Letter from Robert Shea

Dear Editor,

Jim Stumm’s letter about Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, in the Winter, 1989, Prometheus newsletter is a typical example of a libertarian going on at great length sermonizing other libertarians on their errors and expounding the One True Path to Freedom.

Jim calls The Dispossessed “socialist propaganda.” I insist that the society described by Le Guin is an anarchist, not a socialist, society. The difference between anarchism and socialism is quite simple. Socialist societies maintain their economic systems through coercion. Anarchist societies, whatever their economic arrangements, arrive at them through voluntary agreement.

I don’t want to debate Jim on the role of private property in an anarchist society. I’m even inclined to agree with him that pockets of free market activity would probably appear rather quickly in a non-coercive anarchist society initially organized along purely collectivist lines. Where I do want to take issue with him is on his insistence that all awards given by the Libertarian Futurist Society pass his particular ideological purity test.

Jim writes that if The Dispossessed were to win the Hall of Fame award it would indicate to him that the LFS is “dominated by people who are not proprietarians.” He’s gotta be kidding. Look at the list of books that have won the Prometheus Award and the Hall of Fame Award already. Look at the persuasively proprietarian defense of The Dispossessed put forward by Sam Konkin in the same issue of Prometheus.

Might not a Hall of Fame award to The Dispossessed indicate that a majority of LFS advisory members, unlike Jim, opts for a broad, rather than a narrow, definition of libertarianism?

I don’t believe in concealing differences of opinion for the sake of outreach. My own philosophy is not identical with those of Ayn Rand, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Cyril Kornbluth. But I respect all the authors who have received awards from the LFS. I’ve learned much from their works. I don’t expect to agree with them point for point. For that matter my views differ in many respects from those of L. Neil Smith, yet I still feel honored to have made the speech presenting the Prometheus Award to him for The Probability Broach in 1982.

Let the LFS Hall of Fame consist of a variety of novels; let newcomers see that the freedom movement is large and generous, providing a home to many differing opinions. Surely the recognition and acceptance of a variety of points of view must be one of the first principles of a free society.

I pledge that if The Dispossessed is not selected for the Hall of Fame this year I will not pick up my marbles and go home. I will stick with the LFS and continue to try to persuade it to give The Dispossessed the recognition it deserves.

Surely an excellent novel describing the workings of an anarchist society deserves to be considered for the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Hall of Fame award.

Is the society described in The Dispossessed an anarchist society? Yes.

Is The Dispossessed an excellent novel? Yes.

I rest my case.