(Insert Title Here)
United for Communism said:
Tiassa, I hate to be the outcast, but I don't support the Democratic Party either. They are also bought by corporate interests and do not promote true equality.
One problem I have with the recommendation I'm about to make is that it requires a bit of long effort. That is, to understand the context as fully as possible, one must read a few other novels first.
But Steven Brust, if you haven't read him, is an excellent fantasy author. No, I'm not huge on fantasy in general, but this isn't your average fantasy cycle.
Brust's Taltos Cycle follows a gangster from being a lowly member of the most reviled class in his stratified society to being a player in events of imperial and divine consequence.
Okay, sounds like a standard hero arc, right?
But Brust is also a Trotskyist sympathizer. His parents were renowned activists in the American socialist movement. Eventually, this pushes through in the stories.
Teckla, the third in the series, and
Phoenix, the fifth, dwell in ideas quite clearly drawn from revolutionary communism.
...She sighed. "Kelly has his hands on the truth about the way a society works, about where the power is, and the cause of the injustice he sees. But it is a truth for another time and another place. He has built an organization around these ideas, and because of their truth, his organization prospers. But the truth he has based his policies on, the fuel for this fire he is building, has no such strength in the Empire. Perhaps in ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand, but not now. And by proceeding as he has, he is setting up his people to be massacred. Do you understand? He is building a world of ideas with no foundation beneath them. When they collapse ...." Her voice trailed off.
..."Why don't you tell him so?"
..."I have. He doesn't believe me."
..."Why don't you kill him?"
..."You don't kill ideas like that by killing the one who espouses them. As fertilizer aids the growth of the tree, so does blood—"
..."So," I said, "you decided to start a war, thinking they'd march off and forget their grievances so they could fight for their homeland? That doesn't—"
..."Kelly," she said, "is smarter than I though the was, curse him. He's smart enough to destroy every Easterner, and most of the Teckla, in South Adrilankha."
(Phoenix)
(I should note, as to the time scale, that the people in the Empire who aren't "Easterners" live between two and three thousand years. For definition's sake, Teckla are the peasant class, and Easterners are reviled foreigners you and I would recognize as human, living maybe seventy to eighty years if they're lucky. In the dialogue above, he, the narrator, Vlad, is an Easterner, and she, Verra, is a goddess tampering with the Empire.)
Obviously, one cannot draw exact parallels, but infused in those two books are ideas clearly drawn from Trotskyism, socialism, and other leftist influences.
Or we might consider a conversation between Vlad and the Dragaeran Empress:
..."I know that it was my own House that made the petition. But why was it granted?" In other words, since when did a Phoenix Empress care a teckla's squeal about the business workings of House Jhereg?
...She said, "You seem to think I am at liberty to ignore whatever requests I wish to."
..."In a word, Your Majesty, yes. You are Empress."
..."That is true, Baronet Taltos, I am Empress." She frowned, and seemed to be thinking. The floor began to slope up and I began to feel fatigued. She said, "Being Empress has meant many things throughout our long, long history. Its meaning changes with each Cycle, with each House whose turn it is to rule, with each Emperor or Empress who sets the Orb spinning about his or her head. Now, at the dawn of the second Great Cycle, all of those with a bent toward history are looking back, studying how it is we have arrived at this pass, and this gives us the chance to see where we are.
..."The Emperor, Baronet Taltos, has never, in all our long history, ruled the Empire, save now and again, for a few moments only, such as Korotta the Sixth between the destruction of the Barons of the North and the arrival of the Embassy of Duke Tinaan."
..."I know little of these things, Your Majesty."
..."Never mind. I'm getting at something. The peasants grow the food, the nobility distribute it, the craftsmen make the goods, the merchants distribute them. The Emperor sits apart and watches all that goes on to see that nothing disrupts this flow, and to fend off the disasters that our world tries to throw at us from time to time—disasters you can hardly conceive of. I assure you, for example, that stories of the ground shaking and fire spitting forth from it and winds that carried people off during the Interregnum are not myths, but things that would happen were it not for the Orb.
..."But the Emperor sits and waits and studies and watches the Empire for those occasions when something, if not checked, might bring disaster. When such a thing does occur, he has three tools at his disposal. Do you know what they are?"
..."I can guess at two of them," I said. "The Orb and the Warlord."
..."You are correct, Baronet. The third is subtler. I refer to the mechanisms of Imperium, through the Imperial Guards, the Justicers, the scryers, sorcerers, messengers, and spies.
..."Those," she continued, "are the weapons I have at hand with which to make certain that wheat from the north gets south as needed, and iron from the west turns into swords needed in the east. I do not rule, I regulate. Yes, if I give an order, it will be obeyed. But no Emperor, with the Orb or without, can tell if every Vallista mine operator is making honest reports and sending every ton of ore where he says he is."
..."Then who does rule, Your Majesty?"
..."When there is famine in the north, the fishermen in the south rule. When the mines and forges in the west are producing, the transport barns rule. When the Easterners are threatening our borders, the armies in the east rule. Do you mean politically? Even that isn't as simple as you think. At the beginning of our history, no one ruled. Later, it was each House, through its Heir, which ruled each House. Then it became the nobles of all the houses. For a brief time, at the end of the last Cycle, the Emperor did, indeed, rule, but that was short-lived and he was brought down by assassination, conspiracy, and his own foolishness. Now, I think, more and more it is the merchants, especially the caravaneers who control the flow of food and supplies from one side of the Empire to the other. In the future, I suspect it will be the wizards, who are every day able to do things they could not do before."
..."And you? What do you do?"
..."I watch the markets, I watch the mines, I watch the fields, I watch the Dukes and Counts, I guard against disasters, I cajole each House toward the direction I need, I—what is that look on your face for, Baronet?"
..."Each House?" I repeated. "Each House?"
..."Yes, Baronet, each House. You didn't know the Jhereg fits into this scheme? But it must; otherwise why would it be tolerated? The Jhereg feed off the Teckla. By doing so, they keep the Teckla happy by supplying them with things that brighten their existence. I don't mean the peasants, I mean the Teckla who live in the cities and do the menial work none of the rest of us are willing to do. That is the rightful prey of your House, Baronet, for if they become unhappy, the city loses efficiency, and the nobility begins to complain, and the delicate balance of our society is threatened."
I mean, certainly, we have to adapt from a mysterious and fantastic imperium to something more earthly and modern, like our republic. But there are parts of that meandering exploration that are quite clearly drawn from our own reality. To what degree does any executive actually rule the government? To what degree does supply and demand shape political outcomes? Certainly, Zerika IV is an idyllic empress, but there
must be a reason a Trotskyist sympathizer wants us to be sympathetic toward a hereditary monarch. The reason, of course, is philosophical distillation.
The reason I would encourage you to enjoy these adventures is because they are laced throughout with the kinds of considerations you and I might find relevant. For instance, if you hated a particular group of people, what do you say to yourself when you realize that all your friends come from that group? There are bits ranging from gambling theory to poverty and discrimination as motivators of crime, theories of jurisprudence, and even some adapted Von Clausewitz (e.g., all wars are started by the defenders; if they gave the aggressors what they wanted, there would be no war) in the various books. Even Valabar's, the best restaurant in the Empire, has its place in the thematic context (e.g., "Do whatever you do to the Easterners, but leave Valabar's alone.")
Over time, my trust in Brust has softened some of my more insistent communitarian arguments, and even contributed to my belief that the revolution must be bloodless, and must work from the bottom up. It's as swashbuckling a good time as can be had while tromping around in social commentary.
One of my favorite bits comes from
Yendi, which is pretty much pure gangster adventure, but hints at what would come next in
Teckla:
...Walking through the filth in the streets made me want to retch, but I hid it. Anyway, we all know Easterners are filthy, right? Look at how they live. Never mind that they can't use sorcery to keep their neighborhoods clean the way Dragaerans do. If they want to use sorcery, they can become citizens of the Empire by moving into the country and becoming Teckla, or buying titles in the Jhereg. Don't want to be serfs? They're stubborn, too, aren't they? Don't have the money to buy titles? Of course not! Who'd give them a good job, seeing how filthy they are?
...I tried not to let it bother me. Cawti tried too, but I could see the strain around the corners of her eyes and feel it in the purposeful way she walked. I should have felt good about coming back here—successful Easterner boy walks through the old neighborhood. I should have, but I didn't. I only felt sick.
Take that bit and apply it to any number of groups discriminated against in American history: blacks, hispanics, Jews, Irish, Italians, &c. One can even draw certain parallels to Wollstonecraft and Rousseau arguing about dolls.
Yes, the Democrats are generally bought, and largely incompetent. Compared to the seemingly sinister machinations of the Republicans, though, most American liberals, progressives, or whatever else we might call ourselves, will support Democrats in order to slow the pace of digging our own graves.
Meanwhile, we cannot break the cycle entirely without something to replace it. Top-down revolutions, such as the Soviets, Chinese, Koreans, and even the Venezuelans, just don't work. With top-down revolutions, the problem is that we don't necessarily know that the replacement structures will hold. Working from the bottom up, though, we can install each new pillar as the old ones fail. It's a longer process, with less certainty about what the end product will look like, but it's also a process generally untested, and the most likely candidate to replace the top-down revolutions.
It may be a slow transition, but it is more civilized than the alternative on record. And, to be sure, people will continue to starve around the world while waiting for the outcome, but they're starving, anyway, under the current scheme. The question is how to solve the problem soonest, and right now I would suggest a freely electoral transition is probably the quickest route.
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Notes:
Brust, Steven. "Phoenix". 1990. The Book of Taltos. New York: Berkley, 2002.
—————. "Yendi". 1984. The Book of Jhereg. New York: Berkley, 1999.
