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Ursula Le Guin has died

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Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#191

Post by jrochkind1 »

auxbuss wrote: post #162
kiliantics wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ursula Le Guin was an ardent socialist and it comes through in all her writing. I don't understand why the only comments and quotes about her politics are all downvoted in this thread. But I guess that's the average Hackernews reader for you... EDIT: the quote is from a speech, which you can hear/see in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk

Ursula K. Le Guin was an anarchist and Taoist not a socialist[0]; she translated the Tao Te Ching, after all[1]. She was anti-authoritarian, whether libertarian (remembering this term was hijacked), socialist or otherwise. She was pro collaboration. The Dispossessed is an anarchist utopian novel. "I'd put it this way: Dispossessed is an Anarchist utopian novel. Its ideas come from the Pacifist Anarchist tradition: Kr…

Margaret: You’ve perhaps coined one of my favorite one-line descriptions of what an anarchist is: “One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.” Would you describe yourself as an anarchist?

Ursula: I don’t, because I entirely lack the activist element, and so it seems phony or too easy. Like white people who say they are “part Cherokee.”

Margaret: I hope you don’t mind that a lot of us claim you, in approximately the same way that we claim Tolstoy. (Who I believe can be quoted as saying “The anarchists are right … in everything except their belief that anarchism can be reached through revolution” although I’ve only read this quote, and not his original essay.)

Ursula: Of course I don’t mind! I am touched and feel unworthy.

Margaret: What were your first interactions with anarchism?

Ursula: When I got the idea for The Dispossessed, the story I sketched out was all wrong, and I had to figure out what it really was about and what it needed. What it needed was first about a year of reading all the Utopias, and then another year or two of reading all the Anarchist writers. That was my main interaction with anarchism. I was lucky: that stuff was hard to come by in the Seventies — shadows of Sacco and Vanzetti! — but there was a very-far-left bookstore here in Portland, and if you got to know him he let you see his fine collection of all the old Anarchist writings, and some of the newer people like Bookchin too. So I got a good education.

I felt totally at home with (pacifist, not violent) anarchism, just as I always had with Taoism (they are related, at least by affinity.) It is the only mode of political thinking that I do feel at home with. It also links up more and more interestingly, these days, with behavioral biology and animal psychology (as Kropotkin knew it would.)

http://www.anarchogeekreview.com/interview/mythmakers-and-la...

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#193

Post by microcolonel »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #170
microcolonel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia It might also have something to do with the roughly 85-100 million people whose deaths can be directly attributed to policies enacted in support of socialist utopia during the 20th century. Advocates of socialism like to say that they're anarchist, or that they're anti-authoritarian; but enac…

Socialism is about improving the lot of workers, and ordinary people and giving them more power, for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss. In that respect the USSR has very little to do with socialism, more resembling state capitalism. See Chomsky: The Soviet Union vs Socialism. https://chomsky.info/1986____/

> for instance saying that workers should own the factories together, make their own decisions democratically, rather than take orders from a boss.

Which means of production will they own? The ones that previously belonged to their rightful owners? Who really owns the means of production if the only way to seize it is through the state? How can that process be anything except authoritarian? If I have a farm, and you intend give it to billy who usually only turns the manure, what non-authoritarian means will you use to enact that goal?

The USSR has everything to do with socialism, as does the Khmer Rouge, as does the Great Leap Forward, as does Venezuela's oil socialism. Noam Chomsky can write on Lymphoma vs. Melanoma all he wants, it doesn't make the United Soviet Socialist Republics have any less to do with socialism.

If you think socialism is something else, you are thinking about something that isn't socialism.

Democracy is the enemy of socialism. You and I both know that your socialist utopia requires killing or imprisoning me, so let's not be coy about it.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#194

Post by harrumph »

microcolonel wrote: post #169
ixtli wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also found that socialist positions get downvoted here. I'd recommend that people read the works of socialists (Marx, Rosa, etc.) because most of my negative associates came from liberal insinuation I received growing up in the US :) The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia (which, btw, hasn't been anything remotely socialist i…

> The very word has had a campaign against it for a long time because of the 20th century relations between America and Russia It might also have something to do with the roughly 85-100 million people whose deaths can be directly attributed to policies enacted in support of socialist utopia during the 20th century. Advocates of socialism like to say that they're anarchist, or that they're anti-authoritarian; but enac…

>at least one person, myself, is unwilling to have his tools and life work taken from him, and given to a fool who will squander them just as that fool squandered the opportunity to attain them.

Unless, of course, if that person is named "Boss".

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#195

Post by SubiculumCode »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #180

I read The Wizard of Earthsea in the 3rd grade. Literally. I would have it at my desk and try to read it by holding it under my desk. Ursula Le Guin's is daughter of Alfred and Theodora Kroeber. Alfred Kroeber is a preeminent figure in the history of American anthropology and archeology, along with his PhD adviser Franz Boas. The influence of anthropology on Le Guin's writing and thought are easily seen in the Left H…

I probably read these, and recognize the titles, but I cannot recall them. Time to revisit.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#196

Post by taejo »

loudmax wrote: post #141
zumu wrote: post #85

I've always been interested in Le Guin, but never read much, outside of an Earthsea book or two as a child. From the contents of the thread I seem to be gathering The Dispossessed might be the best place to start. Is this correct? Are there any other must reads?

The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are seminal works. As you've gathered from this thread, The Dispossessed can be understood as a critique of capitalism. It is not uncritical of the alternatives. Likewise, the Left Hand of Darkness can be understood as a feminist critique of patriarchy, but it isn't uncritical of feminist ideology. On a deeper level, both novels are nuanced ruminations on society and hum…

I'd like to add The Lathe of Heaven to those two.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#197

Post by KingMob »

stcredzero wrote: post #62
KingMob wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Butler's books made my skin crawl in the best possible way. I can't think of another author in SF who so thoroughly conveyed the feeling of rape to a man who'd never experienced it. Her books were potent brews of control, acceptance, family, and love. I keep hoping Kindred will be made into a mini-series one day.

I'm from the 90's, partially. I hope your username is a reference to The Invisibles .

Yep! Love that comic.
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