These two quotations are mutually relevant:
"'Well, if I 'member my hist'ry right, you had many sep'rate countries in the twentieth century. That was before the Atomic Wars, no? All one country now, the United World Republics. How else could fifteen billion people survive?'" (p. 63)
"Obviously capitalism such as Barlow's America had known, with its inherent need to innovate, was extinct. But he didn't mind. So much so-called progress had been sheer hokum anyhow. Let the world take a thousand years to digest the authentic advances of the Industrial Revolution; give the simple graces of living a chance to catch up." (p. 66)
Competition caused the "...inherent need to innovate..." We are not told enough about the economy in the United World Republics. However, if the single global state controls the economy, then it is no longer any kind of capitalism because it has no external competitor. Instead, it is a return to ancient Asiatic despotism as Barlow realizes when his moronic domestic servants address him as their owner.
"How else could fifteen billion people survive?" Barlow reflects that:
"...when fifteen billion people are jammed together on one impoverished planet, they are bound to become a cheap commodity." (p. 70)
Not bound but maybe likely to. James Blish and Norman L. Knight suggested a, to me, implausible alternative. See here.
8 comments:
Capitalism as such is a system that has an inherent tendency to revolutionize itself.
This is historically unusual, because continual economic upheaval is profoundly disturbing to the people who experience it -- and they'll suppress it if they can, because it threatens loss of income, power and psychological comfort (since most people identify very strongly with their occupation).
Eg., the guy who invented the flying shuttle (doubling the productivity of handweaving with one simple, low-tech innovation) was driven out of his hometown, and eventually out of England for a while, by riots and attempted beatings (possibly attempted murder) by weavers afraid for their livelihoods.
In most of Europe, the authorities -usually- sided with the guilds, not the innovators.
This was for a number of reasons: first, they basically agreed with people like the weavers who thought Kay (the inventor) was a selfish thief of men's livings.
Second, they feared social upheaval, which would threaten a status quo they had to defend.
Third, they (the authorities, the powers-that-be) were rich anyway; they didn't - need- higher productivity, and as landowners despised commercial types anyway.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and its workings-out made England much more hospitable to disruptive innovation than most places, increasingly so as time went on.
And in the pit-of-vipers competitive interstate environment of Europe, a country couldn't afford to let its neighbors get too much of an advantage from innovation, or they'd use the power it generated to eat them alive.
Unlike a universal empire like China, or a country like Japan that could isolate itself, they simply didn't have the option of reflexive conservatism.
Once Britain started to pull ahead of the European pack -- obvious by the 1750's -- they had to imitate or go under.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, you elucidated much more clearly what I had in mind, that "capitalism" was far more genuinely revolutionary than Marxism ever was or could hope to be. And my view is that only free enterprise economics could hope to begin solving the problems and injustices to be found in the United World Republics. And the UWR had much more in common with a China hostile to innovation or a Japan which tried to seal itself off from new ideas.
The fierce competitive rivalry of the European nations made that kind of reflexive conservatism impossible. Even Russia was finally getting the hang of it during the last ten years before WW I, due to the reforms of Peter Stolypin.
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, in "Welcome", the purported changes in dialect are essentially just phonetic spellings of colloquial General American pronunciation. Eg., we usually -do- pronounce history with a silent or near-silent "o". The word is a Latin loan but originally the "o" was stressed, as it still is in "story", which is from the same root.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that reminds me of how I've sometimes wondered how different the Anglic of Dominic Flandry's time would be from our English. We know it was different enough that Flandry read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument" in translation.
I can imagine some changes, such as as simplifying the spelling of many words. The "ugh" ending of words like "although" and "though" might be dropped as unneeded. And words like "thought" might come to be written as "thot. And so on, including loan words absorbed from non human languages. Enough (or "enuf"?) such changes and English WILL become another language.
Ad astra! Seam
Changing the spelling could be done automatically; it's not "translation", it's "transcription".
We read "thought" as "thot" -- although originally it was pronounced roughtly "thoo-ugghht."
If you read Chaucer, you'll note that some of the rhymes don't work any more; it's right on the edge of being incomprehensible without study.
For translation, you'd need changes in syntax and the basic sound system, like that.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Perhaps I was unclear. I should have added that I would expect both changes in spelling and what you said about changes in syntax and the sound system. All of that would change English into Anglic.
And that will almost certainly happen, in the next few centuries.
Ad astra! Sean
Though if you listen carefully, "thought" isn't pronounced -exactly- as "thot" by most people. There's still a slightly prolonged "o" sound, with a rise and fall -- as if the "o" is being haunted by the "ught".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I tried that out myself, and I think you are right: still a SLIGHT "ught" in "thought." But so slight it will almost certainly fade away as time passes.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment