I’m a sci-fi fan, in general, and an Isaac Asimov fan, in particular. I’ve written about him before, both for the good and the bad. Since there’s a TV show out on his Foundation Series, I wanted to re-read some of the Foundation books.
While reading Prelude to Foundation, a brief chapter on a character named Davan captured my interest. I’ll call him Davan the Communist. He collects some themes of organizing on the left.
Davan the Communist?
Asimov’s Foundation Series takes place about 20,000 years in the future. Humanity formed a Galactic Empire of millions of worlds. That Empire stands at the edge of collapse.
Davan the Communist leads a revolutionary movement in a small sector of the Imperial capital planet of Trantor. That sector – Dahl – is made up of working-class people who provide Trantor’s energy. And yet, the rest of Trantor marginalizes and stigmatizes the Dahlites. Davan wants to fight back on behalf of Dahl.
Davan articulates what amounts to a basically Marxist line on events. He points to class division and warfare that benefits the Emperor and other leaders at the top. And he points to how the Empire allows a few Dahlites to rise to middle-class status in order to create a myth of meritocracy.
So far, so good. Davan attempts to recruit the main characters of the book to his movement. Hari Seldon the mathematician and Dors Venabili the historian are hard at work on a ‘solution’ to the Empire’s problems called ‘psychohistory.’ They run into Davan’s very Leninist sounding sales pitch.
Davan the Leninist?
I wrote about Lenin in a post last week. Much like Lenin, Davan pushes for an intelligentsia-led vanguard for the movement. They will form a professional revolutionary core, providing leadership, political education, and direction. On Lenin’s view, this vanguard leads the movement through authoritarian Russia. For Davan, psychohistorians will lead it through an authoritarian Galactic Empire.
But then Seldon and Venabili raise most of the issues one might have with a Leninist vanguard movement. They poke at the elitism, for example, of Davan’s placement of a small group at the top.
Davan the Misguided Leninist?
And then Davan takes some turns. It turns out his ‘plan’ relies on spontaneous mass uprisings. He thought Dahlites would turn on the Empire en masse and gain followers. He also relied heavily on support from a major rival to the imperial throne – the Mayor of Wye (another sector of Trantor).
Lenin, of course, would never allow any of this. Nor should we, as it happens. I suppose it’s a bit less clear what Lenin would think of working with the Mayor of Wye. But surely it’s a mistake for a group to work with a major power it can’t really influence. And Dors Venabili points out that even if Davan wins, the new power will push back the Dahlites.
Davan the Misguided
And so, Davan the Communist shows a ‘greatest hits’ of bad leftist moves. He relies on moralism and spontaneous uprisings. He fails to set up a structure where people lift up one another. And he relies on a vanguard.
To boot, he puts his movement in the service of a major ‘ally’ who says all the right things but will probably turn on it in the end.
In Davan, then, I think we can find some key lessons on how not to run a leftist org.
