I think it's a good point that political words can come with a lot of baggage, and I generally try to avoid politically charged words in my writing. But while I can understand that the word "communism" comes with a lot of baggage for you, it's been used in various forms of utopian thought for a long time.
I think it's a good point that political words can come with a lot of baggage, and I generally try to avoid politically charged words in my writing. But while I can understand that the word "communism" comes with a lot of baggage for you, it's been used in various forms of utopian thought for a long time.
Thomas More's Utopia was communist (even if the word didn't yet exist at the time) and Karl Marx was a utopian thinker who incorporated those ideas into his work. Edward Bellamy and William Morris, in turn, took Karl Marx's ideas and turned them into the socialist utopias in Looking Backward and News from Nowhere (though Edward Bellamy took issue with the word "communism," and even the word "socialism," and used the word "nationalism" instead.) Charlotte Perkins Gilman took issue with the word "nationalism" and avoided all of those terms altogether in her utopian novel. Then we get to Ursula Le Guin whose utopian novel was anarchist, before we head into the various Buddhist utopias, and eventually to Kim Stanley Robinson and his capitalist utopias.
What I'm saying is that utopian thought comes in a lot of different flavors, and communism has been one of those flavors for a long time. Again, my utopian novel is not communist—it is capitalist. But I have been studying all of the flavors in my pursuit of utopian thought as I try to to understand what each thinker was ultimately trying to achieve.
Today, I would call Thomas More's utopia dystopian. But is it not still worth understanding why it felt utopian in his day compared to the realities he was up against? And what he was ultimately trying to achieve? That we have since tried many of those ideas and proved them wrong only means we are learning and adapting as we go. And we are creating new and better versions of utopia as we go! That's why we need a modern continuation of them. To update our ideas about a better future, even as we learn from the ones that didn't have that result!
I think that's the beauty of Substack: I think that it's going to prove a very important platform in the next 10-20 years for the depth of the social discourse and ease of that communication.
The ethics of creating utopias - it's fascinating, isn't it? Science fiction is such a brilliant field for this. Thanks Elle! Sorry if I seemed a bit "on the offensive" . . .
And look what an interaction has formed over a single word :)
I think it's a good point that political words can come with a lot of baggage, and I generally try to avoid politically charged words in my writing. But while I can understand that the word "communism" comes with a lot of baggage for you, it's been used in various forms of utopian thought for a long time.
Thomas More's Utopia was communist (even if the word didn't yet exist at the time) and Karl Marx was a utopian thinker who incorporated those ideas into his work. Edward Bellamy and William Morris, in turn, took Karl Marx's ideas and turned them into the socialist utopias in Looking Backward and News from Nowhere (though Edward Bellamy took issue with the word "communism," and even the word "socialism," and used the word "nationalism" instead.) Charlotte Perkins Gilman took issue with the word "nationalism" and avoided all of those terms altogether in her utopian novel. Then we get to Ursula Le Guin whose utopian novel was anarchist, before we head into the various Buddhist utopias, and eventually to Kim Stanley Robinson and his capitalist utopias.
What I'm saying is that utopian thought comes in a lot of different flavors, and communism has been one of those flavors for a long time. Again, my utopian novel is not communist—it is capitalist. But I have been studying all of the flavors in my pursuit of utopian thought as I try to to understand what each thinker was ultimately trying to achieve.
Today, I would call Thomas More's utopia dystopian. But is it not still worth understanding why it felt utopian in his day compared to the realities he was up against? And what he was ultimately trying to achieve? That we have since tried many of those ideas and proved them wrong only means we are learning and adapting as we go. And we are creating new and better versions of utopia as we go! That's why we need a modern continuation of them. To update our ideas about a better future, even as we learn from the ones that didn't have that result!
I think that's the beauty of Substack: I think that it's going to prove a very important platform in the next 10-20 years for the depth of the social discourse and ease of that communication.
Substack belongs in utopia! :)
The ethics of creating utopias - it's fascinating, isn't it? Science fiction is such a brilliant field for this. Thanks Elle! Sorry if I seemed a bit "on the offensive" . . .
And look what an interaction has formed over a single word :)
It's a powerful subject. Keep up the great work!