Emptyhanded: Re-Imagining Possession and Progress in Post-Capitalist Worlds

“If it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. You must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution.”

The Dispossessed (1974)

Empty hands are almost always associated with need and deficiency. Emptyhandedness thus seems counterintuitive to imagining a ‘better’, alternative world than the present. After all, what is often thought to counteract such lack and poverty is the desire and drive for ‘more’ – for progress, development, advancement, improvement. I, however, seek to highlight how the ideology of ‘more’ is the antithesis to utopianism.

In Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism (2022), Gregory Claeys points out that consumerism has created the “apocalyptic state” (13) in which we live — a state characterized by environmental collapse and the increased challenge of responding to this crisis. The prospect of rescuing and reviving utopia, then, seems impossible. By posing a pertinent question pertaining to how we reached such a state, Claeys postulates an answer that captures the essence of what I seek to analyze comparatively: “This dystopian outcome results from the utopia of plenitude or abundance, the land of milk and honey ideal which lies at the heart of the dominant ideology of modernity” (13). This is why I aim to challenge the utopia of plenitude and redefine progress by closely comparing and examining the distinct post-capitalist societies in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2021). What I hope will become apparent is that both novels sketch the possibility of a utopian society as contingent on the emptying of hands.

Contextual and Theoretical Framework

Mark Fischer’s claim that “[i]t’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (1) exposes the extent to which capitalism, along with its principles of consumption and convenience, have colonized our experience of the world and our modes of thinking about existence. Claeys also comments on the consequences of capitalism, that “[i]ntoxicated by both consumption and the whirling lights and seductive sounds of its signifiers, we embarked on a colossal feast to end all feasts” (13). Hence Fischer’s concept of ‘capitalist realism’: “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (Fischer 1).

With these theories in mind, I argue that it is this ‘impossibility’ of both reversing such a colossal feast and imagining alternatives that The Dispossessed and The Ministry for the Future exemplify, thus destabilizing the notion of capitalist realism. By analysing how The Dispossessed and The Ministry for the Future address the problems of ‘possession’ and ‘progress’, respectively, I argue that it is in challenging the late capitalist mentality of consumption and convenience that an alternative, a utopia, can be envisioned.

‘Possession’ and The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed interestingly opens with protagonist and physicist Shevek’s departure from the utopia, Anarres, to the rival other, Urras. As Hedley Twidle astutely observes in “Ambiguous Utopias” (2022): “Shevek’s journey…is an inversion of the normal utopia travelogue: he is travelling not to utopia but from it, not towards the new world but towards the old” (Twidle). Having invented the General Temporal Theory that seeks to marry Sequency and Simultaneity, Shevek is invited to Urras to complete his research with four other scientists. The narrative shifts between Shevek’s past in Anarres and the present in Urras. Readers, as a result, are enabled to compare the two societies – one that mirrors Claeys’s ‘apocalyptic state’, the other that envisions a post-capitalist state.

Urras, on the one hand, is marked by excess, plenitude and hedonism. Initially Shevek believes that Urras, in all its beauty, is “what a world is supposed to look like” (Le Guin 57). When he first arrives in Urras and looks out the window at the view of the landscape, he describes it as “the most beautiful view [he] had ever seen” (56). As time passes, however, Shevek comes to realize the superficiality of Urras, and that the incessant desire for more – to see, consume, experience, possess more – is unattainable; a never-ending, dissatisfying cycle. He admits that “all that vital, magnificent, inexhaustible world which he had seen from the windows of his room” was “slipping out his grasp…elud[ing] him” (109). Shevek’s description of Urras as constituting “acres of luxuries, acres of excrement” (110), bears an uncanny resemblance to the late capitalist society.

Anarres, on the other hand, is “barren, arid, and inchoate” (57). Yet, according to Shevek, what Anarres lacks in aesthetic it makes up for in ethics. It exemplifies “a better world without state control of centralized authority” (Twidle). Anarres can be read as a post-Urras, and thus post-capitalist, society. In Anarres, there “was to be no controlling centre, no capital, no establishment for the self-perpetuating machinery of bureaucracy and the dominance-drive of individuals seeking to become captains, bosses, Chiefs of State” (Le Guin 81). I find Graeber’s explanation of the difference between anarchist and capitalist societies crucial in comparing Anarres and Urras, and in understanding Anarres as an alternative:

"Anarchist societies are no more unaware of human capacities for greed or vainglory than modern Americans are unaware of human capacities for envy, gluttony, or sloth; they would just find them equally unappealing as the basis for their civilization. In fact, they see these phenomena as moral dangers so dire they end up organizing much of their social life around containing them." (Graeber 12)

With this in mind, I argue that Le Guin’s envisioned utopia responds to the problem of possession in a capitalist society. For envy, gluttony, greed and sloth are arguably all rooted in this desire to possess, to consume more. Individualism and self-seeking motives do not exist in Anarres. Rather, self-denial and sharing – the emptying of hands; the freedom from materialism – characterize the society.

This is arguably most evident in the language of Anarres, Pravic, that Lewis Call describes as an example of “linguistic anarchy” (Call 99). It is “fundamentally egalitarian” (99), owing to the impossibility of speaking about “propertied class” (Le Guin 42). Possessive pronouns are non-existent in Pravic, too – in turn demonstrating the anarchistic structure and grammar of the language of this post-capitalist society. For example, the only time possessive pronouns are used in Pravic is “mostly for emphasis; idiom avoided” (58). Moreover, the capitalist idea of work as a means for accumulating wealth and benefitting the market economy is destabilized in Pravic owing to the synonymity of “work” and “play” (92). Shevek observes that, while in Urras “the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit” (125), “real motives are clearer” where “there’s no money” (125). In Anarres, therefore, “work is done for the work’s sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life” (125). As Call significantly deduces, “[t]he Anarresti cannot be capitalist, because they lack the vocabulary of capitalism” (100). The idea of possession, as a result, is not only redefined for the Anarresti, but woven out of their words, thoughts, work and lives.

It is a utopia not without limitations, though. The absence of swearwords in Pravic somewhat mirrors the ‘dullness’ and restriction of a society premised on the metaphorical emptying of hands. Call even describes the language as “dry and sterile” (101). Similar to its language, Shevek describes “every scene Anarres could offer” as “meagre” (Le Guin 57). One could argue that it is in the very nature of human beings to desire, to be drawn to beauty, to want. Capitalism, as represented by Urras, successfully, cunningly and underhandedly feeds into such yearnings – falsely advertising that ‘more’ can indeed solve any, if not all, problems. Shevek demonstrates this by initially being tempted and drawn in by the luxury, beauty and ‘freedom’ of Urras. His desires and dreams were repressed in Anarres. Thus, insofar as language “cannot be purely rational, for the humans who speak it certainly are not” (Call 100), so the world “cannot be saved through the articulation of a rational revolutionary philosophy” (101).

Nevertheless, the civil war that erupts in Urras between the two states, A-Io and Thu, reveals the cracks in the seemingly idyllic society. What Shevek comes to realize, crucially, is that the abundance accumulated and enjoyed by Urras’s upper class is contingent on the exploitation of the lower class. Having experienced both the egoism and excess of Urras, as well as the emptyhandedness and meagreness of Anarres, Shevek delivers a significant speech at a labourers’ uprising in Urras. Here he describes Anarres as the future, and explains restraint—dispossession—as the path to utopia:

"You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give…We are sharers, not owners…If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands." (247-248)

The same way Pravic is devoid of possession, so the life on Anarres is marked by Claeys’s threefold criterion for a post-capitalist society: the break in the cycle of emulation, the de-commodification of self, and the reining in of consumption (Claeys 18). Hands and words empty of possession and selfish ambition, a utopia is sought.

‘Progress’ and The Ministry for the Future

In Archaeologies of the Future (2005), Frederic Jameson asks “What if the ‘idea’ of progress were not an idea at all but rather the symptom of something else?” (281). Reading The Ministry for the Future through a lens framed by this question reveals ways in which Robinson uses the genre of climate fiction to highlight and critique the conventional idea of ‘progress’ – bigger, faster, better – that has led to environmental degradation, and is symptomatic of a capitalist society. Moreover, Claeys outlines the history of this ‘ideology of plenitude’ that consequently highlights the need to redefine ‘progress’:

"Fuelled by ideas of progress on scientific and technological innovation, the creation of a market or commercial society in the 18th century produced an ideal of unlimited trade, consumption, and production. By the late 20th century this secularised version of paradise dangled that tantalizing vision of an American standard of living, with its fast food, fast cars, and unending consumption, before an eager world." (13)

The implications of such a ‘secularised version’ of a ‘standard of living’ are reflected in The Ministry for the Future’s dystopic beginning. A heatwave in Uttar Pradesh, India, kills over a million people. Following this tragedy, the Ministry for the Future, established by the Paris Climate Accords and headed by Mary Murphy, is an organization responsible for proactively responding to consequences of inaction that future generations would otherwise bear. Robinson thus paints a speculative portrait of myriad responses to the climate crisis in the period between the 2020s and 2040s.

The dystopian elements of the novel reach a climax with “Crash Day” in the thirties that is said to have triggered “The War for the Earth” (Robinson 228). Essentially, Crash Day entailed the sabotage of “flights of all kinds” (228) by “clouds of small drones…directed into the flight paths of the planes involved, fouling their engines” (228). Following this was the sinking of container ships. Initiated and led by the eco-terrorist group, “Kali, or the Children of Kali” (229), the crashing of planes and sinking of ships communicated a crucial message: “No more fossil-fuel-burning transport” (229). The turning point in the novel – from dystopia to utopia – can then read in terms of the adaptive forms of transport. For example, electric motors powered by solar panels replaced the diesel engines of ships (418).

An interesting yet symbolic consequence of this is the “reduction in ship speed, and thus in economic efficiency” (418). This is described as “just part of the new cost of doing business” (418). The capitalist signifiers of ‘fast food, fast cars, and unending consumption’, conjure the image of full hands and full stomachs: stuffed, sometimes overflowing, but fleeting. By depicting slow and sustainable transport as a solution, Robinson seems to be challenging readers to consider a world in which the need or desire for what is faster, more efficient, more convenient, is emptied. “So—where had this obsession with speed come from, why had everyone caved to it so completely?” (419), Mary poignantly ponders. As highlighted in Claeys’s abovementioned words, the secularised version of paradise encapsulates speed and efficiency. Slow, in this instance, is utopic. This is an abstract type of emptyhandedness that I deem symbolic of ‘de-progress’: it is the novel’s reimagination of transport that exemplifies a redefinition of progress.

The limitation here, though, is that this transformation is spoken about generally: such a large global experiment does not seem to consider local complexities. The nuances and diversity of local lived experiences remain unwritten and unaddressed – in turn posing an issue for the efficacy and longevity of such changes. Nevertheless, it is this ambiguity that largely defines the seeking of utopia. Similar to Shevek’s realization but acceptance of the imperfection of the utopia, Anarres, Mary reassures at the end of the novel: “We will keep going…because there is no such thing as fate. Because we never really come to the end” (563). Indeed, the envisioning of an alternative is a slow, ceaseless endeavour.

Conclusion

In revising notions of ‘possession’ and ‘progress’, this comparative analysis sought to examine how The Dispossessed and The Ministry for the Future orient readers towards the future by responding to the excess and environmental depredations of capitalism, and by imagining post-capitalist alternatives of ‘empty hands’. Anarres’s distinctive feature of linguistic anarchy in The Dispossessed addresses the problem of possession, while Earth in the 2040s in The Ministry for the Future responds to the climate crisis by redefining progress in terms of transport. As both novels convey, it is the symbolic position of emptyhandedness – of simplicity, self-denial and slowness – that enable the capacity to imagine the end of capitalism before the end of the world.

Call, Lewis. “Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.” SubStance, vol. 36, no. 2, 2007, pp. 87–105, https://doi.org/10.1353/sub.2007.0028.

Claeys, Gregory. Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism. Princeton University Press, 2022.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.

Graeber, David. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004.

Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Verso, 2005.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” New Dimensions, edited by Robert Silverberg, vol. 3, Nelson Doubleday, New York City, NY, 1973.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. Gollancz, 1974.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future. Orbit, 2021.

Twidle, Hedley. “Ambiguous Utopias.” Hedley Twidle, 25 Jan. 2022, hedleytwidle.com/home/2022/1/25/a-whole-mess-of-utopias.