Review by Stephen S. Hooley   —   December 1, 2003

It is suffering that brings us together.

No matter what society we inhabit, we have certain ineradicable traits. We love and hate, and like and dislike. We seek advantage for ourselves and our young. Sometimes we fight and sometimes we cooperate, depending upon which side of the bed we got up on that morning. Some of us live long, happy, useful lives, some of us die young, and the rest of us more or less just work it out. Social philosophy aside, there are plenty of Richard Corys to prove that financial or social advantages don't guarantee happiness.

But we all hurt. We stub our toes and bark our knuckles and grow old, or we die suddenly and young. We lose friends, are spurned by lovers, are orphaned by time. Man has no common religion or tongue, and very few universal human experiences. Not all cultures love or even hate the way we do, or see the same thing in a sunset: God's miracle? A boiling atomic furnace in the sky? Ooh, pretty colors? But we are tied to our poor mortal bodies, and the only hope for those is each other.

Mankind is the same, whatever planet he lives upon. Fantasy and SF are filled with speculations on variant human societies. There are Utopias, and opposing Dystopias, and a myriad of -opias in between. For every Asimov, Clarke, or Bradbury trying to prevent the future, there's a Jack Vance gleefully showing you from his merchant sailor's perspective how nasty and weird human cultures can be. And right in the middle of these fantastic cultural speculations is Ursula K. LeGuin's THE DISPOSSESSED: An Ambiguous Utopia.

So, how ambiguous is it? We begin with a wall, a wall around a spaceport. It's such a crummy wall that it's only the idea of a wall, a few feet high and gateless. It keeps the outer world away from the moneyless, propertyless moon of Anarres, where there's nothing to own and not much worth owning, and keeps the revolutionary philosophy of Odonianism away from the heartless capitalists of the lush mother world Urras. And we meet an Odonian, who is boss of a labor gang and has her syndics to back her up, as she orders a crowd away from the wall. A boss giving orders, on a world of anarchists. We meet the child Shevek, being carefully taught to share everything, then we see him a bit older, deducing Zeno's Paradox and being angrily scolded for having original thoughts. Everywhere the 'free' Odonians are directed and managed, from the day they are assigned a name like 'Bedap' or 'Rulag' to the first arbitrary work assignment to the day they cross a custom or rule and are dubbed a 'profiteer' or 'work avoider' and shunned or beaten. And these are the good guys, the great hope for their solar system. Why are they failing? They are being beaten to death by their own greatest strength: anarchy. Man is a creature of systems: family, friends, co-workers. We call street bums 'homeless,' but it's a euphemism: they're friendless. On Anarres you are relentlessly moved around, separated from friends, from parents, from partners. You own nothing on Anarres, taking what rooms are available, leaving things behind when you move. Even your language is neutered: the hand, not my hand; the room, not my room; the partner, not my wife. Only the pervasive philosophy of Odonianism is constant. When you are uncertain, when you are depressed, when you've got the gosh-awfuls and need a hug, you will likely be alone among loners. They gave up too much when they fled the world. Just as Shevek can never bond with Rulag, the Odonians seldom bond with each other. Utopia?

It's been criticized as being a simple metaphor: Anarres for Russia, Urras for the USA. It doesn't hold up for a minute, even though LeGuin says her stories all describe Earth (she doesn't mean LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS is about San Francisco, right?). There's nothing American about Urras, or the parts Shevek sees; it's a land that never had a frontier. The poor are crushed underfoot by the terrifying rich and privileged. There's no way for a prole to advance; wealth is a private club, and there are hints that this is the anti-Odonian backlash, that it was better before the revolution. There's nothing Russian about Anarres, except possibly their wry humor. They have a strong belief in their system, despite its flaws; they're very American in that way, or maybe desert Israeli. Their silly pseudo-Communism only half works at all because they are so determined to force it to work, and "You're not a pure enough Odonian" is only beginning to become an instrument of social correction. They are extreme cases, the Left and the Right gone mad for our edification. If you want to force names on them, call them Guns vs Butter; one state rigidly controlling everything to maintain the status quo, while the other concentrates so much on human development that it ends up doing the same in reverse, demolishing the systems so that the status quo cannot be changed.

With Communism a laughable wreck and Marxism itself tottering, there's not as much interest in competing social systems these days, and in that sense this book might not be written today, or have a different slant.

Shevek is the Einstein, or Ainsetain as he says, of his desert world. He is more than that. His ansible communicator is the most single important invention since the ancient Hainish began spaceflight. In most of LeGuin's Hainish novels, they have the ansible. With an ansible one may email someone on a planet light-years away, and be answered in real time, with medical or technical or philosophical advice. Shevek ends human isolation in a new way, bringing planets together and giving the Hainish their dearest dream. Within years Urras and Anarres will likely be linked by 'instant messenger,' with ideas flowing both ways. Whose dream will be stronger? In leaving Anarres, Shevek broke the law. He left as a rebel, and we glimpse the turmoil his actions have brought to his homeland as he returns, emptyhanded: his faction will fight to protect him from the other faction. He has started a war, if not a revolution. Anarres has a new Odo, and how will they welcome him?

It's not about social systems, or money. Odonianism is a cardboard philosophy. It's not meant to be followed, or understood, by the reader. Shevek's unification theory is the philosophy that drives this book; the one you are meant to understand, and follow or not: ignore the apparent contradictions of existence, the unfairness and unhappiness, the love and hate, birth and death, spring and fall, and go forward anyway. It's the book itself, alternating chapters of past and future, a story which begins in the middle and tells itself backwards and forwards, and yet is read as a linear novel with no confusion. No contradiction; only human hesitation.

I said Odonianism is a cardboard philosophy, but it's actually quite elegant as described. But not much of it is really described; there are quotes and hints and a sketch. Society is an organism, and things Odo didn't like are excrement. Just how exactly do you teach a two-year-old not to grab everything and yell 'mine?' LeGuin understands what Marx didn't, that no one can create a society by creating a philosophy. Societies are made by generations of people turning experience into custom, and by the compromises they make with reality. Odo envisioned her followers making their Urras a paradise, not flying to the Moon to give up their struggle. Her ideals have resulted in a world of anarchists, which is governed by managers in a capitol city whose word is, well, law. Even a lack of possessions and no money can't quite remove the temptation to run things, and the world of anarchy is well on its way to a government, while Urras is a nasty madhouse of uncontrolled capitalism where any social services are seen as possible Odonian threats. They grind the poor as hard as they can, and without even the flimsy excuse of ignorant racism: the humans of Urras are all one people, thin and gray, with fine gray body hair. The foreigner Chifoilisk is 'swarthy,' but not much different. The rich women of Urras depilate their bodies and scalps; the beggars of Anarres wear their hair long. The Revolution failed; the anarchists decided to collectively look out for Number One instead of fighting on ("Since when was altruism an Odonian virtue?" quips Shevek) to free Urras as Odo intended. And Urras is the worse for their departure; not only did some of a generation's best disappear as ours did in the World Wars, but the reaction was a plunge into banana-republic ultra-rightism.

Where is happiness in this ambiguous Utopia? Not in the slums of Urras, or its enclaves of wealth, or in the off-stage other countries fighting their wars, and not on the dry plains of Anarres, where exiled intellectuals plant seedlings in the sand, or in the tiny hardscrabble towns, or even the central city with its vicious political infighting. The Ambassador from devastated Earth thinks Urras is Paradise, and the Hainishman from an unthinkably ancient civilization thinks Anarres is Utopia. Only the children are really happy, playing in the snow or the sand or the sunlight, too young to know what's going to hit them.