This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Dispossessed, the multi-award-winning Sci-Fi novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. The book recounts an anarchist-libertarian utopia that has settled on a distant moon called Anarres, which orbits the planet Urras in the Tau Ceti star system, 11 light years from Earth. The anarchists had fled Urras roughly two centuries earlier to live their principles in peace; and since Anarres was mostly just a desert with only sparse vegetation and a thin atmosphere anyways, the nations of Urras left them alone. Urras in turn is inarguably wealthier and more beautiful, but also wracked with massive wealth-inequality, exploitation of the poor, and tense stand-offs between the planet’s various capitalist and communist states.

Urras is clearly a reflection of the Cold War milieu that Le Guin was writing in during the 1970s, right down to the spy-games, print newspapers, landline telephones, machine-gun helicopters, and Vietnam-esque proxy wars (it is another example of how most Sci-Fi is never about the future at all, but the present). The anarchist moon of Anarres, however, is unlike any society that has ever existed on Earth, outside of maybe a few years in Barcelona early in the Spanish Civil War, before Hitler started arming Franco and before the Soviets co-opted and suppressed the anarchist collectives for themselves. Utopia in Greek literally means “nowhere,” but here in the nowhere of outer space, on a distant moon, Le Guin’s anarchists have finally built it. They have a genuinely de-centralized government, a functioning moneyless economy, short 5-7 hour work days, open entrepreneurship, no monopolies, no military, no police, no prisons, little crime, equality between the sexes, and a system wherein everyone shares equally in the manual labor, which in turn allows everyone plenty of free time to pursue a robust education.

Now, Le Guin is careful not to make the anarchist moon sound too idealic: every day is a struggle to survive in that harsh environment; they suffer through a horrible drought; human failings such as jealousy, suspicion, and pettiness still exist; privacy is minimal; there is still coercion via social pressure; closeness within family units is not encouraged; they are distrustful of outsiders; they dogmatically quote Odo, the founder of their society, in a way that often misses the point; and the arts and sciences persistently lag behind the main world. I have bemoaned before the lack of genuine utopias in fiction outside of, say, Star Trek, and The Dispossessed still doesn’t quite fit the bill, either; in some early editions Le Guin subtitled the novel An Ambiguous Utopia, and that is accurate.

The plot in fact follows a malcontent from Anarres, a brilliant physics prodigy named Shevek^[1]There are no last names or titles in this anarchist society., who travels to Urras over the angry protests of his fellow anarchists, after some of his theoretical papers on the possibility of faster-than-light communication get published down there. However, Shevek doesn’t just visit to be feted by their scientists and dignitaries (though he gets that, too), but to try and promote the rapprochement of their two worlds. He clearly chafes against the provincialism and dogmatism of his home-society, and can see what’s good in the world his people left behind.

Yet it is also unmistakable which world Le Guin thinks has ultimately built the better society: After initially being awed by the overflowing natural beauty of Urras, Shevek becomes increasingly disheartened by the gross classism, sexism, and materialism he encounters there. When he finally realizes that he was only invited down because the state wished to weaponize his faster-than-light theories for military purposes, he gets in contact with some underground anarchists and speaks movingly at a General Strike they had been planning against the latest proxy war. After seeing their peaceful demonstration get violently repressed by the state, he seeks asylum at the Terran (Earth) embassy, where he gives them his faster-than-light formulas with explicit instructions to share them with all human worlds, equally, “without money and without price”^[2]Isaiah 55:1. The Terrans in turn provide him safe passage back to Anarres. Despite all his frustrations with his home-society, Shevek remains a true anarchist through-and-through.

Le Guin’s overall thesis appears to be that even the worst-off anarchist collective is still better than the wealthiest capital-based economy. For example, when someone on Urras asks Shevek how their society can possibly motivate anyone to do their fair share of the manual labor without the promise of extra pay, he in turn points out that on Urras, its always the people paid least who do the worst work. (This, perhaps not-coincidentally, was the exact same response that MIT professor and anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky gave to a BBC interviewer who asked him an identical question in the 1970s).^[3]Chomsky on Anarchism, ed. Barry Pateman, pg. 143

And it is here that I cannot help but note that Brigham Young, shortly after the settlement of Utah territory—another inhospitable desert with only sparse vegetation and a thin mountain atmosphere—had argued that the Saints should establish a similar order to Anarres: “Work less, wear less, eat less, and we shall be a great deal wiser, healthier, and wealthier people”^[4]Discourse of Brigham Young, Ed. John A. Widstoe, pg. 187 he once declared in General Conference, in words that could’ve come straight from the mouth of Odo herself. Likewise, on the subject of short work days and all sharing alike in manual labor so that all can become educated, Young preached that “If we all labor a few hours a day, we could then spend the remainder of our time in rest and the improvement of our minds. This would give an opportunity to the children to be educated in the learning of the day, and to possess all the wisdom of man”^[5]Discourse of Brigham Young, Ed. John A. Widstoe, pg. 302–which, again, is the exact same system described by Le Guin on Anarres. For that matter, President Young went by the much more equitable moniker of “Brother Brigham,” and encouraged the Saints to address each other as Brother and Sister as well, a practice that persists to this day—again, just like the people of Anarres. And of course Brigham Young set up just such classless communities of no-rich-no-poor in Ordersville and Brigham City, Utah. Although the theocratic and patriarchal Brigham Young was clearly no anarchist himself, he was by-and-large proposing the same type of society that the anarco-syndicalists were still championing–both in fiction and in real life–well over a century later.

That is, both groups were yearning, whether consciously or unconsciously, for the United Order.

And I once again find myself wondering how we as a Church got so far away from that; I often find myself wishing that this was the Brigham Young preaching everyone had codified into doctrine, not the racist one^[6]we are all cafeteria Mormons, it turns out. Of course I know full well why the Saints fixated more on codifying his Priesthood ban than the United Order: there is always more money to be made in marginalizing others^[7]Utah territory legalized slavery pre-Civil War, after all. than in building a more equitable^[8]the literal antonym for “iniquity” and just society. Well did Young speak when he said “I am more afraid of the covetousness of our Elders than I am of the hordes of hell,”^[9]Discourse of Brigham Young, Ed. John A. Widstoe, pg. 306 for it is the covetous who plainly won the day^[10]I’m even willing to argue that Young fatally undermined his United Order projects by focusing too much on his racist projects!. If Anarres existed in real life, I’m forced to conclude that it would’ve back-slid into just another unremarkable market economy within two generations, just like Ordersville and Brigham City and Barcelona before it.

I even find myself wishing that Brigham Young and Joseph Smith and the rest had striven harder to codify this form of anarco-libertarian society into our religion, maybe even made us seal ourselves into a covenant to establish this society via our holiest rituals–until I remember that they did! The Law of Consecration is the highest and crowning covenant of our Temple Endowment ceremony. We have nowadays watered down that covenant to only mean “pay your tithing and don’t turn down a church calling,” but it originally meant so much more. Indeed, this covenant was once in perfect harmony with some of our most stirring scriptures. Because, for the umpteenth time, let us quote:

Acts 2:44-45–“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”

4 Nephi 1:3–“And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.”

Mosiah 18:27–“And again Alma commanded that the people of the church should impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he have more abundantly he should impart more abundantly; and of him that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given.”

D&C 49:20–“But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin.”

D&C 70:14–“Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld.”

D&C 78:6–“For if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things.”

1 Timothy 6:10–“For the love of money is the root of all evil.”

And of course Christ’s declaration to the rich young man in Matthew 19:21–“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”

And so forth.

We could go on. We have gone on. And we will go on, because it is literally an article of faith^[11]the Tenth one, to be specific that we are to establish Zion upon this earth, so that we may be prepared to receive the celestial Zion when it descends down from the heavens—not just one lone man from the moon like Shevek, but the entire fabled City of Enoch and God’s own United Order. And for all of Brigham Young’s other flaws, it remains to our condemnation that we have not even begun to establish his vision of Zion on the Earth yet. Because this one won’t be “An Ambiguous Utopia” at all, but one where “the LORD has founded Zion, and the poor of His people shall trust in it.”^[12]Isaiah 14:32; 2 Nephi 24:32