Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy, #3)

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Sax thought it unlikely steam engines were an adequate model for the human mind. The mind was more like—what?—an ecology—a fellfield—or else a jungle, populated by all manner of strange beasts. Or a universe, filled with stars and quasars and black holes. Well—a bit grandiose, that—really it was more like a complex collection of synapses and axons, chemical energies surging hither and yon, like weather in an atmosphere. That was better—weather—storm fronts of thought, high-pressure zones, low-pressure cells, hurricanes—the jet streams of biological desires, always making their swift powerful rounds…life in the wind. Well. Throwing together. In fact the mind was poorly understood.

The intense desire to talk with someone, sharp as any pain; this was what people meant when they talked about love. Or rather; this was what Sax would acknowledge to be love. Just the super-heightened desire to share thoughts. That alone. Oh Ann, please talk to me.

He was not a scholar, and he had few ideas about what a Martian constitution ought to include. Getting people together was what he was good at, and he had done that.

watching people look at Nadia was a pleasure in itself. And the way she looked back: interested, sympathetic, skeptical, an edge developing quickly if she thought someone was wasting her time, a warmth kindling if she was impressed by their contribution. And people knew this, they wanted to please her. They tried to keep to the point, to make a contribution.

In the first week many arguments concerned simply what a constitution was, what form it should take, and whether they should have one at all. Charlotte called this the metaconflict, the argument about what the argument was about—a very important matter, she said when she saw Nadia squint unhappily, “because in settling it, we set the limits on what we can decide. If we decide to include economic and social issues in the constitution, for instance, then this is a very different kind of thing than if we stick to purely political or legal matters, or to a very general statement of principles.”

Another tactic is to deprofessionalize governing. You make some big part of the government a public obligation, like jury duty, and then draft ordinary citizens in a lottery, to serve for a short time. They get professional staff help, but make the decisions themselves.” “I’ve never heard of that one,” Nadia said. “No. It’s been often proposed, but seldom enacted. But I think it’s really worth considering. It tends to make power as much a burden as an advantage. You get a letter in the mail; oh no; you’re drafted to do two years in congress. It’s a drag, but on the other hand it’s a kind of distinction too, a chance to add something to the public discourse. Citizen government.”

“Another method to reduce majoritarianism is voting by some version of the Australian ballot, where voters vote for two or more candidates in ranked fashion, first choice, second choice, third choice. Candidates get some points for being second or third choice, so to win elections they have to appeal outside their own group. It tends to push politicians toward moderation, and in the long run it can create trust among groups where none existed before.”

“What you said about government and business is absurd,” he stated coldly. It was a tone of voice that had not been heard much at the congress so far, contemptuous and dismissive. “Governments always regulate the kinds of business they allow. Economics is a legal matter, a system of laws. So far, we have been saying in the Martian underground that as a matter of law, democracy and self-government are the innate rights of every person, and that these rights are not to be suspended when a person goes to work. You”—he waved a hand to indicate he did not know Antar’s name—“do you believe in democracy and self-rule?” “Yes!” Antar said defensively. “Do you believe in democracy and self-rule as the fundamental values that government ought to encourage?” “Yes!” Antar repeated, looking more and more annoyed. “Very well. If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue—control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is—a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives’ labor, under ...

“Business leaders work,” Antar said sharply. “And they take the financial risks—” “The so-called risk of the capitalist is merely one of the privileges of capital.”

“Management—” “Yes yes. Don’t interrupt me. Management is a real thing, a technical matter. But it can be controlled by labor just as well as by capital. Capital itself is simply the useful residue of the work of past laborers, and it could belong to everyone as well as to a few. There is no reason why a tiny nobility should own the capital, and everyone else therefore be in service to them. There is no reason they should give us a living wage and take all the rest that we produce.

The system called capitalist democracy was not really democratic at all. That is why it was able to turn so quickly into the metanational system, in which democracy grew ever weaker and capitalism ever stronger. In which one percent of the population owned half of the wealth, and five percent of the population owned ninety-five percent of the wealth. History has shown which values were real in that system. And the sad thing is that the injustice and suffering caused by it were not...

We must change. It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including in the work...

everyone’s work is their own, and the worth of it cannot be taken away. It says that the various modes of production belong to those who created them, and to the common good of the future generations. It says that the world is something we all steward together. That is what it says. And in our years on Mars, we have developed an economic system that can keep all those promises. That has been our work these last fifty years. In the system we have developed, all economic enterprises are to be small cooperatives, owned by their workers and by no one else. They hire their management, or manage themse...

most of our microeconomy has been in successful operation for centuries in the Mondragon region of Spain.

These organizations were the precursors to our economy, which will be democratic in a way capitalism never even tried to be.”

A synthesis of systems. And Vladimir Taneev was a very great synthesist;

Economic rationality is simply not the highest value. It is a tool to calculate costs and benefits, only one part of a larger equation concerning human welfare. The larger equation is called a mixed economy, and that is what we are constructing here. We are proposing a complex system, with public and private spheres of economic activity. It may be that we ask people to give, throughout their lives, about a year of their work to the public good, as in Switzerland’s national service. That labor pool, plus taxes on private co-ops for use of the land and its resources, will enable us to guarantee the so-called social rights we have been discussing—housing, health care, food, education—things that should not be at the mercy of market rationality. Because la salute non si paga, as the Italian workers used to say. Health is not for sale!”

in the metanational order, health most certainly had been for sale, not only medical care and food and housing, but preeminently the longevity treatment itself, which so far had been going only to those who could afford it. Vlad’s greatest invention, in other words, had become the property of the privileged, the ultimate class distinction—long life or early death—a physicalization of class that almost resembled divergent species.

“The market will always exist. It is the mechanism by which things and services are exchanged. Competition to provide the best product at the best price, this is inevitable and healthy. But on Mars it will be directed by society in a more active way. There will be not-for-profit status to vital life-support matters, and then the freest part of the market will be directed away from the basics of existence toward nonessentials, where venture enterprises can be undertaken by worker-owned co-ops, who will be free to try what they like. When the basics are secured and when the workers own their own businesses, why not? It is the process of creation we are talking about.”

the land, air, and water of Mars belong to no one, that we are the stewards of it for all the future generations. This stewardship will be everyone’s responsibility, but in case of conflicts we propose strong environmental courts, perhaps as part of the constitutional court, which will estimate the real and complete environmental costs of economic activities, and help to coordinate plans that impact the environment.”

Names from earlier totalities are deceptive. They become little more than theological terms. There are elements one could call socialist in this system, of course. How else remove injustice from economy? But private enterprises will be owned by their workers rather than being nationalized, and this is not socialism, at least not socialism as it was usually attempted on Earth. And all the co-ops are businesses—small democracies devoted to some work or other, all needing capital. There will be a market, there will be capital. But in our system workers will hire capital rather than the other way around. It’s more democratic that way, more just. Understand me—we have tried to evaluate each feature of this economy by how well it aids us to reach the goals of more justice and more freedom. And justice and freedom do not contradict each other as much as has been claimed, because freedom in an injust system is no freedom at all.

Human scale. The Mediterranean tree, the tree of the Greeks, who had seen so many things so clearly, seen things in their proper proportion, everything in a gauge symmetry to the human scale—the trees, the towns, their whole physical world, the rocky islands in the Aegean, the rocky hills of the Peloponnese—a universe you could walk across in a few days. Perhaps home was the place of human scale, wherever it was. Usually childhood.

Les Baux.

Once they went out to see the Pont du Gard, and there it was, same as ever, the Romans’ greatest work of art—an aqueduct: three tiers of stone,

So? Well. Suicide is usually considered to be a sign of psychological dysfunction.

I think the philosophical reasons cited by people suffering depression are masks protecting them from harder, more personal hurts.

there’s usually a start to these things, among all the real reasons—the first one that started you down your road. Often you have to go back to that point in your journey in order to start off in a new way.

Time is not space. The metaphor of space lies about what is really possible in time. You can never go back. No no. You can go back, metaphorically. In your mental traveling you can journey back into the past, retrace your steps, see where you turned and why, then proceed onward in a direction that is different because it includes these loops of understanding. Increased understanding increases meaning.

When you continue to insist that it is the fate of Mars that concerns you most, I think it is a displacement so strong that it has confused you. It too is a metaphor. Perhaps a true one, yes. ...

It deserves to be rethought,

You should go out to consider it,

The world is still here. You could go out and see. I don’t want to see. I’ve seen it already! Not you. Some previous you. Now you’re the you living now.

But here we are now. At every moment you should ask, what now is lacking? and work at some acceptance of your current reality. This is sanity, this is life. You have to imagine your life from here on out.

You’ve been our shrink for a long time. Yes. Over a hundred years. Yes. And never any results at all. Well. I like to think I have helped a little. But it doesn’t come naturally to you. Perhaps not. Do you think people get interested in studying psychology because they’re troubled in the mind? It’s a common theory. But no one has ever been shrink to you. Oh I’ve had my therapists.

Yes! Quite helpful. Fairly helpful. I mean—they did what they could. But you don’t know your task. No. Or, I…I want to go home. What home? That’s the problem. Hard when you don’t know where home is, eh? Yes. I thought you would stay in Provence. No no. I mean, Provence is my home, but…. But now you’re on your way back to Mars. Yes. You decided to come back. …Yes. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you? No. But you do. You know where your home is. You have that, and it’s precious! You should remember that, you shouldn’t be throwing away such a gift, or thinking it’s a burden! You’re a fool to think that! It’s a gift, damn you, a precious precious gift, do you understand me? I’ll have to think about that.

Every Martian business now had to be owned by its employees only.

In these firms all employees were co-owners, and they bought into their positions by paying the equivalent of about a year’s wages to the firm’s equity fund, wages earned in apprentice programs of various kinds at the end of schooling. This buy-in fee became the starter of their share in the firm, which grew every year they stayed, until it was given back to them as pension or departure payment.

Councils elected from the workforce hired management, usually from outside, and this management then had the power to make executive decisions, but was subject to a yearly review by the councils.

Had they really worked all their lives to overthrow Terran domination of Mars, only in order to put in place their own local version of the same thing? Could politics ever be anything but politics, practical, cynical, compromised, ugly?

On the one hand he wanted to stay a wanderer, to fly and walk and sail over all the world, a nomad forever, wandering ceaselessly until he knew Mars better than anyone else. Ah yes; it was a familiar euphoria. On the other hand it was familiar, he had done that all his life. It would be the form of his previous life, without the content.

he knew already the loneliness of that life, the rootlessness that made him feel so detached, that gave him this wrong-end-of-the-telescope vision. Coming from everywhere he came from nowhere. He had no home. And so now he wanted that home, as much as the freedom or more. A home. He wanted to settle into a full human life, to pick a place and stay there, to learn it completely, in all its seasons, to grow his food, make his house and his tools, become part of a community of friends.

Both these desires existed, strongly and together—or, to be more exact, in a subtle rapid oscillation, which jangled his emotions, and left him insomniac and restless. He could see no way ...

Om Mani Padme Hum,

the clatter of voices was like the sound of waves, as at any cocktail party: an amazing sound, those voices all together. A chorus of talk—it was a music that no one consciously listened to but Sax, as far as he could tell; but as he listened to it he suspected strongly that the sound of it, heard unconsciously, was one of the things that made people at parties so happy and gregarious. Get two hundred people together, talking loudly so that each conversation could be heard only by its small group: such a music they made!

Such a pleasure to have his old friend with him in this beautiful place.

Michel came back grinning. “Here, touch the line—you can feel the wind.” “Ah,” Sax said. “So you can.” And the nearly invisible line thrummed against his fingers.

Let them have it

Michel talked about Maya for a while, first complaining, then making allowances, then enumerating her good qualities, the qualities that made her indispensable,

Sax nodded dutifully at every declaration, no matter how much they contradicted the ones that had come before. It was like listening to an addict, he imagined; but this was the way people were; and he was not so far from such contradictions himself.

If you saw all the signs of life in the landscape as contaminations, as a horrible mold encrusting the pure beauty of the mineral world, then even the oxygen blue of the sky would be implicated. It would drive one mad.

“They’re only going to be young for as long as we were—a snap of the fingers, right? And then they’re old, and then gone. We all go through it. Even a century’s difference doesn’t matter a damn. And of all the humans who ever existed and ever will exist, these people are the only ones alive at the same time we are. Just being alive at the same time, that makes us all contemporaries. And your contemporaries are the only ones who are ever going to really understand you.”