I think this is the most heartbreaking book I've ever read. Beyond the philosophy, politics and physics (all of which I absolutely loved), is one of the most sincere depictions of human yearning I've ever come across — a yearning that reaches beyond the petty resentments of possession, envy and greed — feelings that so often parade in yearning's mask.

Le Guin revisions desire as emancipatory, as a dialectic between collective and individual freedom, two sides of the same becoming that sublate into a greater totality she calls the social organism — an organism not of some essential balance that must always be returned to (i.e. fascism), but rather, an organism that can only survive through constant flux, change and revolution (i.e. anarchism).

Le Guin also explores selfhood and suffering. If the self is the source of suffering, then one must go beyond the self. Anarchism is this attempt. Through anarchism, Taoism becomes a political practice, a living and breathing philosophy, which is a far cry from Taoism's commodification into an individualistic lifestyle choice under capitalism.

Voluntary association, collective deliberation and individual autonomy all exist in Le Guin's anarchist society (though not without flaws), and she argues beautifully against many commonplace liberal-capitalist (mis)conceptions of socialism and anarchism.

For example: [People are lazy and won't work without an economic incentive.] Le Guin argues that an economic incentive, or, more accurately, an economic coercion, constricts our natural productive curiosity, creativity and spontaneity. In doing so, we come to view production with resentment and see it as the source of our suffering. We come to see consumption as the answer to this suffering. This artificial dichotomy between work and leisure keeps us isolated and alienated — it keeps us from the joy of productive, social play.

The incentive in Le Guin's anarchist society then, is collective affirmation in the process of labour itself. One's labour is enjoyable for it is freely chosen, one's existence is meaningful for it contributes to society, and one's identity is affirmed by the other workers one works alongside.

Quite a far cry from our own society, but not idealistic at all. One need only look into bottom-up disaster, poverty and war relief efforts to see people coming together out of joyous affirmation for social life. Egoistic self-maximising behaviour makes little sense if one desires sustainable belongings and becomings (i.e. if one wants to live).

Le Guin also provides an outsider's perspective into capitalism, for the book is split between time spent on the anarchist planet and time spent on the capitalist one.

Under capitalism, mutual aggression rather than mutual aid drives human behaviour. Everyone is potentially a usurper to one's own position, therefore, one cannot trust one's peers — one keeps a distance. It is a society of intense isolation — of friendliness without friendship — and individuals are afflicted by guilt and fear: guilt of having too much and fear of having too little. Resentment flourishes on both sides of the class divide.

Le Guin also explores the gender division, for in her capitalist society men run the planet while women dress up for, lounge around and seduce, men. There is a beautiful passage where the main character Shevek asks the sister of one of his hosts how she can stand being treated as an inferior. She replies that while men rule the world, women rule the men. Shevek, however, is horrified by this response — horrified that such resentment exists between men and women, that cruelty is followed with further cruelty, that neither side can see the other as equal, and that each must play the other to feel self-affirmation and -worth.

This moment left me utterly forlorn, because we see the same response played out, again and again, in our world — of female empowerment reduced to depictions of women dominating men or enacting violent masculine roles, as if it were merely women's exclusion from such roles that is the problem, rather than the roles themselves.

Le Guin does not stop there, however. There is even a moment of interspecies solidarity, where Shevek meets the pet of one of his hosts (I think a beaver?) and in seeing the intelligent playfulness in its eyes, sees it as more than a pet, and calls it brother.

This whole book just made me want to cry — for everything we could be and everything that we are.

For the monstrosity of an economic system we live under that reduces all human relations into paranoid petty hatred and all humans into interchangeable commodities in a labour market bought and sold for the maximisation of a cost-benefit analysis unto the blind fetish of profit.

For a world that could be built on mutual aid and respect, unfettered by taboos, familialism and self-centered loneliness. A world stripped of pretense and power, the scrambling chase for petty pleasures and fleeting affirmations.

And I know Le Guin goes into many of the failings of such an anarchist society in The Dispossessed as well, but god damn it I'm tired and biased and don't give a damn, because the society we're in is utterly horrific and I want it gone.