this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Do you like Iain M Banks? I love his fiction. Earlier we were talking about how Marx failed to imagine a better society and work back from it. So let's talk about imagination. Banks has a great one. His science fiction series The Culture is about an anarchist society in space, with a technology level far beyond even Star Trek.
I chose my name based on Dune. I think the Fremen are really interesting. In Dune, the Harkonens make the mistake of thinking tribal societies are simple. And then Muad'dib kicks their asses. Dune is about space anarchists struggling. But I actually like The Culture better, because it's about space anarchists succeeding.
You don't seem to want an anarchist society. You can't imagine one with advanced technology and manufacturing. Since your failure is imagination, I think you need fiction. Read Iain Banks. The Player Of Games is a good entry point to the series.
I am plenty good at imagination. I wouldn't say Marx failed to imagine a better world, Communism itself as Marx describes is definitely a better, more just world. The difference with Marx is that Marx focused on analyzing material reality and how we might take advantage of its existing mechanisms and trends to get to a better future for all, rather than try to build a "Utopia" in reality like other Socialists like Robert Owen had tried and failed to achieve.
If you like Anarchist Sci-Fi, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossesed is a classic. A fun, extremely queer (as in gay) webnovel written by a Marxist would be Unjust Depths, about a group of Communists that managed to break away from an undersea empire and establish a small Socialist state that provides for its people, despite lacking the immense wealth of the Empire, and tries to take advantage of political unrest in the Empire to aid in revolution. It isn't a masterpiece but it's certainly very fun.
Then why can't you imagine a society that practices indigenous anarchism with advanced technology? It just kinda seems like you don't think tribespeople can be smart.
I can certainly imagine it, but that doesn't mean it will happen. It just kinda seems like you're a troll trying to paint me as racist for suggesting you look to the indigenous Americans in the Chiapas region practicing Zapatismo, a form of Anarchism.