinbaum, "Valley of Dreams" (1934). Martians have the one system no one on earth has yet tried: anarchism. Sequel to "A Martian Odyssey" (1934). Herbert Read, The Green Child (1935). ? J.D. Beresford, What Dreams May Come… (1941). Dream vision of a non-mechanical, religious utopia. A.E. Van Vogt. In The World of Null-A (1945, revised edition 1970) an anarchistic society has been created on Venus. Only individuals made ready for anarchy through the practice of General Semantics are allowed to go there. In The Anarchistic Colossus (1977) the earth has realized anarchism through a novel method: a network of computers constantly reads everyone's minds through their Kirlian auras, and zaps anyone about to do anything naughty with lasers. Stephen Lister, Hail Bolonia! (1948). Ivan Chtcheglov, "Formulary for a New Urbanism" (1953). A brief, bizarre vision of a libertarian socialist city in which everyone will have his own cathedral and "There will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one cannot help but love". Available in Ken Knabb's Situationist International Anthology (1981). Philip K. Dick, "The Last of the Masters" (1954). Eric Frank Russell, The Great Explosion (1962), fix-up novel incorporating "And Then There Were None" (1951). Portrays a society very similar to that advocated by the American anarcho-individualists of the nineteenth century. Rex Gordon, Utopia 239 (1955). Anarchist utopia in post-nuclear holocaust world. William Burroughs. While his work is primarily dystopian, a few anarchistic utopian societies show up. In The Wild Boys (1969), for example, Burroughs portrays an anarchistic society that consists of roving gangs of dope-smoking, homosexual teenage boys who wear nothing but jockstraps and rollerskates. The trilogy that begins with Cities of the Red Night (1981) includes material about several attempts to found libertarian societies, including Libertatia and a group of Rimbaud-reading, dope-smoking, homosexual Zen gunslingers in the Wild West. Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). Portrays a society similar to anarcho-capitalism, the origin of the phrase "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" - which is very popular with those who pay for their lunches with the products of other people's labor. Curt Clark, Anarchaos (1967). Sensationalistic account of a planet where anarchy is chaos, and everyone is your enemy. Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974). An attempt to portray a socialist-anarchist society in full, with both its good and bad features readily apparent. Widely popular among anarchists today, but many capitalists consider this an unambiguous dystopia. See the study guide here: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). Samuel Delaney, Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia; or, Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus (1976). Robert Anton Wilson. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975, in collaboration with Robert Shea) includes many anarchist characters and several appendices that discuss theoretical issues. The Illuminati Papers () includes essays by a number of characters from the trilogy, some of which discuss anarchist issues. The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy (1979) describes a parallel universe in which the Libertarian Immortalist Party succeeds in putting many of RAW's ideas into effect. Practically all of RAW's work is relevant to anarchism. Very popular among the marginals milieu. Bert Garskof, The Canbe Collective Builds a Be-Hive (1977). A. Bertram Chandler, The Anarch Lords (1981). Anonymous, "Visit Port Watson!" (1985). The editors (Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Robert Anton Wilson) of the Semiotext(e) SF issue were unable to obtain any works of "radical utopian vision" from their contributors, so they reprinted this piece from a magazine called Libertarian Horizons: A Journal for the Free Traveler. This is a fictional description of the Pacific island Sonsoral combining ideas from libertarian socialism, libertarian capitalism, and the marginals milieu. P.M., bolo'bolo (1985). A full-length attempt to a design a libertarian socialist society with enough respect for the diversity of humanity's desires that a community of cyberpunks who live online might be placed next to a community made up of bands of hunter-gatherers. Frequently whimsical but well thought-out; sometimes verges into semi-fictional form. Pat Murphy, The City, Not Long After (1989). Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net (1989). Influenced by Bob Black's The Abolition of Work. Lewis Shiner, Slam (1990). Influenced by Bob Black's The Abolition of Work. Iain M. Banks. Culture series: Consider Phlebas (1987), Player Of Games (1988), Use Of Weapons (1990), Excession (1996), Look To Windward (2000). A socialist- anarchist society has been created through the use of nanotechnology to eliminate scarcity. Very popular at the moment. Jane Doe, Anarchist Farm (1995). Sequel to George Orwell's Animal Farm. Graham Purchase, My Journey with Aristotle to the Anarchist Utopia (1995). Yet another sleeper awakes, this time to be given a guided tour of Bear City in the Cat-River bioregion, an eco-anarchist utopia. Saab Lofton, A.D. (1996). An inhabitant of a dystopia in which the Nation of Islam rules becomes a sleeper who wakes in a libertarian socialist society. Ken MacLeod, The Star Fraction (1996), The Stone Canal (1997), The Cassini Division (1999), The Sky Road (1999). Portrays a future that includes both a libertarian socialist society and a libertarian capitalist society. -- Dan Clore mailto:clore@columbia-center.org Lord Weÿrdgliffe: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/ Necronomicon Page: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm News for Anarchists & Activists: http://www.egroups.com/group/smygo