[ahhhhnoooo]

Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)

Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.

[Tossrock]

Indeed, sci fi has always been a way for KSR to explore and animate his politics. But he's so skilled a writer that the spectacle and incredible technical detail of the sci fi wrappings can obscure subtlety of the political philosophy (as it should be, imo).

[the_biot]

Agree, except I thought his political views were rather more obvious, to the point that it's a little annoying (IMHO of course). I'd describe it more as hard-left than anarchism, too.

[vogtb]

Same. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.

[api]

Going off on a huge nerdy tangent but... people think that about anarchism because the violent dystopian image is what you would actually get in most scenarios.

Anarchism is the politics of ignoring game theory. If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is incredibly hard, and that most highly cooperative states are highly unstable. A small number of defectors can easily collapse the whole system back to a more stable tit-for-tat or all-defect state. All-defect states, meanwhile, are often stable.

This probably explains why it took billions of years to get multicellular complex life. It took billions of years for evolution to figure out how to make something that doesn't instantly defect.

It's related to the second law of thermodynamics. An all cooperate state is highly ordered, and thus higher energy and prone to collapsing into a lower energy less ordered state.

A living system that wants to be all-cooperate is going to have to expend huge amounts of energy to maintain that state, which leads me to the final problem with anarchism: most anarchists I've read or met are at least to some degree anti-growth / anti-industry / primitivist types. That math doesn't math. If you want a society where everyone cooperates and is taken care of, that society is going to have huge energy needs, much larger than totalitarian-slum or crime-ridden-hellhole.

I mean, poor people use less energy for starters. Dead people use even less.

The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.). They can create an all-cooperate utopia by using embarrassing amounts of energy to not just police and stamp out defection but render it unnecessary to begin with.

[n4r9]

Banks' Culture series is certainly in this vein. In a post-scarcity society not only is there no limits on energy, but there is very little additional benefit to gain from violence to others.

A potential counter to your post would be LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", where a resource-strapped planet-mining society maintains an anarcho-syndicalist society without private ownership, centralised government, or military forces. The likelihood of defection is minimised by firstly the values passed onto younger generations in their education system, and secondly the lack of actual benefit (since few people would follow you and there's not much material wealth or power to gain). Perhaps this is the "other extreme" in which anarchist principles can be explored.

[api]

Yes, humanity has used mechanisms like LeGuin’s before. It’s called strict theocracy.

A lot of the anarcho types I’ve met have a blind spot there just like they do with energy. They tend to be social liberals, LGBTQ, etc. and they don’t think about the fact that such societies in real life (not in fiction where the writer is god) tend to be extremely conservative and rigidly traditional. In practice there’s often brutal enforcement too.

The conservatism emerges naturally from the need to strictly maintain the society’s value system to maintain a fragile high cooperation state. Any deviation creates social fragmentation which opens cracks.

I think this is probably why historical civilizations evolved to be so conservative and why social liberalism combined with high trust is a feature of the higher energy industrial cosmopolitan state.

So if you don’t want to live in a strict theocratic state but still want equality, figure out fusion or cheap batteries.

You either overpower entropy with overproduction (cheap energy and cheap stuff) or by finding a cooperative state and then exterminating all deviation from that state with repression and violence.

[n4r9]

What about Rojava? Maybe not strict anarchism but not too far off. Definitely not a theocracy or rigidly traditional.

Paris commune, revolutionary Catalonia and Ukrainian free state also spring to mind, though all were bowled over by neighbouring forces.

[api]

Catalonia is one I'm familiar with as an example of something a bit like syndicalism working, but it isn't that big and it isn't entirely standing on its own.

These also, as you say, tended to get bowled over eventually.

Try to scale these systems to the whole world and I don't think it would work... not unless you're much closer to post-scarcity.

[n4r9]

One thing worth noting is that Anarres in The Dispossessed has a population of only around 20 million. It's not actually that much bigger than revolutionary Catalonia was - maybe 2-3 times the population?

[MrGilbert]

> If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is _incredibly_ hard

I never realized that game theory would give me an answer to that question. You can tell that cooperation at scale is really hard just by observing the discourse around climate change and the necessary steps, as it is something that basically involves everyone. Thanks for the hint!

[api]

Climate change is a great example of a horrid game theory problem. Solving it requires an all cooperate pact as long as fossil fuels remain one of the easiest cheapest ways to get power. As long as that’s true, any defector can outcompete everyone in industrial production and creating a higher standard of living.

The other way to beat this is to advance renewable or nuclear power or both to the point that these options are cheaper than fossil fuels, which changes the game by making defection much less profitable.

I personally think that's the only way that's likely to work. As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest easiest route to prosperity, even if the rich world makes (and actually keeps) a climate change pact there's going to be an enormous temptation for developing countries to be like "fuck you, we're poor." Poverty, as in real grinding poverty, really really sucks.

[mungoman2]

But renewable is already cheaper than fossil fuels. Why don't we see this already?

[coryrc]

Renewable PV is the cheapest way generate electricity during daytime at appropriate latitudes.

Notice several caveats: electricity, not heat; daytime, not nighttime; only for some places on the globe.

Most energy use doesn't use electricity. It's one thing to replace an average-16%-efficient internal combustion engine with electricity and another to replace a 96%-efficient condensing boiler.

[gamblor956]

Solar heating has been a thing for centuries.

[cardanome]

> The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.).

Yeah, Marx already had these kind of discussions in the 19th century.

It is very interesting that you arrived to similar conclusions while employing a very different methodology.

Marxism evolved out of a criticism of what they call utopian socialism. Marx realized that socialism could only be build upon the massive development of productivity forces that would lead towards a post scarcity society.

Which is also why actually existing socialism struggled so hard. A revolution is more likely to occur in the least developed parts of the world but that also means it will be one of the hardest places to implement socialism in. Especially while having to defend itself against the rest of the world.

Many Marxists didn't even believe it could be possible to build socialism in such a condition but the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.

The good news is that these days even the least developed parts of the world are vastly more developed than they were in the 19th or 20th century. Modern actually existing socialism will look vastly different. Plus the rot of the latest stage of capitalism is showing more and more.

So socialism might be closer than we might think.

[api]

Not really. Marx didn't know anything about game theory. But he did come up with some adjacent ideas.

> the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.

I think that's giving the USSR way too much credit. Had they had, say, a more boring democratic revolution and joined social democratic Europe they'd have done a whole lot better.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's a very confused reading of thermodynamics, and going from stability landscapes to political systems to literal energy consumption is not a credible leap.

The real problem is psychology, not energy. As soon as you get one predatory narcissist/sociopath in a culture, and they're allowed to act freely, they will, with absolute inevitability, take advantage of everyone else's trust and cooperation and destroy any culture of mutual good will.

Energy is irrelevant to this. It will happen at any level of technology.

[cezart]

That leap reminds me of the Soviet Unions official ideology/non-religion “Dialectical Materialism”. It had the goal of explaining everything in the world, from the dynamics of atoms to the global communist revolution, with one common logic. To make it sound like the ideology of the system was based on the rules of nature itself.

[strogonoff]

Which sci-fi series give proper anarchist culture a shot, other than the Mars trilogy?

[ahhhhnoooo]

Becky Chambers work, Ursula LeGuin's work (particularly The Dispossessed), The Culture series by Banks, Murderbot by Wells.

[strogonoff]

I am into Banks but have not thought of Culture as anarchist, interesting!

[CSMastermind]

Not sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it.

I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.

[dominicrose]

Isn't that dangerous, to write about a fictional society that works while being based on ideas that don't work in real life?

[FearNotDaniel]

While you’re at it call Netflix and tell them that marrying a European prince at Christmas isn’t a viable option for most big city career girls. Fiction must be realistic at all times with no idealism or escapism, got it.

[dominicrose]

While accepting that freedom of expression is important I just wouldn't recommend anti-capitalist fiction. Against totalitarism seems better.

[shagie]

The goal of the fictional societies is to explore what they could be and to challenge existing ideas.

I'd suggest giving https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130 a read.

[arethuza]

Didn't seem to stop Ayn Rand? - To be clear I wouldn't want to either KSR or Rand publishing anything they wanted!

[arethuza]

Oops = I missed "stop" out of that comment!

[n4r9]

This post neatly encapsulates the phrase "It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism".

[dominicrose]

There are varying degrees of capitalism, right? If someone thinks it's unfair that his boss earns 100% more than him, then maybe 50, or 25% or even 10% would be fair? Trying to flip an imperfect system upside down doesn't seem right to me.

[n4r9]

Modern Western economies generally incorporate a mixture of capitalist and socialist principles. On one hand we have private ownership and capital accumulation, on the other we have universal healthcare, free education, some form of welfare, etc... . You could argue that this is simply "regulated capitalism" but I think it's more accurate to see it as a balance of distinct economic ideals.

My original post was in response to your statement "ideas that don't work in real life". Excepting the fact that anarchist principles are functioning tolerably well in some places such as Rojava; I believe we ought to continually ask ourselves whether the capitalistic appeal to greed and competition is relevant as our social structures and technology evolves. The fact that left-wing revolutions led to authoritarian rule in Russia, China and other countries doesn't refute that we can eventually rid ourselves of that blight.