unfortunately, i can't write out a detailed analysis of this text, because it doesn't justify one (edit: or, at least, i didn't initially think that it justified one. i have since expanded this review to further discuss it's treatment of marx' theory of alienation, which appears to be the point of the text). we are once again thrust into a sherlock holmes mystery, with baley playing the role of sherlock and daneel playing the role of watson (and you'll have to ask somebody else to explore the judaic significance of a story with characters that have the names of elijah, daniel and jezebel - i'm not interested), but there is no underlying allegory. it's really just plot.
that said, it happens to be that the setting is coincidentally worth discussing a little bit strictly because it mirrors the social relations we find ourselves in during the covid pandemic. on the planet of solaria, which is where baley and daneel are sent to solve a crime in this episode, people live as isolated individuals in mansions dotted across the surface by hundreds or thousands of miles, with upwards of 50 robots designed to serve each individual in specific manners, in a perfect division of labour. if asimov is toying with the leftist critique of the division of labour yet again, or drawing comparisons to slave to slave owner ratios in early 19th century america, he doesn't run with it (there is what seems like a forced reference to the helots in sparta, that i suspect may have been forced as a distraction, given that the references to american slavery are heavy-handed and longstanding), nor does he play with the idea of alienation, as presented by marx, which is a theory that i'm critical of, in too deep a manner - even if it's arguably the actual purpose of the text, something that i've decided to discuss in further detail, in this space. asimov again seems to come down somewhere in the middle of this debate over the importance of physical human contact in the maintenance of normal human mental health, both exploring the positive aspects of a society rooted strictly in contact via virtual reality, and in which physical touching and sex are frowned upon as primitive and sort of disgusting behaviours, and noting some of the potential drawbacks in terms of quality of life and in terms of blowback in the form of antisocial behaviour. i suppose it's an objective exploration of the idea, in that sense. but, as mentioned, this is really strictly of interest because it's contemporary - it makes you wonder what the next pandemic might be like, 100 years from now.
why am i critical of marx' views on alienation? i should acknowledge that this is a subtle thing, but it comes down to a rejection of the marxist/hegelian concept of how humans define ourselves, in terms of purpose and self-worth. basically, i don't think we define our worth in terms of our labour, and i think that only a slave could ever argue that we do, or that we ought to. i'd argue that the alienation of the worker from their labour (and ultimately from society) is desirable, and that this is actually why we want communism - that placing labour in the hands of automation, or otherwise separating it from individual humans through a process of socializing it, is the best way to reclaim our humanity and purpose, as emancipated individuals that define ourselves in terms other than our labour-purpose. an emancipated, free person ought to define their purpose in terms of their artistic expression, or in terms of their leisure time, and not in terms of their labour, as defined as some kind of collectivist contribution to society; in many cases, a free person might choose to spend their time doing something that we might currently describe as labour, but they would do it as a form of recreation, and not in order to justify their self-worth. but, this is why i'm an anarchist and you're not - i reject the producerism, i reject the romanticization of labour and instead assert that labour is a necessary evil, something we have to do whether we like it or not, and something we should all thoroughly despise as unbefitting of a free human being. the value of robots - of automation, of mechanization - is supposed to be that it frees us of the necessity to perform this unwanted evil of labour. to an anarcho-communist, separating the worker from their labour is the whole point - it's not a process of being alienated from anything, but a process of being emancipated from the slavery of market relations.
let's get back to the text. if the purpose of the text is to explore "alienation" via this mechanism of a planet where people only interact via virtual reality, however weakly it is actually developed, then what is asimov really getting at with this? is it a marxist critique of capitalist social relations? am i as opposed to what asimov thought as i am to what marx thought? see, that all seems a little off, given that (1) solaria is a broadly communist society, where there is no longer any conflict over control of the means of production and competition does not exist and (2) what asimov seems to be criticizing, the separation of the human from their "tribe" (by which he means society), is not really what "alienation" means in a marxist framework (it refers to a worker being alienated from the product of it's labour, not individuals being alienated from society, or technology acting as a force of alienation, although the latter has been frequently applied as a tool in a discourse on marxist alienation). the actual reality is that what asimov is getting at is sort of blurry and not particularly well formed, but nonetheless is some kind of vague critique of the idea of a society where individuals have no connection to each other and is probably influenced by marx' writing on alienation, perhaps via a secondary source. he's not the first person to apply the idea of marxist alienation in a blurry or non-specific manner and he probably won't be the last, but it makes a review like this difficult. do i analyze what marx actually said about alienation, or do i analyze asimov's confused or naive take on it? or do i just point out that asimov is talking about "alienation" without really talking about "marxist alienation" and kind of leave it at that?
asimov actually seems to point to some upsides of the social relations he's describing (and, in the end, the main character decides he has to leave the earth because he can no longer live in the new york city kibbutz because it's stifling his individuality), but each of his characters seem to be introduced to develop specific reasons why such a social relation isn't particularly desirable. this is why it seems to be the point of the text: what we have is a detective arriving on this strange world and being sequentially introduced to different characters that all demonstrate a different reason why the defining social relation on the planet is not a good one (and i'll leave the formal essay to whatever high school student gets here first). the character of leebig, who commits suicide on the threat of human contact, even seems to be a parody of the archetypal introverted science nerd, taken to the extreme. that said, while asimov may be fairly clear in his critique of the alienation defining the social relations in the society he's describing, even if it's not a strictly marxist critique, and even if the society isn't very capitalist, he isn't always convincing in his critique, and i find that a lot of his intended arguments against what he seems to be deciding is "alienation" are actually fairly compelling arguments in favour of the value of escaping from the deadening aspects of a collectivist society that dulls the abilities of individual expression. while i do not think it's intentional on asimov's behalf, i actually frequently find myself relating more to the solarians than i do to baley.
so, there isn't a clear allegory in the text, and the application of marx' theory of alienation isn't always well informed, but it is nonetheless clear that asimov was trying to write a novel that critiques the idea of alienation, and was influenced by marx in what he was doing. maybe i'm missing the point - maybe there's some irony in what he's doing, in twisting the situation around, and introducing alienation into an advanced techno-communist dystopia. maybe he's redefining the concept of alienation as it may exist in an actual dystopian future, and maybe he's even suggesting that alienation (as he's defining it) is actually an inescapable consequence of marx' theories, meaning maybe he's more on my side than i think. but, i think the balance of evidence is that he's working with an idea that's come to him second hand, or that he didn't fully understand, and that, as a result, it's hard to sort it out all these years later.
one may note that the character of gloria (who exists to show a specific perceived downside of the end of physical human social contact) is exactly the sort of character that asimov was frequently criticized for not writing into his novels. it's just more evidence that his feminist admirers are more grounded in reality than his feminist detractors.
there is also a weak tie-in to the previous text's plot about utopian socialist medievalists, in that asimov does explicitly present solaria as an exaggeration of the wastefulness of contemporary earth. so, that's the ironic plot twist - the earthling of the future experiencing self-realization at seeing his own history in the mirror. but, this is really only done in passing and comes off as comical more than it does as profound. there are also further explorations of the culture of the outer worlds - the vanguard - which are further explorations of the kibbutz theme, also drawing heavily from plato. there are further references to malthus and a further exploration of the potential positive uses of eugenics. so, asimov does explore the basic premise of the first novel a little bit more, but he doesn't really expand upon anything substantive, by doing so. the text ends with asimov revisiting the ending of the first volume, in deciding that humans must return to colonizing space to prevent the earth from surpassing it's carrying capacity.
this somewhat difficult sidestepping of the discussion of marxist alienation aside, the text is really otherwise fairly unexciting, unless you're actually into the whodunnit thing, in which case it should be noted that it's one of asimov's longer texts in that style, for better or worse.
i had to nap this afternoon, but i want to get through the last short stories collection (the bicentennial man) this weekend as well, and then get to the actual journal entries (five and counting...) over the next week. remember: i'm over two years behind on this. i really need to pick it up, and if the broken computer gives me an excuse for a few weeks, so be it.
