I read this as part of my research for a paper I'm will be presenting on Le Guin's [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388229638s/18423.jpg|817527] in January at Mythmoot III. I was surprised to find how short the book is, and was able to read it in one sitting — though, having done so, I suspect it is not the intended method of consumption. It seems better suited to small, daily chunks for rumination or meditation. It's unlikely that I will read it in that manner, but I suspect I will revisit it a couple times in the next month or so.

Overall, I quite enjoyed it. I read more for feeling than sense, and Le Guin's brief, sporadic commentaries seem to uphold such a reading. Much of it is the sort of short, enigmatic, oscillating verse that one might expect, but I was surprised to find how much of it is fairly comprehensible. Indeed, there's plenty of strangeness and a tendency toward epigrammatic enigma, but on the whole there's a simplicity to the sensibleness of many of the verses. It's hard to say how much of that is inherent in the text itself, and how much of it is Le Guin's rendering. She warns, in her notes at the end, that she did not translate it, but created her own version based on a dozen or so prior translations that she has studied over many years, working on it bit by bit, sometimes with decade-long hiatuses.

Anyway, if I have one criticism, it's in a single comment she makes on chapter 53, "Insight," the last stanza of which reads:

People wearing ornaments and fancy clothes, carrying weapons,
drinking a lot and eating a lot,
having a lot of things, a lot of money:
shameless thieves.
Surely their way
isn't the way.

Le Guin's comment: "So much for capitalism."

sigh

The obvious reply here is that when Lau Tzu (or whomever) wrote this, capitalism wasn't "a thing," so to call out capitalism in response to these statements is disingenuous at best. More to the point, the text seems to indicate that these things are not "the way" regardless of the political and economic situation one finds themselves. (In the prior stanza, there is a reference to splendiferous palaces, which seems distinctly anti-capitalist to me.) The idea that ornamentalism, ostentatiousness, warmongering, gluttony, greed and theft are solely the products of capitalism is simply absurd.

In fact, there are other moments in Le Guin's commentary that seem to favor capitalist — in particular, anarcho-capitalist — ideals. The author "sees sacrifice of the self or others as a corruption of power," she writes in her comment on chapter 13, "Shameless." "This is a radically subversive attitude. No wonder anarchists and Taoists make good friends." This idea is cognate with modern libertarian attitudes against so-called "crony capitalism," which is an oxymoron insofar as it isn't truly capitalism but more like fascism (in the original sense of the word). In chapter 57, "Being simple," are found the lines:

The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world,
the poorer people get
...
So a wise leader might say:
I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.
I love to be quiet, and the people themselves find justice.

Le Guin's comment, in part, is, "No pessimist would say that people are able to look after themselves, be just, and prosper on their own. No anarchist can be a pessimist." Again, this fits well with libertarian/capitalist viewpoints. It was, after all, [a:Adam Smith|14424|Adam Smith|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1244624882p2/14424.jpg], the patron saint of capitalism, who wrote, "We may often fulfill all the roles of justice by sitting still and doing nothing."

Perhaps I've ranted too long. Overall I quite enjoyed the work. And bonus: I even found some stuff to use for my paper on Left Hand....


Edit: I feel compelled to add that I realize Le Guin's definition of anarchism is likely not anarcho-capitalism but rather anarcho-syndicalism. I mean, I have read [b:The Dispossessed|13651|The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle, #5)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1353467455s/13651.jpg|2684122]. Still, my objections stand.