Disappointed by KSR's Leftist Politics
Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years ago to Books
Kim Stanley Robinson, a favorite Sci Fi author of mine, came to the UW Madison tonight.
When I arrived he was saying he doesn't mind being called a utopian scifi author because Thomas Jefferson was a utopian fiction author of his time. I agree!
Unfortunately he said Ayn Rand is a utopian author based on everyone being greedy. It makes me think he hasn't read her books. The greedy people are the villains in AS and Fountainhead!
He also repeated the line I hear so often about going into a post-capitalist era in which the necessities of life are seen as the commons like the air we breathe. I hope I get the chance to pick his brain (or some other smart left's brain) on that. I get the idea that our society is so wealthy we should all agree to spend some of our money to ensure the poor don't go without the basic necessities of life. That is NOT the same thing as their being the commons.
We all need the air the live. If someone says he doesn't mind damaging the entire atmosphere, there's no way to let him have a damaged atmosphere and preserve a clean atmosphere for those who want it.. If it's local soot, though, the producer of the soot can and should buy up the land nearby and sell it to people who don't mind soot in their immediate area. In that case the air is NOT the commons. Food is NOT the commons. I agree (with most everyone at the book reading tonight) that we should purchase it for the needy, but food is not part of the commons.
I find this food/medicine/housing/clothing = commons idea to be just an ideological construct to sell people on the idea they should pay for someone else's needs. If you think that, I say come out and say it. This whole notion of a "heathcare system" is based on that. We can't just call it people who do surgeries and can show you their track record of curing people in exchange for money. It's a "system". Why? B/c it creates the excuse to have someone else buy it for the needy. Come out and say it if you think there's a fundamental benefit to us all of living in a society without poverty, and we should all pay for that society or else move to Gulch/seastead/space colony/etc.
This will probably seem like leftists nitpicking one another, but it's not. When you say privately produced things are the commons or talk about a post-capitalist system as an escape from feudalism, you're undermining the idea that you have a right what you produce, even if you produce means of further production. That's completely different, IMHO, from saying there's a fundamental value to living in a world without poverty and we should keep trying to stop poverty the same way we keep trying to stop murder and other other undesirable facts of human existence. We should not, BTW, spend more and more until murder/poverty/"terrorism" disappear altogether. They never will.
I love KSR's books. I wish I could pick his brain as to how he came to the thing about the commons or exactly how things would be produced in a post-capitalist society. The characters who accomplish good things in his books I consider to be capitalists-- they do work, trade for stuff that produces things people need, and put those means of production to work intelligently.
When I arrived he was saying he doesn't mind being called a utopian scifi author because Thomas Jefferson was a utopian fiction author of his time. I agree!
Unfortunately he said Ayn Rand is a utopian author based on everyone being greedy. It makes me think he hasn't read her books. The greedy people are the villains in AS and Fountainhead!
He also repeated the line I hear so often about going into a post-capitalist era in which the necessities of life are seen as the commons like the air we breathe. I hope I get the chance to pick his brain (or some other smart left's brain) on that. I get the idea that our society is so wealthy we should all agree to spend some of our money to ensure the poor don't go without the basic necessities of life. That is NOT the same thing as their being the commons.
We all need the air the live. If someone says he doesn't mind damaging the entire atmosphere, there's no way to let him have a damaged atmosphere and preserve a clean atmosphere for those who want it.. If it's local soot, though, the producer of the soot can and should buy up the land nearby and sell it to people who don't mind soot in their immediate area. In that case the air is NOT the commons. Food is NOT the commons. I agree (with most everyone at the book reading tonight) that we should purchase it for the needy, but food is not part of the commons.
I find this food/medicine/housing/clothing = commons idea to be just an ideological construct to sell people on the idea they should pay for someone else's needs. If you think that, I say come out and say it. This whole notion of a "heathcare system" is based on that. We can't just call it people who do surgeries and can show you their track record of curing people in exchange for money. It's a "system". Why? B/c it creates the excuse to have someone else buy it for the needy. Come out and say it if you think there's a fundamental benefit to us all of living in a society without poverty, and we should all pay for that society or else move to Gulch/seastead/space colony/etc.
This will probably seem like leftists nitpicking one another, but it's not. When you say privately produced things are the commons or talk about a post-capitalist system as an escape from feudalism, you're undermining the idea that you have a right what you produce, even if you produce means of further production. That's completely different, IMHO, from saying there's a fundamental value to living in a world without poverty and we should keep trying to stop poverty the same way we keep trying to stop murder and other other undesirable facts of human existence. We should not, BTW, spend more and more until murder/poverty/"terrorism" disappear altogether. They never will.
I love KSR's books. I wish I could pick his brain as to how he came to the thing about the commons or exactly how things would be produced in a post-capitalist society. The characters who accomplish good things in his books I consider to be capitalists-- they do work, trade for stuff that produces things people need, and put those means of production to work intelligently.
I do agree with the rest of what you say, though. Having everything owned in a central commons has been tried before, and it always leads directly to an INCREASE in poverty, not a reduction of it. That's not to say welfare can't work - it can, but only so long as it remains separate from the government, and doesn't require the entire income of all participants. I know the Mormon church asks its members to pay 10% of all their income as tithing to the church, which the church then uses to fund welfare programs, among other things. So it's entirely feasible, but only if individuals are allowed to keep the majority of their earnings for themselves.