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YA dystopias teach children to submit to the free market, not fight authority

The Hunger Games, The Giver and Divergent all depict rebellions against the state, and promote a tacit right-wing libertarianism
hunger games
Locked into late capitalism … Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
A "progressive parent" friend of mine was recently expressing enthusiasm over the fact that his children had taken to reading Young Adult dystopian novels. They were dying to see the new feature film adaptation of the book The Giver (see Sarah Palin's review, here), after having ploughed through the quartet of bestselling books by Lois Lowry. They had absorbed the blockbuster film adaptations of Divergent and The Hunger Games and had hungrily consumed the associated merchandise . They'd also made hundreds of new friends from all over the world who "shared" the same passion for dystopian teen icons Katniss, Tris and Jonas through the tens of thousands of Twitter fan accounts.
My friend thought teenage dystopian fiction to be a great improvement on the Harry Potter cult that had been filling children's heads with right-wing dreams of public schools and supernatural powers. He felt that YA dystopias were a good way of teaching kids to "question authority" - these books, after all, had protagonists who exposed the lies of their societies, they were standing up against those in power. Dystopian YA was, he claimed, a great left-wing educational tool. My friend could not have been more wrong.
Twenty years ago he would have been right. He was projecting from his fond memories of the dystopian novels and films of his own childhood, from the free-market-will-bring-hell-on earth period of speculative fiction. This was a tradition which sprang from HG Wells and his engagement with communism (see his discussion with Stalin from 1937) and which filtered into the 1960s through left-engaged authors like Philip K Dick. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (adapted for screen as Blade Runner) saw a post-apocalyptic world in which a massive private global corporation had replaced governments and nations.
A similar picture of dictatorship - albeit a Christian fundamentalist anti-feminist one - formed the oppressive dystopia in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, while second wave feminist scholars read the cyberpunk movement in fiction through an anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist lens. The science fiction of William Gibson was also championed by the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson. In this period the capitalist dystopia was a respected left wing "cultural strategy" and its dominance endured till around 1993 which, coincidentally or not, was the time of the fall of the old left and the rise of neoliberalism. The dystopian narratives which are currently consuming the minds of millions of teens worldwide are now communicating right-wing ideas.
You might say, wait, they're all about freedom and truth and oppressive societies, but the kind of freedom that's being advocated in The Hunger Games and Divergent is, as Salon magazine recently pointed out, more like "agit-prop for capitalism".
What marks these dystopias out from previous ones is that, almost without exception, the bad guys are not the corporations but the state and those well-meaning liberal leftists who want to make the world a better place. Books such as The Giver, Divergent and the Hunger Games trilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality. They support one of the key ideologies that the left has been battling against for a century: the idea that human nature, rather than nurture, determines how we act and live. These books propose a laissez-faire existence, with heroic individuals who are guided by the innate forces of human nature against evil social planners.
Of course, there is not some secret underground bunker filled with a Bilderberg-group-type-fraternity of neoliberals & neocons dictating what Young Adult authors write and neither is there a conspiracy among right-wing media moguls to implant reactionary messages through the mass media into the minds of the young and impressionable. This is one of those zeitgeist moments where the subconscious of a culture emerges into visibility. We might be giving ourselves right-wing messages because, whether or not we realise it, we have come to accept them as incontestable. This generation of YA dystopian novels is really our neoliberal society dreaming its last nightmares about the threat from communism, socialism and the planned society. We've simplified it to make it a story we can tell to children and in so doing we've calmed the child inside us.
Common to the two trilogies and one quartet above is the same underlying narrative: In each a unique individual who lives in a stable, peaceful, carefully structured society is graced or cursed with extraordinary skills which mark them out from the conformist communities around them. In The Giver this is the psychic power of memory, in Divergent it is genetic divergence from the five factions which make up society and in The Hunger Games it is survival cunning. These unique individuals are then forced to make a choice which places them in conflict with the powers that be. Through this friction the powers are exposed as an all-controlling government that dictates, enforces and polices all social norms and behaviours and which has laid down a rigid structure for the society and the economy through which it operates. As a line from the elite who rule society in The Giver states: "When people have the power to choose, they choose wrong."
Divergent As free as the market … the film version of Divergent
Yes there is a critique of statism at the heart of these books, but you might say, big deal: every teenager is a rampant individualist, a libertarian. However, the right wing root runs quite a bit deeper into the narrative structures.
In each of these narratives the all-controlling or totalitarian government (which sees itself as a utopian social engineer) has come about after a catastrophe. In Divergent/Insurgent/Allegiant the disaster occurred after specialists failed in their attempts to alter DNA for the better; in The Giver it is after unendurable exposure to human suffering that the specialists attempted to construct a perfectly-controlled society and in The Hunger Games it is after a period of mass death and destruction that the same totalising governmental structure is put in place by a well-meaning elite. As the leader in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 announces: "Since the dark days our society has known only peace, ours is an elegant system conceived to nourish and protect".
In the Giver, the evil social structure is something called 'Community' and the genetic nuclear family has been banished (this was once a long term plan of the communists). Men and women have total gender equality in the workplace and the job that the father of protagonist Jonas does is as a "nurturer" – he takes care of babies. (You might be able to see the Marxist feminist project here being traced as a burgeoning hell on earth). Children do not know their biological parents and are raised in their first years communally – a project originally envisaged by the communist Alexandra Kollontai.
Putting all this together within one genre, it's a huge indictment of the history of the left and a promotion of the right. Which is pretty cunning for a bunch of books for kids.
Not only that but this genre may, in terms of book sales, be the one of the largest markets in the history of publishing, so the message that left-wing utopians are inherently dangerous and potentially evil is hitting a lot of impressionable people. The quantity of books consumed here is staggering. The Hunger Games trilogy netted 36.5m copies, while The Hunger Games movie was the third biggest movie premiere of all time and Catching Fire broke box office records, while the Divergent trilogy held the top first, second and third places in the American bestseller list at the start of 2014 with 10m sales of the first book in the trilogy.
If you see yourself as a left-leaning progressive parent, you might want to exercise some of that oppressive parental control and limit your kids exposure to the "freedom" expressed in YA dystopian fiction. But let's not worry about it too much, the good thing about laissez-faire capitalism is that things come in waves and pass out of fashion quickly, and already people are saying that YA dystopia is dead..
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  • 9 people, 10 comments
    gadgetgirl02
    64
    I haven't read the other two, but I disagree with the reading of The Hunger Games. The state IS the corporation in that one -- the vassal states pay tribute in natural resources and people, in return for absurdly inadequate compensation. Katniss has her survival skills from working under the table and not getting all her family's necessities from the company store. The state is the 1% exploiting the 99%. That the 1% now openly forms the government is the only distinction from now, where instead they have to at least dodge most of the conflict of interest laws.
    Katniss threatens the status quo by winning the games (when not expected to) and bending the rules, showing the country that the elite's control is not as perfect as it appears.
    It is a lot more like a call for unionisation than neo-liberalism.
    • DorothyS gadgetgirl02
      15
      I agree. I have also only read the first book of the Hunger Games, but the state is a property owning dictatorship, separating people in separate areas according to skills, and ruthlessly exploiting them. Katniss is from a mining family, her father was killed,she is forced to compete to the death against other children in competitions reminiscent of ancient Rome. The ruling elite have often Latin sounding names. Eventually the subject states begin to rebel.
    • schroduck gadgetgirl02
      7
      Indeed, with the wealthy but rather useless Capitol plundering the resource-and-labour-rich but capital-poor Districts, the Hunger Games seems to come down fairly harshly against this global capitalist model. Divergent also has a strong (or as strong as anything can be in that rather underwritten book) anti-exploitation message - the state is segregated by genetics and people who don't fit into the privileged classes become "factionless" and have to perform the menial tasks that run the city for pittance.
    • Tony Mastrogiorgio gadgetgirl02
      11
      I agree that this article shows a serious misreading of the Hunger Games. Describing the Capital as a well-meaning elite makes me wonder if you've actually read the books.
      In addition to the comments here, the dynamic in which the more privileged districts not only buy into the games, they also provide the military muscle for the Capitol is something that Frantz Fanon would recognize.
    • ourumwelt schroduck
      1
      If you read the divergent trilogy you'll find out that the entire society (the city) was created as an experiment by an egalitarian elite of social planners. The factionless are not the saviours in the end. Tris has to overthrow the entire system of social planning and start to create a society based on laissez faire. Same with The Giver
    • Idioplasm gadgetgirl02
      10
      Very much agree. One of the biggest themes I've drawn from the Hunger Games is that the tournament is a critique of the faux meritocratic nature of modern American society, e.g. the fact that 'anyone can win' but it's almost always contestants from District 1 and 2 who are trained from birth to compete, something I see as very much analogous with the Ivy League argument that 'anyone can get in' if they work hard enough but the vast majority of those who do are rich kids who have had the way laid out and paid out for them by their parents.
    • BruceMajors gadgetgirl02
      4
      The posters here seem as hilariously clueless as the author is hilariously slow (in reporting on something envy one else realized years ago as If it is news). The State is the 1% and always has been. State capitols (DC, London too I think) have rising real estate markets and job growth, in many cases based on tax revenues, getting fiat currency injections first, and marketing government debt, while the outlying tax serf districts languish and provide the soldiers from their young who can find no other employment or access to education funds. As Nozick said, Marxist exploitation is the exploitation of the low information voter's ignorance of economics. Marx (while letting his own children starve to death) got the idea of class conflict and class analysis from radical French libertarians. Public choice economics today is one place where you can find a continuation of their analysis of how States and ruling political elites exploit the tax serfs.
    • BruceMajors gadgetgirl02
      1
      The posters here seem as hilariously clueless as the author is hilariously slow (in reporting on something envy one else realized years ago as If it is news). The State is the 1% and always has been. State capitols (DC, London too I think) have rising real estate markets and job growth, in many cases based on tax revenues, getting fiat currency injections first, and marketing government debt, while the outlying tax serf districts languish and provide the soldiers from their young who can find no other employment or access to education funds. As Nozick said, Marxist exploitation is the exploitation of ignorance of economics. Marx (while letting his own children starve to death) got the idea of class conflict and class analysis from radical French libertarians. Public choice economics today is one place where you can find a continuation of their analysis of how States and ruling political elites exploit the tax serfs.
    • Bruce P. Majors DorothyS
      1
      The posters here seem as hilariously clueless as the author is hilariously slow (in reporting on something envy one else realized years ago as If it is news). The State is the 1% and always has been. State capitols (DC, London too I think) have rising real estate markets and job growth, in many cases based on tax revenues, getting fiat currency injections first, and marketing government debt, while the outlying tax serf districts languish and provide the soldiers from their young who can find no other employment or access to education funds. As Nozick said, Marxist exploitation is the exploitation of ignorance of economics. Marx (while letting his own children starve to death) got the idea of class conflict and class analysis from radical French libertarians. Public choice economics today is one place where you can find a continuation of their analysis of how States and ruling political elites exploit the tax serfs.
    • Voight gadgetgirl02
      1
      I think you're exactly right.
      In any dystopian novel, if you have a small group of people who use violence over a defined geographic area to control a population, who else could that be, but corporations?
      Likewise, if this small group of rulers is using that violence to confiscate the wealth of the general population against their will, and then distributes that wealth according to their own desires, who else could that be, but corporations? I mean, how could that be government?
      If someone in a dystopian novel is making a living under the table, who else could they be hiding from under that table, but the corporations?
      And, when your call to action looks like a bloody war against a military, with flying machines and bombs, resulting in the death of the ruling class in the end, well, that's your average labor union negotation, straight up. I mean, how could anyone construe that as, I don't know, a rebellion against a brutal government?
      Whew. I'm glad we got that straightened out. Now we can all go back to reading the Hunger Games, with purely correct thinking in terms of any analogs we may make towards inspiration and reality.
      Why do you hate the labor movement, Ewan Morrison?
  • tonymcgowan
    13
    This is a brilliant articulation of my own unformed thoughts on Y/A dystopias. Add on to it a more basic critique of escapism - it diverts us from finding solutions to immediate 'real' problems, and adds a comforting padded lining to our shackles - and you've got it nailed.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
  • 7 people, 17 comments
    Guardian contributor
    DanHolloway
    11
    I'd love to have seen your take on His Dark Materials and where that slots in as it is such a heart on its sleeve socialist trilogy.
    I have to say I think you are right about the portrayal of "the individual" - it's something that goes back to neoplatonism and the courtly/questing tradition and what makes it so dangerous is that individualism is always contentless - what matters most is "being yourself" whatever that means. It's time more people called BS on that - what matters is creating a just society - even if that means there are people who don't get to be themselves
    • Ineluki DanHolloway
      18
      The individual is always going to be essential to a dramatic production- because no-one is going to go watch a film where the protagonist is a committee. :)
    • Nathan Shafer DanHolloway
      53
      "what matters is creating a just society - even if that means there are people who don't get to be themselves"
      And when your definition of "just" and mine conflict, what then? Must my individualistic insistence on *my* definition be beaten out of me with the stick of the state?
      No thank you. You enforce your definition of "just" within the sphere proper to you: your life, and your ability to voluntarily persuade those around you, and keep it out of my life.
      This is what "individualism* REALLY means.
    • morememoreme Nathan Shafer
      3
      No,no,no. Your morality, world view or whatever you wish to call it did not spring from your un-influenced breast. You are ally to your influences and therefore a social being. Sad if you don't know this and still believe the Hollywood myth of the inner directed being, even sadder if you don't know who your influences were/are.
    • jae426 DanHolloway
      6
      what matters most is "being yourself" whatever that means
      It means you or I can be gay and society doesn't ban that because it doesn't serve society.
      I remember reading an interesting thing about Vietnam. Their government doesn't so much ban things as it legalises them. Unless the law has established you have a right to do something, you don't.
      It's all for your own good, of course.
      The classical idea of the republic isn't about removing the crown but keeping the power. The power is devolved, and is then passed upwards for the common good, not seized from the top.
    • morememoreme Ineluki
      2
      Have you seen The Magnificent Seven and all the other corporatist movies where groups of people with different skills pool their resources to solve a problem? They are eulogies to committees, corporations and ultimately big business, and millions of people watch them.
    • lberns1 DanHolloway
      22
      Yes, because the only path to a peaceful, just, moral, and peaceful society is via the barrel of the state's gun.
      Good lord how I despise authoritarian collectivist control freakism (right or left).
    • Guardian contributor
      DanHolloway jae426
      3
      That sounds very interesting.
      I think comments (not yours - but I don't want to over-comment so I'm answering here) have confused the totalitarian with the collective. The inner mechanism of the totalitarian is much akin to the individual - it is the imposition of a supreme will upon the surrounding world. A collective works to blend many individuals to build something better for everyone that the product of any one singlw will. And yes, I do think this means some individuals will not be given free rein whereas others will have their voices amplified. Look at contemporary discussions of privilege - I am happy to say that as a white man in an unequal society where by dint of my whiteness and maleness I occupy a position of privilege, I need to have my volume switched down so that others against whom society constructs obstacles can have access to the things to which I have access.
      Which brings me back to your point, lberns1 - in an indvidualist society that's a freedom that is far from vouchsafed for us because such a society will tend for a large number of reasons (from the distribution of confidence and aspiration to the history of its language) to amplify the voices of the privileged.
    • jae426 DanHolloway
      7
      A collective works to blend many individuals to build something better for everyone that the product of any one singlw will.
      Yes, but that's not the philosophy that The Hunger Games espouses. The world in the books isn't the way it is because the majority have joined forces to make a society like that. The 1% live in the lavish Capitol, visiting collective punishment on the starving Districts, who have no vote.
      I still have no clue how anyone could possibly read a Right-wing message into that, except beyond the Marxist reading where everything that isn't overtly Marxist has a Right-wing message!
    • Nathan Shafer morememoreme
      6
      What an incredible non-sequitur. Of course I know what my influences are, but those influences don't *make* me believe what I believe, I make those choices and no one else. So you still haven't addressed the question.
    • Nathan Shafer DanHolloway
      11
      "A collective works to blend many individuals to build something better for everyone that the product of any one singlw will. And yes, I do think this means some individuals will not be given free rein whereas others will have their voices amplified."
      "given free rein" by whom - by the "Collective"? If that's what you mean, then pretty up the language however you like, you are talking about tyranny of the majority.
      But what about when the minority, not content to be so overruled, takes up arms against the majority and decides that they will not be trod upon any longer?
    • Guardian contributor
      DanHolloway Nathan Shafer
      2
      I think there's a somewhat utopian view of indivdualism and dystopian view of collectivism here. It is only the implementation and guarantee of basic rights that ensures that the tyranny of the majority is never allowed to take them away. And that means that many of those in the majority buy into a system in which they have less than they could otherwise take so that those who are born with or fall into less can have more - it's that implementation that means there will tend to be a seemingly top down structure to society but the protection of the fundamental rights of the many, however flawed they may be, is a very different model from the imposition of the whim of the strong-willed, however similar they may look and however many of the same traps they may be prone to falling into.
    • Nathan Shafer DanHolloway
      10
      " It is only the implementation and guarantee of basic rights that ensures that the tyranny of the majority is never allowed to take them away."
      True enough. Except rights cannot be "implemented" by force, they can only be taken away. Rights are moral principles concerning freedom of action *by individuals*. Collectives do not act, there is no collective anywhere in the world that can act without the individuals it comprises first choosing to act.
      So collective action is a myth; there is only aggregated, concerted actions of individuals.
      So there is no such thing as "the fundamental rigts of the many", there is only the fundamental, equal rights of ALL individuals.
    • Brett Ruiz DanHolloway
      19
      "what matters is creating a just society - even if that means there are people who don't get to be themselves"
      This is easily one of the most terrifyingly and transparent comments on the entire internet. Thank you for revealing yourself to the world.
    • Guardian contributor
      DanHolloway Brett Ruiz
      2
      It's hardly a secret that I despair of the cult of individualism. I do understand the criticism, but I don't see why the statement is truly shocking as opposed to hands-up-in-horror-mock-shocking. Isn't it what all of law is built upon - the notion that we deprive some of liberty and their "true self" for the sake of others? Of course I absolutely accept the anarchist position or the outright Schopenhauerian battle of wills - disagree, but accept the validity. But all I'm actually saying is that those people whose lives are given true meaning by abusing the downtrodden and disenfranchised should not be able to exercise that trait - is that really more shocking than saying the paedophile or the animal abuser should be denied the right to exercise their nature? Or is the underpinning of the criticism actually a Rousseauian kind of belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature such that what should be stopped is behaviour that's actually "not truly human" which is another position I understand but surely one whose problems and logics aren't too far removed from mine?
    • lberns1 DanHolloway
      5
      "Which brings me back to your point, lberns1 - in an indvidualist society that's a freedom that is far from vouchsafed for us because such a society will tend for a large number of reasons (from the distribution of confidence and aspiration to the history of its language) to amplify the voices of the privileged."
      Only if you hold onto in the superstitious belief that some people have the legitimate right and authority to rule you. Once that belief is shed, yousee the state for what it is: a violent parasitic gang of thugs. Then it is easy to deal with the "privileged" (or psychopaths, as I call them).
    • Guardian contributor
      DanHolloway lberns1
      1
      I think the use of "some people" is pointing to something I wasn't trying to say - because it suggests the "who" is important, which it isn't. I do think that states can be legitimated by embodying principles that have been agreed by those they rule are of value
  • Yasuda
    2
    Economics aside, I liked the first Hunger Games book for giving us the "horror" of a sporty woman who likes hanging around with her best friend being forced to marry a man and live a lie because it's what society and her family expect.
    Obviously, Gale was a man. Katniss wasn't a lesbian. But, still, coming from America, I was impressed.
  • ID1083575
    4
    For terrifyingly accurate idea of the future, forget this YA garbage and read C. M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons".
  • Blanny
    14
    Great piece, pointing out very a significant change going on in the zeitgeist right now. This comments thread is interesting too if only because so many people fail to understand the coming-together of states and corporations. I'll quote Mussolini one more time: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." And yes, if rock and roll has a political stripe it is surely Libertarianism. Except we called it Anarchy.
  • Meltingman
    15
    You really need to get out more-not to mention broaden your reading.(Dick is ok, but his writing is very lumpy and unpolished and opens threads that have no relevance to the tale/disappear without trace and leave you wondering if he simply forgot about it in his pulp fiction rush to finish to a dead line)
    Are you oblivious to your own irony in demanding that you ban your kids from reading YA dystopian books thus being the oppressor they read about in them !
    Why do you think they will be so influenced by them and all become Nazis? they will read other books that counter these books (which aren't that good really) and build up a store of arguments and ideas-something you're scared of it seems.
    The only draw back from reading all the great books of all genres is that you can pull to pieces mercilessly arguments such as on display here as the author hasn't read a fraction of what you've read. But playing spot the gaping hole in the self professed geniuses argument is great fun; the Guardian proving just as easy to pull apart as the Sun Mail and Express....apparently it was one of Saul Bellow's pleasures in his later life
  • Polly Trope
    2
    thank you, that was a really good roundup and distillation of those books. they're also very behind on the postcolonial ghetto and wallowing in an "I am the centre of the world" perspective that simply doesn't hold any more
  • ActualGraunReader
    11
    Well, yes, but this is hardly news. Most Dystopias are inherently conservative (an early example was even called 'If This Goes On...') just as most popular revolts are: fear of change, which is essentially fear of mortality, is more powerful than hope for anyone with anything to lose (such as parents).
    The bog-standard dystopias we're getting from established authors are all based on the one thing anyone knows about the future - the person writing isn't going to be around for all of it. Single-issue dystopias abound, and get good reviews, even though the consequences of the posited change are almost always limited to what the polemic requires with no thought for other side-effects and complex interactions of relatively small changes ('Never Let Me Go' is especially amusing for ignoring all the implications of the supposed change from 'our' 1950s that require a moment's thought beyond the ones needed for the tearjerking and frankly daft premise).
    Meanwhile, it's equally axiomatic that teenagers see things in absolutes and over-systematise limited data. Presenting an 'isn't it terrible?' set-up and extrapolating it into a rather implausibly total global situation is Worldbuilding for Dummies and - perhaps as important now - allows a book/ film. trilogy/ franchise to be summed up in a one-line pitch.
    Nobody ever went broke underestimating teenagers' capacity for self-pity.
    Genuine dystopian cultures all began as Utopias that wanted rid of blemishes; which is tough if your friends and you are considered not to fit. Utopian fiction, which is harder to do well, has the inherent problem that if it's so great then nothing much will ever happen (Arcadian fiction, as Auden points out, includes PG Wodehouse and AA Milne and all problems resolve with the initial situation restored). Ambiguous Utopias (we have to mention Le Guin in the Graun, it's the rules) are more interesting - 'Brave New World' is one, despite what people who've not read it think.
    The granddaddy of them all, 'We', ends with the complete recantation of the whole of the rest of the book by a 'cured' dissident, even after he's amply demonstrated that the entire nation is founded on an unworkable nostrum. That's perhaps a bit harder to make into a page-turning teen read or an action-movie.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    Foxiix
    10
    What you seem to have missed is these days the corporation and the state are very often the same entity. The blanket surveillance, for instance, upon U.S. citizens was initially enabled by one of Ronald Reagan's executive orders, and corporations, via lobbyists, have fairly bought the U.S. government. They are certainly buying the elections.
    • LakerFan Foxiix
      1
      Benito Mussolini, the founder of modern fascism, defined it as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between corporations and government."
      What is the situation called when corporations own government?
      Back to YA dystopias--the general theme of oppression of the many by the few is the foundation of all of them. IMO, we are all living in a dystopia at this moment. Simply describing the Western World from the perspective of an indifferent outsider would read as an oppressive dystopia.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    Chris James
    4
    I enjoyed this a lot - thank you. I wonder what today's teens are going to be like 20 or 30 years down the road. What I find disturbing these days is the depth of cynicism (hardly surprising, I know) among younger people, which seems to be choking off engagement with society. Capitalism plays very well to the feeling of "Everyone who has power must therefore be corrupt"
    • Guardian contributor
      DanHolloway Chris James
      4
      Exactly - you only have to look at some of the debate around the second amendment, which seems to be predicated upon the notion that we are only ever one day from the government marching through our front doors and whisking us off to labour camps.
      What I find most infuriating (see some of the responses to my comment above) is the inconsistency - the notion that anything that a government could do must be resisted at all costs because it's an inevitable first step to hell whereas anything an individual could do must be protected at all costs because any misuse is a harmless aberation that must be ignored for the sake avoiding, well, it's not quite clear what kind of world people actually want to live in - another infuriation, it all seems to be contentless ideology rather than considering, for example, what day to day life for,say, a disabled person will be like in such a world - but it's clear that it must be somewhere on the road to hell!
  • 5 people, 5 comments
    Elaine Axten
    4
    The story arc for The Hunger Games would have worked far better if she'd stopped at the end of the first book. However, ploughing on SPOILER ALERT to the end, we find Katniss, having evidently solved all the world's ills, settling down and having children, something she has sworn not to do.
    I have nothing against children, but I found this conclusion boring and conformist and critically defunct.
  • 5 people, 5 comments
    Colum McCaffery
    5
    Fiction of this sort plays into a huge market of likeminded people and the left is implicated. Rather than tackling right wing argument, many on the left - suffering the delusion that all seeming anti-authority sentiment is progressive - want to lead people who are opposed to the left's core objectives. The truth is that the masses are increasingly right wing with an antagonism to politics and to the state. They need to be confronted.
    • Richard Dale Colum McCaffery
      51
      Why need we be confronted? In what way? The violence so often advocated by the left?
      What is your argument against antagonism to politics and to the state? Politics has time and again failed the people. The state is snatches rights from the people with no legitimate authority, or cedes the power to do so to trans-national bodies such as the UN and the EU which have no democratic legitimacy nor accountability to people whatever.
      Recently we have seen the state kill people in large numbers in a lousy medical care. The NHS is compulsory for most of us; I realise you don't give a damn about anything but yourself and the petty politics of the left and can afford private care, but most people cannot afford taxes for the NHS and private provision.
      Recently we have seen the state not only stand by while grown men raped little girls but actively arrest the girls and the fathers who tried to save them.
      We have seen the state dig into our lives secretly for no good reason. We have seen the state bully political opponents; the state broadcaster has been doing this for years but local governments and the police have joined in. In the USA the IRS and the DoJ have also been doing so.
      So what is your reason that we should be confronted for antagonism to the state? It cannot be that the state gives no cause to fear.
      Careful though. Your left-wing disgust at and bigotry against the people, "the masses" is showing. Using that dismissive term then claiming that they must be confronted (in your mind it cannot be that they have reason, that they have agency) you show your contempt for them, contempt all leftie "intellectuals" show.
    • Cas Ann Colum McCaffery
      19
      Hah! Confronted by whom? What exactly are you advocating? Typical leftist totalitarian.
    • Dale Franks Colum McCaffery
      17
      The truth is that the masses are increasingly right wing with an antagonism to politics and to the state. They need to be confronted.
      This implies that you know better than "the masses", and are essentially uninterested in their ability to democratically reduce the size and scope of government. So, now we know that you disapprove democratic self-government.
      And as far as confronting "the masses" goes, well, let me know how that works out for you.
    • daBoyd Colum McCaffery
      5
      Maybe you need to think that through a little. A confrontation between blowhard Leftitsts who willingly disarm themselves as an article of faith and a right wing that is devoted to pursuing the exact opposite course isn't likely to go well for you.
  • 2 people, 4 comments
    AndyCh
    14
    Ahhh, it's quite a well-written piece but you're wrong. In The Hunger Games you can see the tyranny of individualism and atomisation in the Capitol, it's fear of organisation that drives the idea of the games and the subjugation of all the districts. I haven't read the other collections, but I didn't see any right-wingness in the Hunger Games.
    • emorrison AndyCh
      5
      Andy, To answer you - you might be interested in this from Forbes magazine
      "In Panem, where the citizens are slaves of the state, the people are working against each other, and thieving one another in order to live. In that case, the Hunger Games is a very apt name for a games put on by a powerful state that doesn’t allow profits. In those kinds of societies, think the old Soviet Union or North Korea at present, individuals are working against one another and even killing one another in order to survive. Those cruelly picked to participate in the Hunger Games will die with the exception of the one individual skillful enough at killing (capitalistic businesses want their customers to live; as in they want repeat business) others such that he or she is the last one standing. Given the 100 million plus body count of communism in the 20th century, it’s pretty clear what Collins is describing either on purpose or unwittingly."
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2013/11/24/the-hunger-games-catching-fire-reveals-the-brutal-horrors-of-thuggish-government/
    • AndyCh emorrison
      5
      Or...
      "Collins shows how the ruling class uses individualism to oppress working and poor people. Conflict in the Districts, for example, is fostered not only by the Hunger Games but also by the tesserae, tokens which allow poor children to receive a year’s supply of grain and oil per family member in exchange for additional entries in the drawing to select tributes for the games. (The Hunger Games, 13)" From Solidarity.
      It's unionisation of the working districts that the consumers fear.
    • AndyCh emorrison
      4
      "A powerful state that doesn’t allow profits."
      That's the fundamental mistake. Panem does allow profit, but the wealth only flows one way, to the centre. It's better to look at Taiwan in the 80s, South Korea in the 90s and China in the 00s where millions were involved in the production of consumer goods they could never afford, essentially subsidising the habits of the west with their labour and poverty wages. Or maybe think of Reaganomics and trickledown economics, where workers are tricked into working for less with the expectation that things would get better if only they worked harder.
  • johnproctor
    7
    Not being a YA myself, I’ll have to take your word for the neoliberal message of these books and films. But if, as you mention, ‘every teenager is a rampant individualist, a libertarian’ then why are they all marching along to buy these books and watch these films in such large numbers? In my experience teenagers are naturally conservative and conformist – they buy books and watch films largely because their friends do – but fondly imagine they are individualist rebels. We therefore shouldn’t worry too much. Their conservatism will usually support the status quo and keep the cash registers ringing.
  • 3 people, 4 comments
    Paul Stephen-Evans
    22
    Can't see this. The author describes the Orwellian nightmare depicted in The Hunger Games as "stable, peaceful, carefully structured society," missing the irony of the travelling propaganda film's assertions and arguing this is a "governmental structure is put in place by a well-meaning elite," despite the martial law, industrial exploitation, starvation, summary executions, vacuous fashionistas, and fueling an embedded media industry with teenage gladiatorial murders. So how is this narrative an "substantial attack" on leftist "welfare state, progress, social planning and equality"? The thing's set in 'Panem' in North America, with the elitist seat of this all-consuming, totalitarian regime called the 'Capitol'... how many clues...? It's anti-authoritarianism. It isn't Atlas Shrugged.
    • ourumwelt Paul Stephen-Evans
      18
      "What I find interesting about the left’s reaction to Hunger Games is they seem to miss that the evil in the story—Katniss’ nemesis—is not a big corporation or even the people of the Capitol. It’s President Snow. It’s the government. Government is the only institution with the power to force the districts to fight in the games. It is the only thing powerful enough to force the districts to hand over their production. It’s the only thing strong enough to wipe out entire districts when they don’t do what the government says.
      Look at any of the great blockbuster hits in which people are fighting for freedom, and you find government at the center. Even liberals, as they write their own books and produce their own films, can’t escape the existential reality that the greatest threat to man’s liberty is government. Whether it’s Star Wars or Harry Potter, governments—or malignant malcontents using government—are the best antagonists. They’re the ones the freedom fighters are trying to defeat because they’re the ones with the real power to enslave whole populations of people.
      If Suzanne Collins’ purpose in writing Hunger Games was to show the evils of capitalism, she failed. What she showed is the abusive power of big government. " From Ricochet dot com
      http://ricochet.com/hunger-games-conservative/
    • Cas Ann Paul Stephen-Evans
      3
      To describe the society depicted in the Hunger Games as utopian is insane. I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.
  • 3 people, 6 comments
    Patrick Samphire
    30
    What nonsense.
    Harry Potter cult that had been filling children's heads with right-wing dreams of public schools and supernatural powers
    This is silly. Supernatural powers are not inherently right-wing, and while Hogwarts is an old-fashioned boarding school, there aren't any fees and students are selected on merit. Furthermore, the Harry Potter books are actually somewhat left-wing (like Rowling herself) and question quite strongly the structures of power.
    Secondly, as other commenters have pointed out, the society in The Hunger Games is not at all socialist. It consists of a central region characterized by indulgence and wealth, and subject regions which are essentially enslaved. If you consider this a socialist ideal, well, you'd probably fit in nicely in the latter days of the Soviet Union, but not in any socialist society I'd like to see.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    Mikes005
    7
    depict rebellions against the state, and promote a tacit right-wing libertarianism
    If that's the message you want to read into them, I suppose they could. But given how in almost all dystopian rebellion stories it's against a fascistic regime I'd say the opposite is true.
  • 4 people, 5 comments
    Ineluki
    14
    I'm not seeing it, TBH.
    In the Hunger Games, the "state" is a perfect analogy with the 1%. There's a small proportion of society grown rich and fat by keeping down the rest of the populace, and sending in armed enforcers when anyone steps out of line. The populace are constantly exhorted to work harder for less. The actual games are the ultimate in "every man for himself" - for the amusement of the élite.
    Katniss and co want more equitable distribution of the wealth - doesn't sound like a capitalist wet dream to me, quite the reverse.
  • 3 people, 3 comments
    Gaetano Prestia
    26
    "submit to the free market"
    As much an oxymoron as I've ever seen.
    The "free market" is defined as being that of *mutual*, voluntary exchange: "submit" invokes a sense of submission to authority or will of another person through a *lack of* self-benefit. You don't "submit" to the free market, because you're receiving something of mutual gain in return. To "submit" would be to relinquish any possible benefit or gain you might receive from the transaction/engagement.
    "the bad guys are not the corporations but the state"
    Corporations are often corporations and within said capacity to incorporate all facets of the industry in an effort to monopolise as a *product of* the state.
    "In the Giver, the evil social structure is something called 'Community' and the genetic nuclear family has been banished (this was once a long term plan of the communists). Men and women have total gender equality in the workplace and the job that the father of protagonist Jonas does is as a "nurturer" – he takes care of babies. (You might be able to see the Marxist feminist project here being traced as a burgeoning hell on earth). Children do not know their biological parents and are raised in their first years communally – a project originally envisaged by the communist Alexandra Kollontai."
    If that idea represents "the history of the left", then it downright deserves to be critiqued, ridiculed and condemned. History is very clear that most of not all socially persecuted minorities, be it class, race, sex, are becoming increasingly equal in standing among those previously above them in the social order.
    What you argue is an abomination: that the state *must* define and determine the roles of men and women - to "equalise" - and disregard natural tendencies and elements of free will in the hope of achieving what is the left's dysfunctional interpretation of "community".
    Children do not know their biological parents and are raised in their first years communally – a project originally envisaged by the communist Alexandra Kollontai
    Horrifying. When we are one in the same, we are no longer individuals.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    jasegr
    8
    You kind of lost me when describing Panem/Snow (from the only one of the books you quoted that I've read) as anything other than a (somewhat lazy) representation of what I see as extreme far-right politics (fascism).
    It's a long bow you're drawing here, I think these books are quite simply based around the common theme of overcoming extremism in any form.
    • ourumwelt jasegr
      8
      "Panem is a Communist totalitarian dictatorship where all the resources and how they are allocated belongs to the Capitol. The districts exist only to provide goods and services for the Capital and most of the citizens live in poverty. It is a police state where the "peacekeepers" use force and threats to keep the people under control. Dissent is outlawed and those who disobey the law are executed, flogged, or turned into Avoxes. The games are another means in which the ruling elite in the Capitol exert their power over the districts. When reading the books I drew parallels between Panem and the Soviet Union and North Korea. In no way is Panem capitalist. The people in the Capitol are wealthy but the majority of them are involved in the government somehow. It was the same way in the former Soviet Union where bigwigs in the Communist Party and high ranking government officials were given access to goods, services, medical treatments not available to the general public. If you think Panem has a capitalist economy you need to brush up on your economics."
      A reader from Goodreads put it better than I can. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1246126-is-the-hunger-games-capitol-communist
  • TracySLawson
    15
    Submit to the free market? What does that even mean?
    Dystopian novels are combination horror stories and cautionary tales, set against twisted versions of perfect societies. Dystopian heroes are discontented—they don’t fit in, and often lack the self-awareness to realize why.
    In YA dystopian societies, civilization is usually managed by absent adult authority figures. For teenagers who fear they’ve inherited a chaotic world, yet feel stifled by the rules, these fictional societies resonate. Dystopian societies take rule-making to the extreme. Extreme control. Extreme censorship. Extreme surveillance. No dissenting ideas. In these societies, parents and children are often subjected to the same controls and restrictions.
    The classics of adult dystopia tends to be more apocalyptic, more dire. YA dystopia can be apocalyptic and scary—but it can also feel a lot like high school, where everyone feels pressure to conform. To escape the fear, alienation, and danger, protagonists band together with others like themselves.
    YA dystopian fiction opens a pathway to explore and appreciate the genre—and appreciating makes it easier for teens to fully absorb the classics when they’re assigned to read them at school, or choose to read them for pleasure.
    I believe in free markets, and want teens and young adults to think for themselves and speak up when they perceive something is wrong. That's why I blog about dystopian fiction, and why I wrote Counteract.
    http://counteractbook.com
  • puremercury
    38
    Good "progressive" parenting = making sure your children don't have access to books that expose them to different ideas. That's just great. And you wonder why the statist left is portrayed as totalitarian in literature?
    http://counteractbook.com
  • puremercury
    38
    Good "progressive" parenting = making sure your children don't have access to books that expose them to different ideas. That's just great. And you wonder why the statist left is portrayed as totalitarian in literature?
  • 3 people, 5 comments
    purplesurfer
    3
    If any author allows themselves to become an unconscious ,unquestioning vehicle for any ideology at all (never mind such a vapid ideology as neo -liberalism with all of its inhumane outcomes) then that author must be very limited in their own self awareness ,so therefore probably not a very good author.
  • Cindy Gobrecht
    0
    http://cindybiondigobrecht.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/dystopia-is-the-new-utopia-for-young-adults/
  • ourumwelt
    12
    Panem (Hunger Games) is clearly a communist society that has become corrupt, rather than a free market economy that has become totalitarian.
    Katnis lives in a commune. Society has been split up into districts by a central government which controls the distribution of food and resources - hence the hunger of the title. District 13 is communist -everyone has the same status and the meagre number of possessions is determined again by government. Every aspects of people's lives is laid down through social engineering and policed by the government. This is a communist command economy.
    The affluence in the city and the donors is due to the corruption of those within the elite of rulers - just as you had within the elite of Stalin's party.
    In Divergent the leaders have set up the city as a social experiment and again it it takes place within a command economy.
  • 7 people, 9 comments
    • Fireclown SamuelWeller
      7
      I've just finished re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. There is no all-powerful corporation. There is a corporation that makes androids, the Rosen Association (not the Tyrell Corporation as in the film), but it does not control society. I'm not sure how the book can be portrayed as an anti-capitalist track
    • ourumwelt SamuelWeller
      4
      Philip K Dick was investigated by the FBI for expressing left wing opinions and after a raid on his house he was convinced that a fascist conspiracy was out to get him. He was a loony but also a loony leftie.
      Dick's bad guys were always corporations or corporations merged with right wing governments. See the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht and his wacky idea about the corporation that makes Barbie and Ken houses that you can inhabit by taking a hallucinogenic drug while - New York City-based Perky Pat (or P.P.) Layouts Inc.
    • ActualGraunReader ourumwelt
      1
      Almost, but not quite, entirely the wrong way around.
      Dick was convinced of a conspiracy beforehand but relieved when a raid proved he was right. It meant he wasn't mad. It was his drug-dealer chums who were being tailed for their drug-dealing, not his politics making him a feared insurgent. He could barely have been more conspicuous, so wasn't mole material.
      His books were more ontologically subversive than any pedestrian politics (but check out 'Flow My Tears The Policeman Said' for an eye-witness version of what fearrful revolutionary groups were like) and corporations were usually fronts for some sort of demiurge. The Tyrell Corporation in the book is morally neutral (part of his playful way of inverting all the cliches of other dire prognoses of the Club of Rome an the Hudson Institute by having an under-populated future with too many resources).
      Then, when the event of February 1974 befell him, his reaction was to do everything he could to prove it wasn't a divine message because no self-respecting deity would choose a science-fiction writer as His vessel; only when he failed to spot any inconsistencies when relating the event and his self-examination in novel form (and read the reviews) did he think that maybe it wasn't a breakdown or hallucination after all.
    • MikeAlx SamuelWeller
      1
      I don't think PKD's politics were all that easy to pin down. He was obviously a liberal rather than a conservative, but he was also fearful of all kinds of totalitarianism - evident in novels such as "The Man who Japed" and "The Penultimate Truth", as well as in his paranoid suspicions that Stanislav Lem might not be a man but a communist fiction-writing committee! I don't think monolithic Marxist states were his thing.
    • emorrison MikeAlx
      1
      Agreed, Dick's enemy, the one in his books was the right wing. He was of his time in that respect.
      I'm interested in a shift in fiction form the pro-left anti corporation and anti-free market dystopias of the 60s to 80s - consider Alien, 2001AD, Robocop - all of which had corporations and an unregulated free market as the enemy. To today in which social planners and the state are the enemy.
    • MikeAlx emorrison
      2
      If memory serves, "The Man Who Japed" is set in a communist dystopia. Dick was against Totalitarianism and the Police State, whether it was nominally left-wing or right-wing. He is sometimes anti-corporate, but never anti-enterprise. He values individual entrepreneurship and originality, a theme highlighted in "The Man in the High Castle".
    • emorrison MikeAlx
      0
      The Man Who Japed by Philip K Dick is set in a right wing ultra conservative, puritanical state.
      Check out the movies
      Paycheck is about a corporartion gone awry. Minority report is a capitalist dystopia (remember those adverts that are cued by scanning your irises).
      A scanner Darkly is about a corrupt state that is in cahoots with a drug manufacturer.
      Dick is all about evil corporations and only in the second instance about evil governments. they're evil because they;ve allowed capitalism to control them in his books
    • No_Rush Fireclown
      0
      The author seems to be getting books and films confused frequently. His quotations from the Giver don't appear in the book.
  • 2 people, 4 comments
    SamuelWeller
    2
    Anyway, I can see your point, but for me the quality problem is bigger than the political: children should read first from Defoe to Swift, enough for them, and re-education for us. It is not I am a classicist, it is just a quality (and quantity, and money and time wasting) problem. ie Hunger Games...
  • 3 people, 5 comments
    jae426
    8
    the Hunger Games trilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality.
    Bonkers. What welfare state is there? What progress?
    The big government is a dictatorship. Nobody in the districts can vote against President Snow.
    The equality means everyone outside the Capitol is equally worthless and powerless.
    And the social planning involves pitting people at the bottom against each other so that they won't unite to revolt.
    George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984 about how supposedly Left-wing governments were corrupted into being quite the opposite, and nobody accused him of being a Tory. For what it's worth, I don't think the government in the Hunger Games was ever Left-wing to begin with.
    • ourumwelt jae426
      4
      Welfare State and progress are written into the heart of the Hunger Games. Panem portrays itself as the perfect society, one that has progressed from the wars of the past and every part of people lives is provided for - from cradle to grave by the state, there is no free enterprise. There aren't very friendly or benevolent versions of progress and the welfare state, but most americans don't view the welfare these things favourably. they see them as an impediment to 'personal freedom', which is basically Suzanne Collins take.
    • jae426 ourumwelt
      4
      Their 'needs' are only provided so as to make rebellion less likely. Have a 30 million starving people on your hands and you'll probably go the way of Marie Antoinette.
      Throw them a few crumbs, however, and enough will be grateful enough to not want to rock the boat and risk losing even those crumbs.
      Suzanne Collins has been very clear that she named Panem for 'Panem et circenses' - bread and circuses, from Juvenal's caricature of how dictators can distract their subjects from realising that the system is inherently rotten.
      She wasn't advocating this system, which seems to be the accusation here.
    • George Johnson jae426
      5
      The Soviet Union was a dictatorship. Cuba is a dictatorship. N Korea is a dictatorship. Yugoslavia was a dictatorship. I don't know anyone who would claim that they were right-wing. Left-wing and totalitarian are not positions that are at odds anywhere except Marxist theory (because Marxist theory claims that for one human to wield power over another is unjust and illegitimate, whilst simultaneously accepting use of the state, and brutal revolution (power over another human) in order to achieve its goal of equality (which can only be realised by a utopian planner wielding power, unless every single person on the planet decides to be equal). This would contradict Marxist theory again though, since the bourgeois forces must be violently overthrown as they will not accept equality). Slight tangent there. Anyway, the point is, not only are they not a contradiction, but in fact the more left-wing one becomes, the more control and power becomes necessary to achieve it.
    • jae426 George Johnson
      1
      I wouldn't necessarily disagree with any of that.
      But that's not the system of government established in the Hunger Games (have you read them, by the way?). It's very clearly explained that the Districts were on the losing side of a second American Civil War, and that they are kept subjugated so they will never be in a position to rise up against the Capitol again.
      The Capitol doesn't so much manage their economy as take what it wants to enrich itself, whilst throwing just enough morsels of food the Districts' way to keep enough of them subdued. It then uses the Games themselves to keep the Districts pitted against each other rather than likely to unite against the Capitol.
      Nowhere does the Capitol try to convince the Districts that this system is for their own good. It is made painfully clear to them that this is collective punishment for their ancestors' actions.
      I think it's yourself who's unable to distinguish between Left-wing and totalitarian. Was the Roman Empire fundamentally communist? Would you say Israel was Left-wing because it occupies Palestinian territories and controls their economy?
  • 3 people, 4 comments
    L. Michael Gipson
    11
    I disagree with the author strongly when it comes to "The Hunger Games." That book series is radically and violently against oligarch rule, which is the form of totalitarianism Suzanne Collins was targeting in the work. She's no right wing anything, having studied as wars and poverty and totalitarian governments with a decidedly leftist lens. I also rabidly reject the notion that all totalitarian governments are born of the left, which this author seems to suggest for the sole purpose of advancing a weak thesis. I can't say for "The Giver" since I read it over 20 years ago and I can't say for Divergent, since I never read it, but I definitely disagree with his characterization on "The Hunger Games" series as advancing libertarianism. Individualism as a solely right wing concept lacks nuance and accuracy.
    • emorrison L. Michael Gipson
      2
      L. Michael. In reply to your point - Forbes magazine has this to say:
      "Collins’ story (The Hunger Games)of a dystopian society defined by misery, alcoholism, starvation and fear of the state has naturally generated quite a reaction among readers. Many, including this writer, saw The Hunger Games as an obvious polemic about the horrors of unchecked government, but as the series is wildly popular on both sides of the political spectrum, there was predictably some angry pushback. Fair enough, plus in defense of the “deniers,” Collins hasn’t exactly been explicit about her political views, if any.
      Oh well, whatever the truth about her politics, what can’t be denied by those who’ve read Catching Fire is what its message is. Catching Fire has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with what happens when it’s abolished in favor of an all-powerful state."
    • emorrison emorrison
      0
      Heres the link to the Forbes article:
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2013/11/24/the-hunger-games-catching-fire-reveals-the-brutal-horrors-of-thuggish-government/
    • George Johnson L. Michael Gipson
      3
      "Individualism as a solely right-wing concept lacks nuance and accuracy."
      I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I'm assuming you're saying that the right does not have the monopoly over individualism. If that is the case, I would invite you to consider how the left's aims of forced co-operation and equality (which are inherently collectivist) can not be at odds with individualism, and how one can be a left-wing individualist?
      Otherwise, I will take your comment as a criticism of individualism because it is a right wing concept, a point I will happily debate.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    locusalius
    4
    why does the author equate 'central planning' with leftwing utopia? what is she? a stalinist?uniformity, planning, collective ''happiness'' are all distinguishing features of managerialized and neo-liberal systems of oppresion -- neo-liberalism is the new soviet.
    Any oppresion of difference, subjectivity and imagination is in principle anti-leftist -- and anti-progressive...
    • emorrison locusalius
      4
      Why do I associate 'central planning' with 'leftwing utopia'? Well, if you look at all left wing utopias they're always based on a central planning (I exclude anarchists here as they've never achieved anything that lasted more than a few years).You might like to have a read of this interview between HG Wells and Joseph Stalin from 1937 in which they discuss central planning in the USSR and the USA and Wells jokes about having a five year plan to change the human brain - Stalin keeps a straight face and is merely polite as he was working on doing just that! HG Wells also comments on what a happy place the USSR is. A real historical gem.
      INTERVIEW BETWEEN HG WELLS AND JOSEPH STALIN
      http://rationalrevolution.net/special/library/cc835_44.htm
  • spaycecopper
    0
    I'm on board with this reading of YA in general but it is wilfully ignoring the focus of the Hunger Games. In which it (apparently shows) a version of leftism which enters its children into an arena of death where they must all kill each other.
  • 3 people, 6 comments
    emorrison
    12
    Those coming from a liberal left (as opposed to radical left) perspective tend not to understand what communism was and how it still influences the left today or to understand that the right got right about communism. They also tend to underestimate its impact on the subconscious of contemporary fiction. We are haunted by Marxism and the genocidal path it cut through the 20th century, so it is not too hard to believe that in the 21st century the subconscious of American writers might reflect that fear of all things communist. Steven Pinker’s book The Blank Slate digs to the source of the communist project. He shows how communism brought to a head a tradition which sees the human being as a blank slate and which strives to build a new society from zero., through ‘planning’ . This new society has to be a command economy with human engineering, as all ‘nurturing’ effects and bad influences from the old (corrupt, patriarchal, capitalist) culture cannot infect the new society. The enemy of this is position is ‘human nature’ and the laissez faire economy – the unplanned ‘free’ society which nonetheless gives rise to the inequalities which come from unfettered human nature. Communism no matter what its plans are is about a total plan to shape a new human and to transform or eradicate human nature. Socialism is just a diluted and much compromised version of that.
    In Divergent, The Giver and The Hunger Games, the protagonists are exemplary individuals who find themselves at odds with planned societies – societies which were built according to a top–down plan after a disaster created a blank slate in history. In The Giver and Divergent it is clear that human nature is the problem and that the societal plan has been to utterly transform it. In The Hunger Games - a spectacle is made out of the conflict of human nature so that the mass can then go back to their planned lives. The Hunger Games however is muddied because Collins attempts to fuse elements of communism with the Roman Empire (so you get a population who live in communes but who are forced to select a member to compete) and this is actually a hole in her plot which has come from her not thinking through her fictional society clearly enough. It’s a hybrid done for effect and not to express a particular political philosophy. As many have pointed out there are contradictions in the actual functioning of Panem as a fictional construct. What is clear though is that Katnis' task is to sweep away the planned society and introduce a ‘free’ society.
    The framework in Divergent. Insurgent and Allegiant and also The Giver Trilogy is less messy and easier to see. In these books the societies have been created according to a plan made by specialists – these specialists are people who believe in progress and who state clearly that man left to his own devices is brutal and destructive. In Divergent the city of Chicago is turned into an experiment in DNA, fully controlled and monitored. There is no free market, everything everyone needs is created and distributed by the state. It is the same in The Giver where individuality, history and the passions are erased by the well meaning elite – all conflict is removed and everyone lives in state of equality. These are communist heavens which throughout the course of the narratives turn out to be hells. The Hunger Games (THG) also can and should be read in this way. In it there is a command economy, there is social engineering and the society was created after a blank slate event by specialists who sought to orchestrate the behaviour of all citizens. These embody the key points of Pinker’s picture of communism. Seeing THG as a critique of oligarchy falls down in that oligarchs never had that degree of control over their economies and generally encouraged a hierarchy based on 'human nature'. In THG you have a communist total plan for society which has become corrupt, in the way that communist countries decay into empires. Katnis embodies the power of human nature over the planners.
    • MikeAlx emorrison
      5
      The essence of Katniss's struggle is not to sweep away the society because it is planned and centralised, but because it is unjust and inhumane.
      The argument of the establishment is that the brutality and inequality of the system is justified in the interests of maintaining stability; a little bloodletting to prevent a major bloodbath. The tribute system serves as a warning against insurrection; to reinforce the Capitol's hegemony. Katniss's war therefore is not against communism, but against imperialist hegemony.
      The last book has a rather poignant passage about the cost of war - the enormous human sacrifice - and thus invites a debate about what kinds of peace are acceptable and at what price.
    • emorrison MikeAlx
      5
      In Panem, trade, industry, and the means of production are controlled by the government. So is the media. There is no free trade. Can you name a single 'imperialist hegemony" or capitalist country in which this is the case?
      Now try communism.
      Suzanne Collins is no scholar of history so she's got her political systems a bit mixed up, unlike the authors of The Giver and the Divergent trillogy who have clearly created communist hells. Nonetheless the form of economy in the Hunger Games is a command economy. People are forbidden from growing their own food - it is all administered by the state.
      I would say that Collins is not consciously making a critique of the left, she's just expressing the American distrust of the state.
    • MikeAlx emorrison
      7
      Suzanne Collins is no scholar of history, so she's got her political systems mixed up
      She's writing speculative fiction, not straight allegory, so can have any political configuration she likes. This sounds more like a disingenuous excuse for the fact her society doesn't neatly fit your argument.
    • emorrison MikeAlx
      2
      There is ambiguity in her social structure but the dominant social form in Panem is the Command Economy.
      "A system where the government, rather than the free market, determines what goods should be produced, how much should be produced and the price at which the goods will be offered for sale. The command economy is a key feature of any communist society. China, Cuba, North Korea and the former Soviet Union are examples of countries that have command economies. "
    • No_Rush emorrison
      0
      I think that sells Collins' work short. The Districts have a command economy, but there is absolutely no indication that the Capital is a command economy. That's the point--the districts are subjugated. But that is more a political fact than an economic one.
      The key aspect of a communist economy (or any left-wing economy with command elements) is that control is to be exercised for the good of the people, at least in theory. Nothing in the Panem economy suggests that this is the case in any but the most gross propaganda: everyone understands that the provinces are being exploited for the sake of the center. Hence, the Capital hosts the games, but it doesn't send tributes.
  • zettel45
    6
    Yeah, right - because banning things REALLY puts your kids off them.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    Pagey
    7
    The Hunger Games isn't right wing - the society in question enslaves the poor for the benefit of the rich, and Katniss fights against that.
  • Steven Horwitz
    28
    I can't imagine, after reading this article, why young people might find attractive novels that are critical of the left. I mean, our author here does seem to know what's best for them and he just wants to make sure they are brought up with the right ideas and the right ways of thinking. What could possibly be wrong with that?
    Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. Do you even irony, bro?
  • Maty Aksenton
    17
    Title:
    "YA dystopias teach children to submit to the free market, not fight authority"
    Then goes on to say:
    "Books such as The Giver, Divergent and the Hunger Games trilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality."
    Leftist idea of "fighting authority": Letting the state led by wise men with high academic degrees who know better than you what's good for you run your life. And of course, let's not forget to add "progress" to the package, because if you are against a government managing your economic life you must be a caveman who is against progress, per the leftist creed.
    The doublethink is indeed strong with this one.
    But these books and movies must be doing something right if they make sanctimonious fart-sniffing pseudo-intellectual leftists go bonkers.
  • HamsterMan
    9
    If the author is identifying Katniss as neoliberal then I'd say that by accidental inference he's damned the state.
    People should be more concerned about the state than corporations. Toyota, Pepsico and Google can't lock me up if I decide to stop using their products, unlike the NHS who will try and arrest parents for taking their kids to hospitals in other countries.
  • 4 people, 4 comments
    Anne Smith
    4
    Whoever wrote this hasn't read The Giver, or The Divergent Series, or The Hunger Games. Planned societies, sure - benevolent, nurturing societies - no.
    In all 3, Industry and State have become one and the same. No one in the society remembers whatever went before (including the animals that inspired the cuddly toys in The Giver, the society that spawned such massive buildings and structures for entertainment in Divergent, and anything other than forced labor and privation in The Hunger Games.) I'd go so far as to include the Ember series by Jeanne DuPrau and the Silo series by Hugh Howey, where the planned societies have come to the brink of their own dystopian downfall...not through their leftist ideals, but through a variety of environmental and societal faults, through systemic mismanagement: an abandonment of those left leaning ideals as seen in the excess of the Capitol as contrasted with the privation of the districts in the Hunger Games books; systematic thievery and mismanagement of resources and infrastructure in both Ember and Silo; political maneuvering and deceit in Divergent; and banishment of anyone who argues against sameness in the Giver.
    I continue to find value in the obvious answers that there is no cookie cutter escape from societal ills; that unintended consequences can occur regardless of how well intentioned any person or society is; and that a small group of people who are devoted and passionate can escape or alter the course of fate for their society.
  • emorrison
    8
    In the pro-left-wing anti-capitalist dystopias from the 60s to the early 90s private companies aka corporations were nearly always the bad guys.
    Aliens - a corporation (Weyland Utani Corp)
    Blade Runner - a corporation (Tyrell corp)
    Judge Dredd/2000 AD- capitalism run wild
    Robocop - a privatised police force
    Total Recall - a corporation (Rekall)
    Terminator - a corporation (Cyberdine systems)
    The dominant message was that unregulated capitalism leads to out of control corporations that lead to societal destruction.
  • 5 people, 5 comments
    Brett Lee
    19
    "If you see yourself as a left-leaning progressive parent, you might want to exercise some of that oppressive parental control and limit your kids exposure to the 'freedom' expressed in YA dystopian fiction."
    Hahaha! That last bit says it all about the leftist mentality! I read the Giver as a child (required reading in elementary school), and later embraced a number of libertarian leaning authors in my teen years (Neal Stephenson, Robert Anton Wilson, Michael Crichton, among others I can't recall right now). I have been absolutely thrilled in the recent years of the great libertarian themes coming out of YA authors and most surprisingly, Hollywood. This all gives me hope for the future, that the Millennials (a generation, of which I am proudly part of) can fix the many mistakes made by the so-called progressives, who have put us in our current mess, globally.
  • Manuel Amador
    12
    According to the author:
    Dystopias that portray companies as evil and violent, diametrically opposed to what they are in reality = "good".
    Dystopias that portray governments as slightly more evil than what they normally are, displaying historical elements shown by many brutal governments of reality = "GTFO WITH YOUR YOUTH-CORRUPTING SIENSE FICSHUN!"
    #juststatistthings
  • BenSix
    5
    Children do not know their biological parents and are raised in their first years communally – a project originally envisaged by the communist Alexandra Kollontai."
    If Mr Morrison's point is that dystopic novels have been characterised by their opposition to coercive persuasion and autocratic collectivism I believe that he is right. Is the difference between us that I think that this is just and Mr Morrison does not? That would be interestingly contrarian.
    Just as I suspect that Christians who insisted that Harry Potter was demonic made young believers lose their faith, incidentally, I suspect that proposing that affection for casting spells and riding broomsticks is evidence of disturbing right wing tendencies is a good way of directing young readers to the starboard. No one likes to be told that their innocent fun is somehow corrupt.
  • James Peron
    9
    Damn young people, don't they know to submit to the superior wisdom of the social planners?
    The collective is all that matters. Long live the collective. Long live the people, not the person!
    We must march together, think together, obey together.
    Mr Morrison's one mistake is that he did not first ask his brothers and sisters if they held his opinion. He is too individualistic to live in the perfect world. He is an enemy of the people.
  • AntonBruckner
    19
    "the bad guys are not the corporations but the state and those well-meaning liberal leftists who want to make the world a better place."
    That's whole point, and a lesson of this "agitprop." Well-meaning does not lead to well-designed. You grossly misunderstand how royally humans can screw up things in this complex world. The number things we've gotten right in just the last 100 alone is inestimably greater than the loads and loads of "knowledge" that has turned out to be wrong. Human designs are imminently naive, expressed in the pages of Eastern philosophy or by recent Westerners like Mike Huemer ("In Praise of Passivity.")
    Thinking we can design society is essentially a God Complex. The US has the strongest economy in the world not because it's centrally-planned, but because its failure rate of businesses is higher than anywhere else in the world; companies that don't provide value commensurate with what society wants and needs are pruned. If you want central design with good intentions, visit Venezuela. Unfortunately you won't enjoy your stay, because there's no toilet paper.
  • James Peron
    23
    The best part of this proto-fascist rant is where he tells parents to initiate control over their children and monitor what they read. I think the parents should order the children NOT to read the books—that works so well. I suspect the result will be kids hiding behind the garage reading voraciously that which is forbidden. This guy really is a control freak.
  • 3 people, 3 comments
    Jamma88
    12
    If you see yourself as a left-leaning progressive parent, you might want to exercise some of that oppressive parental control and limit your kids exposure to the "freedom" expressed in YA dystopian fiction.
    Except that if you are left-leaning and progressive, you probably don't conflate the idea of a large, dictatorial state with the notion of a socialistic society, which is what the author seems to be painstakingly and frustratingly trying to do.
  • 2 people, 2 comments
    Mestes1
    3
    He says that old dystopian novels had to do with corporations and not with totalitarian states but... What about 1984 or that Russian novel "We"? I think that, corporation or not, this new novels are more commercial than anything. Past dystopian novels were conceived as creative ways to complain about governments.
  • Mestes1
    4
    And the idea of the title? Submit to free market? That's a little bit far fetched, don't you think? I think it does show young people that the power is not always right and if you have the will you can change things for the better.
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    YA dystopias teach children to submit to the free market, not fight authority
    This article was published on the Guardian website at . It was last modified at .
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