Scientific Creationism

Poul Anderson, "Science and Creation" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Volume 2, The Queen Of Air And Darkness (NESFA Press, Framington, MA, 2009), pp. 455-463.

Anderson quotes one of his own characters who said:

"'Sure, I'm anti-intellectual. I prefer people who think...'" (p. 455)

Which character was this? 

Anderson acknowledges that maybe this remark substituted rhetoric for discourse, which he has just accused others of doing, but defends it by saying that it got our attention.

Anderson agrees with scientific creationists that American public schools now teach secular humanism "...to the exclusion of crucial parts of our heritage." (ibid.) Which parts? He agrees that this educational shift has ominous implications for both liberty and national survival. How? He asks whether anyone's constitutional rights would be infringed if children learnt "...something about the roots of their civilization?" (p. 456) Which roots of civilization are (or were) being excluded from education? How had it been alleged that teaching about those roots would infringe anyone's constitutional rights?

Scientific creationists claim that Earth is only a few thousand years old and that current species have not evolved but have existed unchanged since the beginning. Anderson responds that:

these claims are untrue;

there is a First Amendment right to believe them and to teach them privately;

scientific creationism, astrology, psionics and Marxism should not be given equal time in education.

They should not. However, anyone who has been educated should be able (if they want to, of course), to inquire about scientific creationism etc and to assess them rationally. A guy I knew called Gerry was educated by Christian Brothers in Glasgow. Gerry kept hearing about a controversial figure called "Marx." Not knowing who Marx was or what he represented, Gerry asked a Brother, "Who was this guy, Marx?" The Brother responded with anger, regarding the question not as an inquiry but as a provocation. He responded, "You don't want to know that!" Gerry insisted that he had asked a question because he did want to know the answer to it. He wanted to be educated. The Brother then declared that Marx was a very evil man who wrote a book saying that he wanted everyone to be enslaved.

As Anderson writes:

"By now, reasoned debate is a rarity. There is seldom even any effort to understand an opposing point of view. Instead, a person attributes opinions or attitudes to the other fellow..." (p. 455)

Expeditions And Regimes

Poul Anderson's sf addresses, among many other issues:

(i) political conflicts and future regimes on Earth;
(ii) interstellar exploration and colonization.

Under (i), Anderson shows global power shifting to different parts of the world and twice shows the USSR conquering the US. He links (i) and (ii) by asking:

(iii) What sort of regime would launch an interstellar expedition?
(iv) Might the colonists be political refugees?

"The High Ones," IN Anderson, The Horn Of Time (New York, 1968), perfectly combines (i) and (ii). A World Soviet regime has launched a slower than light spaceship, with suspended animation, to Tau Ceti but, en route, Whites have overthrown the Reds within the ship! Here we encounter an issue familiar from Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Planet Of No Return. Psych-tests were meant to have picked a stable crew so do the tests not work or did someone deliberately sabotage them? The White crew has no intention of returning to Earth except, if they can, as liberators.

What they find in the Tau Cetian system is an ultimate collectivist state where individuals have devolved until they no longer think. Originally intelligent bipeds now have the mentalities of ants, bees or termites. They are on a par with Wells' Morlocks and Eloi or with his Selenites who are biologically adjusted to perform necessary social roles.

Several features of the story are familiar to regular Anderson readers:

we are given the clues - inconsistent behavior by the aliens will be interpreted to mean that they are not intelligent;

there is a moment when our hero realizes the truth - "Holbrook gasped. 'God in heaven!'" (p. 62);

there is a moment when he escapes by grabbing a gun, kicking a guard etc.

Once the truth is realized, it is a very easy matter to evade, immobilize or kill the slow-moving guards, who have not encountered resistance for centuries, and to destroy the computer which is not intelligent but merely applies programs to instruct the population who are helpless without it.

A Soviet loyalist says of the aliens:

"'Their reasoning processes must be fundamentally akin to ours, simply because the laws of nature are the same throughout the universe.'" (p. 49)

That does not follow. Yes, logic and maths should be a basis for communication but only a meta-basic basis. Thought processes can differ considerably even between human cultures. And, of course, his very next sentence is absurd:

"'Including those laws of behavior first seen by Karl Marx.'" (ibid.)

If Marx were there, he would say, "I do not know about these aliens. We have to find out." And he would be intelligent enough to make Holbrook's discovery. There is a parallel situation in Isaac Asimov's future history. The laws of psychohistory describe human society. The Laws of Robotics are not merely about robots because they control robotic behavior towards human beings. Thus, both sets of laws refer to humanity. Therefore, both are irrelevant when considering extra-Galactic intelligences. Hari Seldon, Susan Calvin and Karl Marx would say, "We might find some parallels between human and alien societies but we will have to look and see."

Holbrook replies, "'Pseudo-laws for a pseudo-religion!'" (ibid.)

I do not agree that Marxism is a pseudo-religion but that "Soviet" dogmatic formulation of it certainly is. The Soviet loyalist, holding a gun on his human companions, says, to the approaching alien guards, "'I have them, comrades!'" (p. 65) - and is blown to pieces because, as Holbrook had realized, the aliens are incapable of making any fine distinctions; they simply obey orders to guard or to attack etc. Theirs is a degenerate civilization comparable to what Wells imagined in The Time Machine.

If a Stalinist regime conquered an entire planet and thus ceased to have any external competitor, then it would cease to have any competitive dynamic and would indeed become a horrific, deadening despotism that might eventually wind up as Anderson describes here.

From 1953 To 2025

Yesterday, there was Armed Forces Day by the sea and an "East Meets West" cultural event with food in Lancaster Library. Today there was a Vintage Festival, a Norman Festival and Gay Pride in different parts of the District. I am getting onto my computer late in the day.

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave was published in 1953. Brian Aldiss wrote an Introduction to the Science Fiction Master Series edition in 1976. We are now in 2025. That gives us a vast historical perspective. What else happened in 1953?

Stalin died.

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay reached the summit of Everest.

Casino Royale was published.

I was alive but not yet at school.

SM Stirling born (added later)

That is a short and selective list, of course.

Brian Aldiss' introduction reflects the world in 1976. Because they are relevant to the plot of Anderson's novel, he mentions:

therapy

Eastern religions

new religions

drugs

"Karl Marx's prediction that the State would wither away..." 

-Brian Aldiss, Introduction IN Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977), pp. 5-8 AT p. 5.

Aldiss comments that this prediction "...has been revealed in all its foolishness." (ibid.)

This is a common misunderstanding of Marx. His idea was never that States as we know them would wither away. Instead, they had to be overthrown and replaced by a qualitatively different kind of state. Then that state would rapidly make itself redundant and would start to "wither away" almost from its inception. But we do not need to debate that issue further here.

But it is relevant to Brain Wave where, because of a massive increase in human intelligence, familiar States do cease to function/"wither way." Individuals with enhanced intelligence come together to reorganize social activities in everyone's interests as Marx had hoped would/thought could happen as an outcome of struggles first within, but then going beyond, the old order.

In 2025, we still have all the problems.

Nineteenth Century Individualism And Twentieth Century Organization

One aspect of HG Wells' The Time Machine is unlike anything in Poul Anderson's works. Whereas the Time Traveler himself is a nineteenth century individual inventor like Victor Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau and the Invisible Man, Anderson's twentieth century characters do not invent their own time machines but are contacted by time traveling organizations from the further future. In There Will Be Time, Robert Anderson speculates that the time travel gene was seeded in the past from the remote future.

"'But is it not some hoax?' I said. 'Do you really travel through time?'

"'Really and truly I do.' And he looked frankly into my ideas. He hesitated. His eyes wandered about the room. 'I only want half an hour,' he said. 'I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimens and all. If you'll forgive me leaving you now?'"

-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 16, p. 100.

 

In this passage, the Time Traveler, doing everything himself and offering proof before lunch, is the antithesis of Manse Everard joining the Time Patrol, Malcolm Lockridge drawn into the time war between Wardens and Rangers or Duncan Reid swept back to the age of Atlantis by a malfunctioning anakro. Wells' Time Traveler is the literary precursor of the BBC Doctor Who and I imagine him in this scene as played by the fourth TV Doctor, Tom Baker, although without Baker's wide-eyed look.

 

In There Will Be Time, Jack Havig's time travel group comes into conflict with Caleb Wallis's Eyrie. Havig was born in 1933 whereas Wallis had been born in 1853. Robert Anderson points out that Wallis is a nineteenth century individualist whom Havig can outmaneuver with a twentieth century organizational, operations analysis approach.

 

"'...Caleb Wallis...was born more than a hundred years ago.'

"'What's his birth got to do with the matter?' Havig demanded.

"'Quite a bit,' I said."

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XIV, p. 152.

 

"Dr Dimble looked out the window. 'There is my dullest pupil just ringing the bell,' he said. 'I must go to the study, and listen to an essay on Swift beginning, 'Swift was born.'"

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT CHAPTER 1, p. 377.

 

Years ago, I attended a talk by Duncan Hallas beginning, "Marx was born...," although, of course, Duncan went on to state where and when Marx had been born. Afterwards, I told him that he had effectively quoted a CS Lewis novel. Duncan insisted that his point had been that place and time matter as, of course, they do. Marx, Wallis and Havig represent real, then fictional, history. History is going somewhere. We might not like where.

 

For more on the implications of the Time Traveler as an individual inventor, see Whatever Happened To The Time Traveller?

"The Last Of The Deliverers"

Poul Anderson, "The Last of the Deliverers" IN Door To Anywhere, pp. 408-417.

I read this story once before in an anthology a long time ago. An author's note explained that the story shows one of our present conflicts as history because it will become history.

A future history is summarized:

"'Technology made it possible for a few people and acres to feed the whole country, till millions of acres were lying idle; you could buy them for peanuts.'" (p. 415)

A few people, yes, but a few acres?

"'Meanwhile the cities were overtaxed, underrepresented, and choked by their own traffic. Along came the cheap sunpower unit and the high-capacity accumulator. Those let a man supply most of his own wants, not work his heart out for someone else to pay the inflated prices demanded by an economy where every single business was subsidized or protected at the taxpayer's expense.'" (ibid.)

Living better on less work, people needed to earn so little that they paid nearly zero taxes, consumed little, thus causing a depression, and preferred to live in small country communities, despite rearguard action from both big business and trade unions. Individuals and families use town tractors as and when they need to and most grow garden vegetables. Land cannot be owned because it cannot be pocketed and carried around.

"'And when we do work, we'd rather work for ourselves, not for somebody else, whether you call the somebody else a capitalist or the people. Now let's go sit down and take it easy before lunch.'" (p. 414)

Each town has horses for local travel but also an airport with flitters. The United Townships Research Foundation sent a man to Mars. When the Brotherhood comes to power in the north and cuts down Trees without planting any, a newly formed alliance wages war against them.

The last Republican (US variety) and the last Communist, both very old, meet and fight to the death.

The Communist (before fighting and dying) says:

"'Marx proved that technological advances mean inevitable progress towards socialism...'" (p. 415)

Marx proved nothing of the sort. He clearly stated that society either progresses or regresses. If he had lived into the future history of this short story, then he would have studied the new evidence before theorizing further.

Building A Society

If you could lead the colonization of an undeveloped North America, what sort of society would you want to build? Lord Chumley from Kenya thinks that he might not be able to bring many of his compatriots with him because:

"'Living here would be...well, very different. Not many natives, for one thing; not much labor available.'"
-SM Stirling, Conquistador (New York, 2004), p. 119.

If you are used to having natives working for you, then you want to move to a place with plenty of natives.

The Founder, John Rolfe VI, explains that he has "'...restricted the import of native labor here...'" (ibid.) because:

"I don't want my grandchildren to be facing a mass of half-assimilated Aztecs who've been reading Locke and Tom Paine, not to mention Marx.'" (p. 120)

No? Locke, Paine and Marx are excellent chaps to read even if we disagree and argue about every word that they wrote. I would not be happy in a society whose leaders deliberately suppressed such works.

Poets And Prophets

SM Stirling, Shadows Of Annihilation, Advance Reading Copy.

Horst thinks:

"Things change so fast in our times! What did that Marx fellow say...all that was sacred is profaned, all that was solid melts into air? Perhaps he should have been a poet, not a failed prophet." (ELEVEN, p. 251)

Poets and prophets are related. Whereas the Hebrews had Moses and the prophets, the Greeks had Homer and the poets. Both Biblical and Classical literary sources were regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality.

Any writer addresses his public about life. If he is too close to his public, then he writes what they expect, producing trite, pro-status-quo cliches, whereas, if he gets too far away from or ahead of them, then he becomes a voice crying in the wilderness. I have read the suggestion that the perfect poem expresses an equilateral triangle with poet, public and life equidistant from each other. Thus, the poet neither panders nor preaches but provokes?

I agree that things change fast and that Marx expressed this poetically.

What An Ending!

What an ending to SM Stirling's Marching Through Georgia (New York, 1991)! I had better not summarize precisely what happens in case any reader of this blog has yet to read the novel but some general observations are appropriate. Karl Marx wrote that men make their own histories but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Thus, no one can choose his starting point, obviously, but nor do we have to stay there. Marx was writing about societies but it is equally true of individuals.

Eric von Shrakenberg, who harbors no qualms about killing serfs when he considers it necessary, assesses two aspects of Draka society. Of the Citizen Force, he says:

"'...these are my people. Killers? Yes. But they have courage, and honor, and love and loyalty to one another. Those are real virtues, and on that something can be built, something can grow.'" (p. 370)

- whereas, of the Security Directorate, he says:

"'What you are is a disease, and the only thing yo'll ever produce is rot.'" (ibid.)

Eric intends to continue leading his Century against the Germans, then to write. Would it make sense for him to accompany the American journalist, Dreiser, back to the US, where Eric has already sent his daughter by a concubine, there to warn the American public and politicians against the threat posed by the Draka? Maybe that is asking too much. However, I said earlier that the Draka seem naive, and needing to be shown a better way, so I am pleased to see that Stirling has moved the narrative marginally in this direction.

Draka Vol 2, Under The Yoke, is en route from the US.

Heinlein And Marx

"Remember Karl Marx and note how close that unscientific piece of nonsense called Das Kapital has come to smothering out all freedom of thought on half a planet..."
-Robert Heinlein, Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript (This was printed in an edition of Heinlein's Revolt In 2100. I quote from a photocopy posted to me by Sean M. Brooks.)

Heinlein's Future History, including this explanatory postscript to Volume III, is a masterpiece. I must say that before going on to remark that Heinlein wrote a great deal of "nonsense" later!

I quote Heinlein in the light of the previous post. We can read political theories for understanding or future histories for pleasure but, in either case, we engage in a single debate about the nature of mankind and our place in the universe.

Evitable History

Please read (and contribute to) the historical discussion in the combox for The Practice Of Deception. We realize that:

historical developments are neither inevitable nor predictable;

there is a lot of work for Poul Anderson's Time Patrol;

there is also endless scope for alternative histories fiction;

in the words of Shakespeare's Second Witch, every battle is "...lost and won..." (see here) but, from our point of view, it is lost or won with major consequences either way;

also relevant is Marx's and Engels' statement that the outcome of class struggles is never inevitable because every past fight has:

"...each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1985), 1, p. 79.

Class Warriors

The social gulf that Kenri and Nivala aim to overcome by marrying is enormous. However, Kenri learns that there is a second, and completely insurmountable, barrier: his loyalty to his people. Nivala's uncle, a Colonel on the Supreme Staff of the Dominancy, explains:

the Dominancy's treasury is low;
the new badge tax on the Kith is a precedent;
there will (have to) be further taxes on both subjects and Kith;
but the Dominancy does not want to force the Kith off Earth;
Kenri will be asked to advise policy-makers;
his special knowledge and connections will be useful;
he will be able to make things easier for his former people (how?) but not to annul the history that is currently against them (so how can he help them?).

Kenri refuses, breaks off his engagement to Nivala and stays with the Kith. What interests me here is the Colonel's consciously "class war" attitude:

the Star-Free are an entirely parasitic caste, aesthetic and ornamental;
their rule, enforced by the state-apparatus of the Dominancy, involves military suppression of rebellions;
the Dominancy is funded by heavy taxes on Terrestrial subjects and Kith traders;
there is not only military rule and heavy taxation but also extreme anti-Kith prejudice and overt oppression, e.g., a Star-Free who has bought a Kith merchant's debt can take his daughter under contract - the Colonel's response is not that this is wrong but merely that Kithfolk stick together and can be expected to raise money for the father.

My solutions would be:

to end Star-Free rule by general strike and armed insurrection/successful rebellion;
to establish Terrestrial Democracy as against Dominancy;
to respect the Kith;
to value their contribution to civilization.

The Colonel:

knows exactly what is at stake;
opts to wage this same war from the other side, even at the expense of social tranquility;
does not pretend that the Dominancy serves everyone's interests;
is not socially prejudiced;
recognizes that the Kith are demonstrably the genetic equals of Star families and may sometimes be superior as individuals;
admires Kenri's spirit;
expects Kenri, if he marries Nivala, to renounce his Kith allegience;
frankly acknowledges that Kenri's refusal makes Kenri and himself "enemies";
respects Kenri more for this than if they had become allies;
wishes him luck.

Well, you couldn't find a nicer guy to go to war against!

Meanwhile, this chapter informs us that the Kith are in any case declining. I thought that the chapter also indicated economic reasons for this but have not found those on looking back through it. Maybe someone who has recently reread both "Ghetto" and Chapter 21 will be able to tell us more?

I think that the Colonel would agree with the two opening sentences of The Communist Manifesto:

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journey-man, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985), 1, p. 79.

(The text begins on p. 79 because there is an Introduction by A.J.P. Taylor and there are also seven Prefaces to earlier editions.)

Lastly, both George Orwell and SM Stirling show us a future society in which the ruling group not only acknowledges that it oppresses the population below it but also intends to maintain that oppression for as long as there is a human society.

I posted about the Colonel before. See Class Warrior.

Nothing New?

"The House of Sorrows."

"The Zarathustrans study their holy writ but add nothing new." (p. 86)

Religious and ideological groups can try to read only their own authoritative texts but no one lives in a hermetically sealed universe. To study any text thoroughly, it is necessary to write about it. That is already to add something new. Some scholars will write with more imagination and originality than others. There will be disagreements. Some will write about how to apply their received teachings to new situations. Some will try to refute false and heretical beliefs and thus will write about those beliefs. (I once heard Catholic doctrines in a televised Free Presbyterian sermon.) To conserve a tradition is to conserve (an understanding of) that tradition but in changed conditions. To reform a tradition is to reject a conservative interpretation. To reject a tradition is to be influenced by what is rejected. Thus, all responses involve both change and continuity.

There are times when children are taught to read only so that they can read the Bible. However, as soon as they can read the Bible, they can also read anything else: Darwin, Marx, Freud etc. Writing both preserves and subverts traditions.

Abstract Logic And Concrete History

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series presents not only abstract questions about the logic of time travel but also concrete historical settings like:

1935 Central Park, New York;
1858 Professor Ganz's library in Berlin;
1902 Shalten's flat on the Left Bank;
1894 the streets of London.

In 1894:

Grover Cleveland is President of the United States;
Victoria is Queen of England;
Kipling is writing;
the last American Indian uprisings are still ahead.

Time Patrol offices for 1850-2000 are in London, Moscow and Peiping, 1890-1910. In 1894, the London office must prevent a German from 1917 from assassinating Queen Victoria and must also cope with the Balkan Question and the Chinese opium trade.

Also in, or overlapping with, the 1850-1900 period, although not mentioned by Poul Anderson, were:

1837-1901 the reign of Queen Victoria
1838-1857 the Chartist movement
1845-1852 the Irish Potato Famine
1859 publication of The Origin of Species
1861-1865 the American Civil War
1865-1909 the reign of Leopold II of Belgium
1867 the Manchester Outrages by the Irish Republican Brotherhood
1870-1871 the Franco-Prussian War
1871 the Paris Commune
1879 the birth of Einstein
1883 the death of Marx

- and blog readers will be able to add other details. The Time Patrol would have been kept very busy.

Hord And Spengler

John K. Hord's mostly unpublished work provides the theoretical basis for Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization whereas Oswald Spengler's The Decline Of The West provides the theoretical basis for James Blish's Cities In Flight.

Hord's relevance to the Technic History is explained in a SFWA Bulletin article by Anderson and is spelled out, without naming Hord, by Chunderban Desai in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows and by Dominic Flandry in A Stone In Heaven.

In Cities In Flight, Volume II, A Life For The Stars, the New York City Fathers (computers) electrocram Chris DeFord with:

"Whole systems of world and interstellar history - Machiavelli, Plutarch, Thucydides, Gibbon, Marx, Pareto, Spengler, Sarton, Toynbee, Durant and a score of others -...."

-James Blish, A Life For The Stars IN Anderson, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), CHAPTER NINE, p. 208.

That sounds like Max Abrams tutoring Dominic Flandry, especially the reference to Machiavelli.

Cities In Flight has an:

AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History by Richard D. Mullen (pp. 597-605), followed by a Table on pp. 606-607.which shows Epochs like Hord's stages for Classical, Arabian, Western and Earthmanist Cultures. ("Earthmanist" approximates Anderson's "Technic.")

"No Peace In Our Time"

Poul Anderson's Thermonuclear Warfare (Derby, Connecticut, 1963), Chapter 9, "No Peace In Our Time," is the core of the book, assessing not the technology but the philosophy of the Cold War. In fact, Anderson uses the term "religion" rather than "philosophy":

"[Communism] is a universalist missionary religion." (p. 104)

He defines "...a religion as an emotionally charged system of beliefs, including the conclusions drawn from the basic premises. We say 'emotionally charged' to distinguish religions from philosophies." (p. 105)

I use the term religion differently but Anderson's usage is clear enough for present purposes. (In fact, he later refers to "...supernatural religion..." as one kind of religion (p. 115).)

It follows from this that the Cold War was not just about politics or economics:

"...what is the conflict all about?

"Americans tend to speak of a clash between 'capitalism' and 'collectivism', as if two economic systems were contending. But this is simply not true..." (p. 102)

Possible Meanings of "Collectivism"
(i) a group of people whose temperament and culture is such that they voluntarily and spontaneously work together towards common aims;
(ii) a group of people who, against their natural inclinations, are forced to work together by an entrenched bureaucracy controlling a powerful state apparatus - thus the idea, not the reality, of a collective.

I think that (i), where it exists, is unobjectionable but that (ii) is clearly what is meant here! Anderson does not deny bureaucratic control in the USSR but points out that:

European Socialists and Social Democrats are anti-Communists;
some mixed-economy countries are on the Western side;
"...socialistic Israel is friendly to us..." (p. 103);
some Arab states are on the Russian side;
many Western businessmen want to do business with the Eastern bloc;
tariffs etc prevent the US from being a free enterprise economy.

Thus, as he rightly argues, "capitalism versus collectivism" is an over-simplification. Nevertheless, I am going to propose a similar formula that does identify the conflict as economic and political and not as "religious." My formula is "market capitalism versus state capitalism."

Capitalism involves competitive production of wealth but markets are not the only form of competition. In Russia, the bureaucracy accumulated collective wealth in order to compete militarily against the Western powers. Stalin and others rose through the bureaucracy during civil war after a revolution. Their siege mentality made them crush opposition and increase production not for social aims but for military competition and they used Marxist language to justify this, thus generating the sickeningly bland propaganda that Anderson quotes:

"The social sciences must continue to struggle with determination against bourgeois ideology, against right Socialist theory and practice and against revisionism and dogmatism. They must uphold the purity of the principles of Marxism-Leninism." (pp. 109-110)

Orwell parodied this well! Meanwhile, social scientists must try to understand society, testing received ideas and developing new ones. I know some contemporary British Marxists who analyze the economy and society intelligently but their link back to Marx is through Trotsky, not through Stalin, and on some issues they disagree with Trotsky.

Meanwhile, back to Anderson's "religious" Communists. They existed and he tells us how he met some of them. At the top of the Russian Communist Party were cynical wielders of power whereas European Communist Parties had many devoted members including heroic fighters against Naziism. I honestly do not know where, within the Party hierarchies, devotion ended and cynicism began or how so many well-intentioned people were able to stay in those Parties for so long. But it was a day for rejoicing when the Soviet Union, bankrupted by its pointless military competition, finally collapsed in 1989.

Comic Operas

Mirkheim, VII.

Sandra to Eric, en route to Mirkheim:

"'In history, comic operas have had a way of turning into tragedies.'" (p. 112)

That sounds familiar but it is not the same remark:

Two of Marx's most recognizable quotes appear in the essay. The first is on history repeating itself: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce". The second concerns the role of the individual in history: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

-copied from here.

I cannot comment on historical comic operas, tragedies or farces but I fully endorse that further comment: men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing. David Falkayn did not choose to be alive at the time when his home planet, Hermes, was occupied by mercenaries employed by Baburites but he made history by his role in the resistance.

Real Ideas

Which came first: being or consciousness; things or ideas? These are not quite the same question although they are closely connected. Objective idealists, like Hegel, think that unconscious concepts preexisted particular things. Plato thought that the Idea of the Good timelessly preexists any particular good persons or things. Philosophical materialists regard Platonism as an inversion of reality. We abstract concepts from empirically observed particulars. Why does this matter? CS Lewis incorporates Platonism into his Christianity. In his That Hideous Strength, ideal "Language" preceded particular languages. In Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson imagines a multiverse where materialism is true in some universes but not in others. God and the Devil are manifest in Steve Matuchek's universe where magic works. Can everything exist in the multiverse?

Addendum: This post is telegrammic. To expand slightly: when philosophers say that concepts are real but unconscious, they contradict themselves and move towards materialism. It is "matter"/being that is, initially, unconscious. Marx succeeded Hegel. The other direction to move in from idealism is, with Lewis, towards theism. It is God that thinks the concepts.

Accumulated Experience

Prehistoric people lacked "...the accumulated experience and examples and recorded thought of ..."

Sun Tzu
Caesar Augustus
Han Fei-Tze and the Legalists
Frederick II
Machiavelli
Elizabeth I
Maurice of Nassua
Shaka Senzagakhoa of the Zulu
Timur-i-Leng
Catherine the Great
Napoleon
Marx
Mao
Bismarck
Nguyen Giap
Lenin...

-SM Stirling, On The Oceans Of Eternity (New York, 2000), p. 111.

That is a lot of accumulated experience and we have been affected by them all even if we have never heard of some of them. And Frederick II is a character in an alternative timeline in Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time.

Margrave

Poul Anderson, "Among Thieves," see here.

Hans Rusch, Margrave of Drakenstane on Norstrad, is descended from a rough lot, miners, fishermen and hunters of red-haired ice apes on glaciers. His Queen, descended from gentler equatorial farmers, derides their culture as serfs and war-loving aristocrats with nothing but folk art, music etc.

Rusch comments:

"'Even if the democratic assumption  - that the eternal verities can be discovered by counting enough noses - were true...you cannot repeal eight hundred years of history by decree.'" (p. 166)

He is wrong about democracy but right about history. Need we reply to his parody of democracy? Democrats do not discover scientific laws by voting on them but decide how much of the common wealth should be invested in scientific research. However, as Marx said, men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.

Queen Ingra rightly replies that it is possible to work towards change and adds that:

"'...Earth could send psychotechnic advisors...'" (ibid)

- so psychotechnics has been developed in this timeline also. Much futuristic fiction relies on common reference points.

The Gospel According To...

In Poul Anderson's Perish By The Sword (New York, 1959), Michael Stefanik, translating a Russian text, thinks:

"...better include a critical note, warning the reader to allow for Marxism. Soviet work nowadays seemed less influenced by dogma than formerly, but Stefanik remembered that the gospel according to Karl postulated agriculture had evolved from nomadism (the reverse is actually the case) and this might well bias even a scientific report." (pp. 12-13)

In reality, of course, there is no "...gospel according to Karl..." If Marx thought that agriculture had evolved from nomadism but the reverse is the case, then Marxists have to accept this like everyone else. The Omniscience and Infallibility of the Founder is a religious, not a political, doctrine. However, Stefanik refers not to a group of thinkers and enquirers applying and developing Marxist theory and analysis, for whom "dogma" would be anathema, but to a group of bureaucrats misruling a country, using Marxist ideas, instead of the older Orthodox beliefs, as their ideology and indeed as a "dogma." These are as far apart as a theological conference or a Bible study group is from an Archbishop blessing Imperial troops!

It is fortunate that scientists were able to communicate even across the Iron Curtain, thirty years before the collapse of the Bureaucratic State. Science is universal. When, with a group of other Careers Advisers, I visited UMIST, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, the Admissions Tutor told us that he needed to know of any course applicant, "Does he speak the language we speak? That is the language of mathematics. And does he obey the laws we obey? Those are the laws of physics." A school leaver usually showed this by achieving high grades in public exams in the relevant subjects. A third exam pass with high grades was also needed but could be in any subject: History, Literature etc. (Cultured scientists are a greater social asset than uncultured ones.)

The scientific background of Perish By The Sword is more detailed than in some hard sf novels:

"The time isn't too far distant when you'll specify the properties you want in a metal and some engineer will design an alloy for you. Right now, of course, there's still a lot that isn't known, a great deal which has to be worked out by empirical methods. That's what D & C does. Partly it solves problems handed it by other outfits which don't have facilities for such specialized research. Partly it carries out independent investigation, with an eye to discovering something patentable and profitable." (p. 43)

So this detective novel is like a prequel to any number of "the day after tomorrow" sf novels.