The Dispossessed depicts and interrogates, in an informed and provocative fashion, an imaginary “experiment in nonauthoritarian [i.e., anarchist] communism . . . that has survived for a hundred and seventy years” in an imaginary place called Anarres, in an imaginary future (11: 342). Le Guin has made clear that The Dispossessed reflects her considerable knowledge of anarchism, as well as her strong sympathy for the central ideas and ideals of the communist or communal versions of anarchism that one finds in thinkers like Karl Marx, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, and Goodman. One year after the publication of the novel, Le Guin explained that she wrote the story because she found anarchist communism, of the sort “prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelly and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman . . . [to be] the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.” Years later she repeated her commitment to it: anarchism, she said, is rather “like Christianity; it’s never really been practiced . . . [but] it is a necessary idea.”4 The anarchism she explores though is far from perfect, with flaws within itself. When these flaws are juxtaposed with the properterian and profiteerian Urras, we begin to question the necessity of perfection. Is Annares, with all its failings and compromises good enough? Is it the only utopia we can hope for in a book that seeks to interrogates the limits of solidarity and the possibly unavoidable will to power.
The term “anarchist communism” was coined by Kropotkin. In 1880, he urged “that it conveyed the idea of unity or harmony between individual freedom and a ‘well-ordered’ society. Anarchist communism views the individual as essentially a social being who can achieve full development only in society, while society can benefit only when its members are free.”7 Individuals, he argued, need the nourishment and protection that only a humane social order can provide, while societies need the intelligence and cooperation of free individuals if they are to remain viable in a constantly changing world. The survival and progressive development of humanity in general, and of societies and civilizations in particular, Kropotkin believed, depend on the voluntary cooperation of autonomous, ethical, beings.8 The interdependence of individual and society in a constantly changing natural and human environment is also a central tenet of Anarresti anarchist communism. The knowledge that change is a permanent feature of the world, that one cannot “go down twice to the same river,” means that survival, whether of the individual or the community, requires a willingness and capacity to change and adapt (2: 54). But the source of willed, intelligent, and potentially ethical or progressive change and adaptation lies within individuals. “Society” is ultimately an abstraction; “only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice—the power of change” (10: 333). Hence, social survival and well-being require the nourishment and protection of individuals; any viable social order must enable and protect the autonomy and liberty of each and every person, so that individuals will be willing and able to contribute to society, to initiate needed action, to innovate and take risks when opportunities and dangers appear. Unfortunately, self-governing individuals can deploy their freedom in irresponsible ways, and societies, and the myriad social relationships, groups, and associations within any social order, can easily become oppressive.
The problem is how to reconcile individual autonomy and agency with both the inevitable rules and demands of social units, and the inevitable duties and responsibilities individuals incur as social beings. Shevek, embraces precisely this ideal goal of harmony, even while acknowledging the imperfections of his society. He contends that the fact that “Anarres had fallen short of the ideal” does not undermine the appeal or validity of the theory. Given the right understanding, the right ethics, and the right institutions and practices, “true community,” he says, can be achieved (10: 333). “True community” is of course shorthand for the reconciliation of self and society, freedom and sociality. Shevek and others on Anarres contend that “true community” models itself which the individual and society nourish and serve one another through voluntary cooperation and mutuality (10: 333). Such a community achieves social unity on the basis of diversity and freedom rather than on the basis of uniformity and conformity (1: 4; 3: 81). But how, exactly, does it do so? True community “begins in shared pain.” Actually, it is “brotherhood” which is said to “begin in shared pain,” a claim repeated throughout the novel (for example, 2: 60; 4: 124; 9: 300). The suggestion is that recognition of the individual’s weaknesses and vulnerability is most starkly felt when one suffers, or sees others suffering. On those occasions, human beings instinctively reach for aid or comfort, or try to provide it, and in that moment the need for others, and hence forth brotherhood or solidarity, becomes particularly clear. This cognitive recognition helps explain, and more importantly affirms the existence of, the “impulse to mutual aid” or “solidarity instinct” implanted in human beings by nature (e.g., 6: 68). Explicable (as Kropotkin emphasized) in terms of evolutionary processes, this instinct, or innate tendency, serves as the foundation for what might be termed an ethic of “mutual aid and solidarity” (e.g., 4: 117). In turn, both the propensity for solidarity, and the ethic, facilitate social cooperation, which is the key to social and individual survival and well-being. “The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!” asserts a minor character in the novel, to which Shevek replies, “Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social animal, are those who are most social. In human terms, the most ethical” (7: 220).11
Individuals are on the account of the anarcho-communists radically social. They need one another not only when they are in pain, or in trouble. Rather, there is little the individual can do or be, little he or she can become or achieve, without the help and cooperation of others: “To be whole is to be part ,” reads the tombstone of the revolutionary founder of Anarres (3: 84). True in all societies, the need for others as a condition of self-development and well-being is especially true in an anarcho-communist society, because there the absence of a state, or of centralized authority, entails that the viability of all social institutions and practices depends, entirely, on voluntary cooperation and sharing. Hence individual welfare and community well-being are intimately connected; there is no third party on which individuals can rely to advance their interests or welfare. They must create the conditions and practices of their liberation through their cooperation. Now, one very important implication of the social character of human being and living is that the concept of individual freedom has to be carefully constructed. The notion that freedom can be defined negatively must be rejected, and the idea that it must be used responsibly, because its exercise involves the welfare of others,must be emphasized. The novel suggests that it is in a sense possible for people of privilege to “enjoy” negative freedom, but they can do so only by isolating themselves “from want, distraction, and cares. What they were free to do, however, was another question. It appeared to Shevek that their freedom from obligation was in exact proportion to their lack of freedom of initiative” (5: 127). By contrast, Shevek really was a free man: “Since those [youthful] years his social and personal life had got more and more complicated and d
emanding. He had been not only a physicist but also a partner, a father, an Odonian [that is, a responsible member of his community], and finally a social reformer. As such . . . [he] had not been free from anything, only free to do anything” (5: 29).12 Shevek’s freedom to do what he wants to do sets him on a variety of paths where he voluntarily incurs obligations to others. That the obligations are selfincurred (and can be terminated at the initiative of the individual), and that those obligations reflect and serve the (hopefully autonomous) decisions, interests, and goals of the individual, is what makes Shevek’s society anarchic. The individual is sovereign; the only final authority Shevek recognizes is his own conscience (1: 8; 3: 76). But that the exercise of liberty almost always affects other human beings, and that it almost always requires interacting, cooperating, and often sharing with others, mean that free actions do impose general and particular obligations on the individual, and this is what makes Shevek’s society an ethical community.13 A proper social morality, or an ethic of “mutual aid and solidarity,” would accordingly stress a relatively small number of basic principles or ideals. Always value the particularity and autonomy, and respect the freedom, of individuals. Understand that all persons are moral equals, indeed brothers, deserving of equal respect and concern.14 Help those in need. Never intentionally harm or take advantage of another.15 And contribute to society by doing “the work [you] can do best,” and by cooperating—fairly—when it is mutually beneficial to do so (10: 333). Assuming such an ethic were actually practiced, one important result would be that individuals would tend to assume, as Shevek does, that other “people would be helpful [and could be] trusted” (7: 204). Trusting others is the basis of mutual aid—of reciprocity and collective action. Although mutual trust is presupposed in an anarcho-communist society, the presupposition is not unconditional. It is instead subject to experiential confirmation. The trust initially extended by someone like Shevek to others will be withdrawn if their conduct proves irresponsible. People who fail to reciprocate or to cooperate in a fair and reasonable manner, who are unwilling to contribute to society through work, or who shirk their social obligations and responsibilities or engage in exploitative behavior—such people will not be trusted.Widespread conduct of this sort accordingly spells the collapse of trust and therefore of (voluntary) cooperation. And since, to repeat,mutual trust is the basis of social cooperation, and social cooperation is the basis of both individual and social well-being, insuring responsible conduct must be the central goal of (ethical) education.
But education is not enough, in part because “the will to domination is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is” (6: 168). The will to power or domination, or more generally egoism or selfishness, is a deep-rooted characteristic of human beings not likely to be extinguished by an education in the ethics of mutuality and solidarity, even an education that seeks to suppress egoistic tendencies as Anarresti education does (a point to which I shall return in section II). Instead, a whole panoply of social institutions, conventions, and practices are needed to embody, encourage, and reinforce the ethic of solidarity and thereby insure the responsible exercise of freedom by individuals. A very brief identification of particularly important institutions and practices should begin with the economy. The anarchist communism of the Anarresti rejects not only capitalism but also materialism (excessive and unnecessary wealth is “excrement”). The private ownership of property (and people), the profit motive, money, and most of the other trappings of capitalism, are all absent in Anarresti society, as is the belief that material possessions or personal wealth is essential to one’s happiness or welfare (the view, instead, is that possessions corrupt). As a result, individuals do not and cannot compete for, nor can they seek to accumulate, property or wealth and the forms of power and status based on property and wealth as is common in both traditional and capitalistic societies. People are instead economically equal in the sense that economic distribution (in the form of goods and services) is according to need (within the constraints of local availability, people take what they need from, for instance, storehouses, common dining halls, and school curricula). They are also relatively poor; Anarres is a barren planet (actually a moon), a fact that may well reinforce both the rejection of materialism and recognition of the need for solidarity.16
The economy, like the organization of social life in general, is more or less decentralized and democratically governed, although economic, social, and geographic units are federated to permit the coordination of economic relations and social activities between the typically small, always self-governing, local units. Decentralization and small size are essential to insuring responsible behavior, and not just because “power inheres in a center” (2: 58). Groups that operate on (or approximate operating on) a face-to-face basis facilitate personal responsibility and the maintenance of mutual trust and therefore cooperation. This is because small groups, generally speaking, increase the ease with which differences of opinion can be resolved or accommodated, reduce the incentives for shirking, and increase the ease with which shirking and other forms of irresponsible, trust destroying behavior can be identified and sanctioned (for instance, by criticism ostracism, or even exclusion). Because, moreover, economic and social life is decentralized, the norms and habits of solidarity—the willingness to cooperate, to pitch in, to play fair, even to sanction the irresponsible—are more likely to be carried over into forms of participation in larger, more anonymous contexts. When, for example, a planet-wide drought presents a society-wide crisis, a “labor draft” is instituted and the vast majority of Anarresti willingly, even eagerly, respond (8: 247).17 Other institutions and practices also encourage mutual trust and responsible behavior, or reduce the incentives or occasions for irresponsible conduct, or both. The practice of rotating leadership (and other) positions within organizations, for instance within economic and educational units, is one; it is difficult to be corrupted by power, and to misuse it, if one doesn’t have (very much of ) it for very long. Of course, the absence of a state removes a host of related temptations, including the training of experts in the use of organized coercion, perhaps the most potent source of human corruption and social injustice and conflict. The elimination of marriage and the nuclear family is likewise conceived, in part, as removing opportunities for domination and exploitation, and as encouraging more libertarian and egalitarian social relationships and habits (sexual relations and partnerships, for example, are as varied, and as temporary or permanent, as individuals wish them to be). The elimination of these institutions also serves to integrate people into community life. In general, people live a very public or communal existence on Anarres. Privacy is respected to a degree, but it is difficult to avoid social contact and communal living given the (largely) communal rearing of children, public housing and transportation, public schooling, communal dining, ongoing democratic governance, public service days (every tenth day, local communities organize, and people volunteer for, jobs such as garbage collection and grave digging), and the like that mark everyday life. Communal living does not only embody communal practices, norms, and values, it normalizes and promotes them. Individuals come to regard as quite ordinary and desirable reciprocal and coo
perative arrangements, egalitarian practices and forms of sharing, the suppression of egoistic behaviors and attitudes, volunteering for social activities, and working as effectively as one can for the good of the social whole as well as for the benefit of self. The ethic of solidarity and mutual aid must be practiced to be efficacious, and on Anarres, generally speaking, it is.18
This ethic, recall, includes the values of individual autonomy and freedom. If social practices neglect or discount individuality, the result may be a community of sorts, but it will not be the “true community” in which self and community, liberty and solidarity, are reconciled or harmonized. Now, one central way to protect, and to some degree promote, individual liberty is to make it difficult for individuals and groups to gain power over one another. Thus, most of the institutions and practices mentioned above promote or protect freedom as much as they do solidarity and community: the absence of concentrations of economic and political power, the decentralized self-government of economic and social life, the rotation of positions of leadership within organizations, and so on. But there are other protective and reinforcing practices as well.
The educational system, for example, is supposed to promote autonomy and self-confidence as well as fraternal sentiments and habits of cooperation, and it is designed to encourage students to explore and develop skills and talents which best suit their character or which seem to them most appealing or challenging. Though the system is in Anarresti practice less than perfect (as described below), Shevek is evidence that the system has value and is relatively successful. While it is true that Shevek must throughout the novel struggle for personal and political success, he nonetheless develops an autonomous, reflective self, he is able to practicehe work he wants to do, he is able to follow this work to a successful conclusion, and he is both confident and free enough to become a successful reformer or “revolutionary” (6: 176).19
Job posting is also a key social practice that embodies respect for individuals and liberty. A centralized computer system maintains constantly updated records of job openings throughout Anarres, and is geared to match positions to personal skills and needs, subject to availability. Even in times of social crisis, when people are “drafted” to serve in socially essential positions, there is an effort to match people with jobs and locales they prefer, and people are free to decline the draft if, as is often the case in times of crisis, no match is available. This (conventional, not of course legal) right of refusal symbolizes and protects the liberty and empowerment of the individual, as does the related right of exit. As earlier indicated, no Anarresti can be forced to do anything against his or her will or conscience; hence, except for young children, people are generally speaking free to come and go as they wish. It is even possible to wholly remove oneself from the community and its expectations and obligations by playing the role of hermit. People who do so are called “nuchnibi.” Although nuchnibi hardly integrate themselves into the social order, the right to withdraw symbolizes the commitment of the community to individual sovereignty. On Anarres, “there were a good many solitaries and hermits on the fringes of the older . . . communities, pretending that they were not members of a social species” (4: 110–11). Sometimes, to be sure, the pretense is a screen for free riding, in which case the nuchnibi are not treated well by their neighbors. “They make fun of him, or they get rough with him, beat him up; in a small community they might agree to take his name off the meals listing, so he has to cook and eat all by himself; that is humiliating” (5: 150). Just as one cannot and should not expect coworkers to tolerate shirking, so too one can not expect the neighbors to take kindly to parasitism. But though shirking is wrong, exit is not; and though parasitism will not be tolerated, withdrawal will be.
One final example concerns what might be called the right of initiative, which is a more positive and striking encouragement of individual freedom. In Anarresti society, individuals are free to start new groups and organizations and, within the constraints of availability, draw on local or even more distant resources to make a go of their projects. In the context of the economy, for instance, workers can start a new production syndicate and can request and expect to receive needed resources (say, tools or other forms of equipment) from established producers. In the context of education, students have the right to request, and teachers to offer, courses and classes pretty much at will. Shevek begins a printing syndicate, termed the Syndicate of the Initiative, in order to pursue his scientific work and the work of political reform. Thus, as one would expect in an anarchist community, consenting adults can pretty much do what they want when they want, subject to the constraints of nature and the feelings (and resources) of the neighbors.
The institutions and practices of Anarresti culture are clearly intended, then, to stimulate, cultivate, reinforce, and protect both individuality and community, both the ideals of individual autonomy and freedom on the one hand, and the norms and habits of social solidarity and cooperation on the other. But the degree to which those social practices succeed in reconciling these values is another, related but different, question. I have already indicated that success on Anarres has been limited—this gives Shevek his political mission and the novel much of its drama—and I shall offer some explanations for this shortly, in section II. As a preliminary to that, I want to suggest that the possibility of reconciliation can be viewed as being dependent, in the final analysis, on the recognition by individuals of their mutual or shared interest in supporting precisely the institutions and practices that define anarchist communism. Because of their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, individuals must come to understand that it is in their general, longrun interest to participate in and support the kind of community that provides them with the intellectual, emotional, and material resources, the security and protections, and the opportunities for the exercise of freedom, that they need in order to achieve a meaningful and fulfilling life. An anarcho-communist society is in the self-interest of each and all; enlightened self-interest lies at the bottom of this political theory and its promise of reconciliation.
The Dispossessed seems to confirm this suggestion and Le Guin, I think, intends to make this point, by what she says about altruism. Superficially, anarchist communism may seem to rely on altruism defined as conduct motivated, exclusively or primarily, by concern for the welfare of others.Were a reader of the novel to make this assumption, he or she would be surprised to discover that the wordis rarely used by Le Guin, and much more surprised by what is said about it when it is used. Altruistic motivation is ascribed only to special categories of people, and it is explicitly denied a significant role in Anarresti social life and political thinking. Specifically, “youthful” Anarresti are often eager to serve others, and some of the Anarresti practitioners of “the medical arts” behave altruistically (3: 93; 4: 121). But altruistic motivation and conduct is explicitly said not to be “an Odonian [anarcho-communist] virtue” (8: 226). Most strikingly, Shevek explicitly exclaims at one point that he is “no altruist!” (11: 350). Near the end of the novel, Le Guin describes another race of people, the Hainish (a people who appear in a number of her early novels), who are altruists. They are, as well, a very old race, and one “moved . . . by guilt” (11: 348). Perhaps this means that al
truism is the fruit of a very long evolution, or perhaps that it is only a bad conscience which can sustain such a demanding and self-abnegating disposition. In either case, the Anarresti, in contrast to the Hainish, are not moved by altruism. But, of course, neither are they (supposed to be) moved by egoism. Between altruism and selfishness lies a proper or enlightened sense of self-interest, the kind of human motive that, just perhaps, can serve as the basis for reconciling individual and community.
But even with enlightenment, reconciliation is not easily achieved, and it is virtually certain that anything like a complete reconciliation—a state of affairs marked by the absence of tensions, conflicts, discordant relationships, irresponsible conduct on the part of individuals, oppressive practices, and the like—is an impossibility. The novel offers and suggests a number of reasons for this, but I intend to focus only on those reasons that seem to me to be particularly intractable, in part because these sources of disharmony are also sources of harmony. This duality or ambiguity explains, I think, why Le Guin’s novel is subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia.These ambiguous sources of harmony and disharmony are underlying features of the human condition which give rise to both the promise and the corruptions of individuality and community—that is, the ineradicable vulnerability, and the inherent particularity, of human beings.We have seen how the vulnerability and weaknesses of the isolated individual lie at the root of his or her (enlightened) self-interest in maintaining a humane, anarcho-communist social order and, therefore, in maintaining a commitment to the communal values of solidarity, equality, and fair play and, relatedly, to the suppression and control of egoism and selfish forms of conduct like shirking and domination. Unfortunately, the need for a social order sufficiently stable, productive, and sophisticated to support this kind of community and the manifold needs of its members requires, it turns out, a good deal of centralization. Centralization, in turn, is the source of a host of problems which undercut the promise of reconciliation. Le Guin is very clear about this point, a reflection perhaps of the emphasis placed on the importance of decentralization by so many anarchist theorists and activists. In a key passage in the novel, the reader learns that the revolutionary founder of Anarres’s version of anarchist communism had intended for decentralization to be “an essential element” of the new, post-revolutionary order on her planet (the planet of which Anarres is the moon). Basically, self-sufficient communities would be loosely “connected by communication and transportation networks . . . but the network was not to be run from the top down. There was to be no controlling center, no capital.” However, the founder’s plans had not envisioned the barren, arid moon of Anarres. On arid Anarres, the communities had to scatter widely in search of resources, and few of them could be self-supporting, no matter how they cut back their notions of what is needed for support. They cut back very hard indeed, but to a minimum beneath which they would not go; they would not regress to preurban, pre-technological tribalism. They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex, diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. (4: 95)
So there had to be a center after all. The administration and coordination of labor, transportation, communications, and distribution were in fact, and by necessity, centralized, and “from the start the Settlers [of Anarres] were aware that that unavoidable centralization was a lasting threat” (4: 96). By the time Shevek is a young man, a century and a half or so later, the center had become “basically an archistic bureaucracy.” The need for centralization and coordination unavoidably became the need for bureaucratic “expertise and stability,” and hence new sources of power, based on proficiency, knowledge, information, and strategic position, were created. The need for a humane social order, indeed for an anarchocommunist order, seems to require something like a state, and this “gives scope to the authoritarian impulse” (6: 167). Nor is that all. In order for this relatively centralized, bureaucratic system to function well, in order for it to secure economic efficiency and production, and social and economic predictability and stability, it is indeed necessary to promote the virtues of solidarity, of fellow feeling, community spirit, a willingness to get along and go along, to work hard for the good of society, and to take seriously the beliefs and demands of public opinion, keeper of “the social conscience.” Apart from the fact that a quasi-state can, and in Anarres does, manipulate public opinion (6: 165), the real problem here is, of course, that the legitimate interest in and demand for solidarity and trust and community spirit and the rest can easily become an interest in and demand for uniformity and conformity. In a society in which “the social conscience, the opinion of others, was the most powerful moral force motivating the behavior of most Anarresti,” the lines between cooperation and obedience, persuasion and manipulation, conviction and conformity, tend to blur (4: 112; 6: 167). The problem is in the novel symbolized by the institution of the “Criticism Session,” a legitimate “communal activity . . . wherein everybody stood up and complained about defects in the functioning of the community,” but ended up attacking “defects in the characters of the neighbors” (6: 176). Because the anarchist community depends on enlightened self-interest or voluntary acceptance of the ethic of solidarity and mutual aid, the members of the community must fear, and must work to eradicate or at any rate constrain egoism in themselves and their neighbors. Again, egoism threatens social order; its appearance is always associated with suboptimal performance within groups and organizations as well as with immorality and bad faith. Educators and other socializing agents are likely in consequence to view their job as promoting solidarity and disciplining egoism rather than, or more than, enabling the autonomy, the self-confidence and self-assertion, of the individual. Indeed, even the most well intentioned can have a hard time differentiating self-assertion and self-interest from egoism and selfishness. On Anarres, the not so well intentioned and the confused have become common in the educational system. “Education . . . has become rigid, moralistic, authoritarian. Kids learn to parrot [rather than critically examine the ideals of anarchist communism]” (6: 168). Very early in the novel the reader witnesses this treatment applied to a young Shevek, whose creative and playful efforts in the classroom are met by disapproval and discipline from his teacher (2: 29). Another manifestation of this perhaps inevitable corruption of the ethic and practices of solidarity and mutual aid concerns practices of inclusion and exclusion. We have seen that noncooperators, shirkers for instance, are subject to various kinds of sanctions, the most extreme of which would generally be exclusion (for example, from a syndicate or a local community). Because of the importance of solidarity and cooperation, and the fear of egoism, the practice of exclusion can easily be used to punish and isolate those who threaten or question convention—those who might, for instance, wish to change organizational procedures or goals, or question prevailing notions of fair play, or hard work, or good work. The maintenance of community or organizational solidarity and cooperation at that point becomes indistinguishable from the suppression of individuality, freedom, and difference. Much of the drama of The Dispossessed centers
precisely on Shevek’s exclusion from his society for this kind of reason, a treatment which he learns has become rather common. Shevek discovers the existence in the central city of a large group of “intellectual nuchnibi who had not worked on a regular posting for years,” not because they sought, like real nuchnibi, to withdraw from society, but because society withdrew from them, that is, isolated and excluded them because they did not conform sufficiently to prevailing notions of normalcy and morality (6: 173). If the sources of forms of social oppression and ossification are rooted in the needs for solidarity and for a stable social order (which in turn are rooted ultimately in the vulnerability and weaknesses of the isolated individual), the remedy for these evils is to be found in liberty. As Shevek’s political consciousness matures, he comes to understand that the fundamental key to the maintenance of an ideal or just society is “eternal vigilance” and “permanent revolution” (4: 96; 9:301). The quality of community life, of the structures and processes defining a social order, necessarily depend on individuals who are able to critically reflect on their society, its actual practices as well as its promises, and who are willing to take the kinds of risks and actions that might set things aright (4: 96). Individuals cannot “make” a revolutionary society, says Shevek in a rousing speech, they “can only be” such a society (9: 301). So freedom, or the kinds of ethical action freedom makes possible, is the antidote to social injustice, to oppression and conformity and conservatism. But freedom, like solidarity and social order, is also an ambiguous good, and not just because individuals can exercise their freedom in irresponsible ways. The commitment to individual autonomy and liberty, which defines anarchist communism as much as the commitment to solidarity and cooperation does, guarantees the proliferation of difference—of different characters and personalities, values and attitudes, beliefs and perspectives, interests and ambitions. This is because particularity or uniqueness is a fact of human nature which a properly structured regime of freedom will encourage and allow to blossom and proliferate. But differences often generate disagreement, conflict, disharmony, and too often fear and envy as well. Two common forms of conflict are those due to divergent interests, and those rooted in competing obligations. Divergent interests are particularly problematic in anarchist communism, because its success is so dependent on the mutuality of interests rather than on altruism.
The Dispossessed provides a number of examples of the absence of mutuality in order to dramatize how diversity amidst freedom generates social conflict. The most dramatic examples concern conflicts between the elites who dominate science and politics on Anarres and Shevek and his Syndicate. The Anarresti scientific establishment is invested in and comfortable with orthodox physical theories, and this causes nearly all of the physicists to fear, ignore, and/or criticize Shevek’s innovative scientific work. Relatedly, the political establishment, in the form of the power elite in the central city (seat of the quasi-state), aim not simply to retain their power and privileges, but to protect traditional interests and goals, beliefs and values. In particular, the political elite are like most Anarresti committed to the continued isolation of Anarres from the mother planet, Urras, and from all other worlds. This entrenched policy, dating from the founding of the Anarresti community, seems in their view prudent, serving on the one hand to protect Anarres from the superior military might of Urras, and on the other to insulate it from the presumably inferior yet potentially dangerous ideas prevalent on Urras and every other alien world. Shevek and his Syndicate challenge this policy on the basis of contrary beliefs, counter-interests, and different goals, and they thereby threaten established routines, expectations, and stability. They contend that the old policy constitutes a betrayal of the revolution, both because it means giving up on the goal of spreading revolutionary ideas and ideals, and because it denies the revolution’s commitment to freedom and change by implicitly presupposing that Anarresti society had achieved utopia, that it no longer needed to evolve, and that exposure to diverse and novel forces and ideas outside (as well as inside) its borders could only contaminate and never contribute to positive change. The divergence of perspectives and interests in these cases engenders quite serious conflict between the elite/traditionalists and the Syndicate/rebels. Shevek, Individual and Community in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed for instance, is widely regarded as a traitor, he becomes the target of death threats and lethal force, and his family, including his children, suffer social criticism and ostracism. The conflict reaches something of a zenith when the Syndicate formally proposes that Anarres open its borders to outsiders and then declares, when this proposal fails amidst overwhelming opposition, that Shevek will travel to Urras. Shevek undertakes this bold and risky journey for both personal and political reasons. Struggling for years in the inhospitable climate of Anarresti science to complete his revolutionary work in physics, he concludes that possible success requires the “stimulus” of “alien” ideas (and the more elaborate scientific resources) available on cosmopolitan Urras (6: 160–63; 11: 345). Politically, Shevek believes that the journey could serve to spread the revolution’s ideals, and that it might end the excessively cautious, smug, voluntary “exile” of the Anarresti (5: 138). Shevek hopes, in other words, that his journey will serve to “keep the Revolution alive—on both sides” (12: 376).
Quite apart from conflict engendered by opposed interests, values, and beliefs is the common problem of divided and conflicting loyalties and obligations, a problem likewise rooted in diversity and freedom. Because the Anarresti are free, and because they live in a complex, modern society, they typically incur responsibilities for and obligations to a multiplicity of people and groups. As a result, individuals often find their loyalties split, their duties in conflict, and reconciliation an impossibility. The practice of partnership in general, and Shevek’s specific long-term partnership with a woman, are portrayed at considerable length in the novel to illuminate precisely this problem. For example, during the great drought crisis, which lasts a number of years, Shevek has to choose between doing socially useful work and being with his partner—he cannot do both; later in time he must choose between the effective pursuit of his intellectual and political goals by traveling to Urras with no guarantee of return, or remaining with his partner and children—again, he cannot simultaneously satisfy these conflicting loyalties and duties to self, to others, and to the community. Given the commitment to autonomy and liberty characteristic of anarchocommunist society, and given the particularity of human beings, some degree of conflict and instability is likely, then, to be both ongoing and inevitable. To their credit, the communal and communist anarchists recognized this fact, although I believe they too often downplayed its significance in order to secure the promised ideal of harmony. Kropotkin, for instance, certainly recognized that there would be “nothing immutable” in an anarchist community established on the basis of “free agreements concluded between [individuals and groups] . . . for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being;” but he also contended that “harmony would nonetheless] . . . result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of f
orces and influences [that would emerge over time].”