Book Review: The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't heard of Le Guin until this year, but I'm glad that changed. I don't read a ton of books, maybe a half dozen or so a year, but of those few, a fair amount are science fiction. I've now read 4 or 5 "classic" science fiction books depending on your definition, and I think this may be my favorite classic sci-fi with the exception of Ender's Game. I may be shortchanging Dune, but I read it in 2010, and I'm pretty sure I never got around to finishing it. Beware, there are spoilers ahead.

The Dispossessed is a story of a man named Shevek from an anarcho-syndicalist society on Anarres, a world of Tau Ceti. He visits the neighboring world of Urras and spends most of his time in the capitalist nation of A-Io. Half of the novel is told in flashbacks of his life spent on Anarres, and half of his exploration of the foreign society of the "propertarians" of A-Io.

The book's strength is its realism and that the realism has aged fairly well. This compares favorably with Asimov's Foundation; while there are great ideas, the characters feel a bit stodgy and the author's own time has seeped into the story, breaking the illusion. Trantor feels like city in the 1940s even though it's supposed to be the capital of a galactic empire thousands of years in the future. Of course, The Dispossessed is clearly grappling with Cold War era themes of communism and capitalism, and a scene of a workers' general strike even harkens back to trade unionist actions of the late 1800s. Perhaps those themes just seem more universal to me, but also, the personal story of Shevek and his family ground the story.

Le Guin also takes a more measured approach to the social critique. Foundation's idea of psychohistory, while interesting, reads as pretty outrageous in my opinion. The societies of Anarres and Urras on the other hand, come across as realistic portrayals of how actual humans who grew up in those societies would act. Shevek is perplexed and frustrated by the values of A-Io and eventually tells his hosts so. The Anarresti inhabitants of the anarchic society have strong social norms enforcing rules where laws do not exist.

It's clear Le Guin is partial to the anarcho-syndicalist experiment as you'd expect from a book that decides to explore it, but she also doesn't shy away from the drawbacks. There is a major famine at one part in the novel. Beyond the obvious issues of food scarcity, the famine causes DivLab, the database of open jobs, to prioritize farm work, and Shevek is let go of his physicist position. Worse still, he is sent far away from his family including his newborn daughter for months. When he returns, his partner and daughter have themselves been reassigned. He isn't able to find a posting nearby and ends up missing the first 4 years of his daughter's life. I'm not sure if the famine is meant to be a direct indictment of a lack of price system or just a description of the harsh realities of the world of Anarres, but regardless of intentions I think it should be read as a indictment. The Anarresti needed a price system to know what to prioritize! Instead, Shevek is posted to a mining sector unrelated to food production where he must decide who will starve and who will eat. A free enterprise system would make other mistakes but it would not prioritize anything above food production.

As a result of this experience and others injustices, Shevek diagnoses that the Odonian society (what the Anarresti call themselves) promises freedom, but has created a set of unspoken restrictive rules. Ultimately, Shevek, along with others of a similar mind, create a new syndicate to route around the rules and bureaucracy. For this, his family and children and shunned and outcast, and Shevek himself is threatened with violence.

I won't go as deep into the descriptions of A-Io. There's a fairly standard capitalist critique that the poor are treated unfairly. There's also an interesting view (or lack thereof) of governance and the use of force. A-Io's system of government isn't mentioned. Yet it is strongly hierarchical and seemingly authoritarian; government agents seek to restrict Shevek's movements. When Shevek escapes from their control and links up with revolutionary leftist forces, the resulting strike is broken up by the police firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Perhaps this symbolism landed harder in the 70s, but in today's America, there is both less organized labor and less mass police firing into crowds. In fact, there's an common critique from the Right that the police often do not enforce laws at all.

Finally, to escape the government of A-Io who is pursuing Shevek after the strike is attacked, Shevek takes refuge in the Terran embassy. Le Guin has systemically critiqued anarcho-syndicalism and capitalism, and even had some negative things to say about authoritarian communism, the government of another country on Urras. Now, she turns to Earth and focuses on an environmental critique. The Terrans indicate they have nothing as their planet was destroyed and unable to sustain their population, but they do help Shevek. I would say this critique hits the least hard, since it's been 50 years since the book came out and Earth is doing pretty well. Solar power is incredibly cheap and the global population has seen massive improvements in living standards.

Of course, I've focused on the social critiques because theyh're the most interesting to write about, but do not take my critiques as an indication that the setting is poorly thought out or frustrating to read; on the contrary, the rich detail draws you in. The ideas engage you even if I suspect I disagree with most of the author's beliefs. Moreover, the heart of the story is personal; what should Shevek do in the challenging circumstances he finds himself in? Again, I'd like to emphasize that the novel is quite compelling because of Shevek's personal relationships and his devotion to improving the world. He's a good character who makes reasonable decisions given the circumstances he has grown up in. I wouldn't do the same things he does, but I understand why he does.

Overall, a solid book that I'm glad jumped onto my reading list.