The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress question

It sounds to me like he sees anarchy as the ultimate goal, but recognises that a fledgling revolution needs a leader, a person to anchor them. Mike/Adam works fine as the "leader" during the uprising, but the new state would need someone to stabilise the people and give them an anchor. A liberal democracy with a figurehead king/queen (like in the Netherlands, for example) would work perfectly.

It's really quite the expression on Heinlein's libertarian views. Self-rule is the goal, the anarchist concept of maximizing personal liberty the ultimate aim, but with compromises made in the meantime to ensure that there can be a transition. And I'd agree that perhaps they were acknowledging that such a system is not feasible just yet, either for the Loonies or for humanity in general.

It seems to me that the prof's view is this: an anarchist model is fine for everyday things, but larger problems need elite, authoritarian leadership. The prof believes in individual liberty but seems not to believe in individuals' responsibility (more than three people in a room can't agree on anything). Given that, you do have to wonder how serious his commitment to liberty is - he certainly seems to deny people self-determination.

In fact, I think the whole revolution seems not so much aimed at political and social change but at solving a technical problem. It just happens that the lunar authority stands in the way, so a political change is necessary. If Mannie is a bellwether, the revolution actually makes Lunar society worse - but it is at least sustainable.

Not sure about the rest of it, but it is certainly true that one person is really totally responsible for his or her actions, whether part of a "government" or not. There is always someone responsible. I thought of that very strongly upon seeing "Argo" recently.

I have to say the major flaw in the Prof's (and Heinlein's) political ideals is that they both largely rely upon people being nice to one another; not always out for number one. Heinlein suggests that the Loonies have learnt to become so out of survival necessity but I'm afraid it is a bit of a flower power pipe dream. On the whole we aren't particularly nice to one another; never have been and there's precious little evidence of that changing in the future.

It's an interesting framework that Heinlein has created but so is Le Guin's from the Dispossessed (which is probably a more realistically realised anarchic society). However both would, I'm convinced, fall flat on their faces when confronted with the typical human psyche.

The prof was a bit too liberal for my taste, there again he was a 'people person'.

The society Heinlein created on Luna reminded me a little of a tribal society, where everything is done by custom and people have family affiliations to back them up. Heinlein seemed to assume that people living in close quarters would know each others business well and resolve problems in a neighborly way. And anyone that was a bad neighbor would get shoved out an airlock eventually.

The thing about the book, though, was that Heinlein made everyone more or less equal, which seemed unlikely. It was hard for me to imagine that gangs wouldn't take root in that kind of environment. Let's say one family controls a key piece of ground and charges everyone else a small fee to pass through it. This probably wouldn't seem like much of an issue until the family got very wealthy, then started throwing its weight around. At that point, another family might say "hey, we'll stand up to those guys!", and use that as an excuse for some power-grabbing of its own. And you can see where things might go from there.

I think the only chance there is of setting up a society such as Heinlein depicted would be in an isolated setting like the moon. I used that idea in my own novel to create something quite different in some ways but similar in others.

At least two of Heinlein's books have been made into movies, but I think the one that best expressed his views, at least his more militaristic views, was "Starship Troopers," in particular the idea that people have to serve society before they can become citizens. He may have been a libertarian, but he also believed in responsibility.