Here.
Please don't read comments until you've read this. It is very short and fast to read. It is radicalizing. It is a good short story to send to your friend who needs to understand what capitalism is. LeGuin wrote this in 1973, cementing her status as Chad Supreme of Fuck Mountain. Bow before her might.
Let's discuss in the comments below.
Ok, dissenting opinion: I don't think this has anything to do with capitalism.
For one thing, everyone but the kid in Omelas has a perfect life; under capitalism the masses are miserable and oppressed.
Second, the story implies that the right thing to do is for the people of Omelas to build a more just society on ethical grounds, as opposed to oppressed people liberating themselves from their oppressors. There's no class struggle whatsoever.
Third, nobody actually does anything about the kid; the ones who walk away are just symbolically wiping their hands of it without actually challenging the power structure of Omelas.
It's a moral fable. I don't understand how it's supposed to radicalize anyone or help them understand capitalism.
I agree with Not Capitalism: "As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb.", no war mongering or stock/money shit here
read Marx
Could you explain more of what you mean? Marx doesn't talk about this story, so it is to you to make the bridge.
This has everything to do with capitalism. This is about a people who live perfect lives at the expense and suffering of others (simplified and reduced at this point to AN other), and especially in a senseless and superstitious way. Like how we have built a Cult of Hard Work to force people to pay for things we have in abundance like food, and housing, and clothing.
The story doesn't imply that this is the right thing to do. The story illustrates that this is what these people choose to do.
And yes, none of them do anything about the kid. So ask yourself, is that the right thing to do?
Ok, but making the "other" a single person and the beneficiaries of the system literally everyone else inverts structure of capitalist society; it's the few oppressing and benefiting from the oppression of the many. Capitalism is not a perfectly utilitarian society, and it's not perpetuated by the masses turning a blind eye to the suffering of others, but by the masses not organizing to overthrow their oppressors.
If you interpret the story as representing capitalist society, then the problem is presented as the bourgeoisie just acting immorally, and the solution as them just choosing to stop doing that (and some do).
A story that serves as an allegory for capitalism would have to depict class society in some way, and not the individual moral failings of nearly everyone in a society causing injustice.
Oh, and I just noticed this line:
It's explicitly not a capitalist society.
But capitalism isn't senseless or superstitious. It's completely rational in pursuit of wealth and power for the capitalist class, and came about from people in the past leveraging their power in service of their own self-interest. People have to pay for necessities because they physically can't choose otherwise, not just because of cultural attitudes. But also I don't think this has anything to do with the story.
The story is a thought experiment, and it's safe to assume based on lines like, "they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn’t matter", that the relationship between the utopia and the child's suffering is real because the details of the setting are irrelevant. She doesn't get into the details of proving how this relationship exists because the point is to present a hypothetical utopia which is based on a fundamental injustice. It's her attempt at a "gotcha" against utilitarianism.
But even if we assume that everyone in Omelas is just indoctrinated to assume that their happiness is reliant on the kid's suffering but that it's actually just a big lie that exists for no reason, that wouldn't at all be an allegory for capitalism, because capitalism isn't something that exists just because people believe it's necessary. (Not that capitalist cultural hegemony doesn't play any role, but it's not enough without direct, violent repression and physically separating people from what they need to survive.)
I think it's pretty clear from the context of the story that the ones who walk away are framed as making the correct moral choice. The last lines in particular:
It's not explicit, but also there's nothing condemning them for inaction, which you'd need to make the opposite case.
And just to be clear, I'm not criticizing the story itself.
I think the point is that even for a utopia, a veritable heaven on earth, even when the cost is just one child, we shudder to pay the cost and beat our chests about how we would free that child, whatever the cost of doing so. so why do we happily pay the much higher price of capitalism when it hurts so many and benefits so few?
Well that's the thing: we (meaning the workers and the oppressed) are paying the price of capitalism (to a varying degree). Socialism isn't really about altruism, not that it isn't a good thing or that it can't help. Fundamentally it's about the oppressed liberating themselves, not the comfortable, well-off oppressors choosing out of the kindness of their hearts to stop oppressing.
Also, again, the arrangement in the story benefits the many and hurts the few, which is why I don't think this particular story's related to capitalism.
Don't worry, I'm clear that you're not criticizing the story itself.
It looks to me like you're trying to map this more strictly than is necessary for the story to still function as a critique. Omelas is not a capitalist society, but their prosperity is dependent on the unimaginable and cruel suffering of a child. That child is not a worker and cannot organize, but that child is still the very reason for their prosperity and decadence. So the people of Omelas have to maintain a dual consciousness wherein they recognize that their society is a good and beautiful thing but also that it is fueled by their collective abuse of this child.
This is about how we know capitalism doesn't work and causes unnecessary suffering but we're afraid to end it based on magical thinking. And there's a great deal of superstition in capitalism, in the stock market, in the invisible hand of the free market, in the cult of pain that surrounds it. You could perhaps believe that the bourgeois push these myths to be widely believed, but some of them evangelize to the degree where I think that if they are lying simply to fool us, they've additionally fooled themselves.
Liberating the child would absolutely be a violent conflict, one that would doubtless rend Omelas apart, and with good reason. Those who walk away are washing their hands of the entire affair (and perhaps are by the author not judged harshly, but again this is not something to hang every last moving part on) and personally I judge them for doing so. I think the author in general is letting us make our decisions about this society.
I can't tell if it's suppose to be a thing where we think how ridiculous it is they think all their prosperity is predicated on the suffering or the child, or if it's a thing where people need someone below them/worse off to feel good about themselves.
I dont like how the child is just there as a superstition. If you want to look at this in a third world oppression kind of way, the luxuries and commodities of the first world are a direct artifact of the oppression of the third world. Reading this i just thought why dont they just liberate the kid, he's just there for no reason, while liberating the masses would mean that the first world/the western bourgeoisie would be less luxurious and happy.
Plus as a utilitarian i dont see this system as bad, if a million people can live as happily as ever at the cost of one sacrifice. Which is absolutely not rappresentative of any status quo where that happiness is fabbricated and the suffering are more numerous by far than those profitting. Maybe we all have different tollerances of how much misery there can be for some happiness in the rest of us, and this falls in my range of tollerance. For a society with no violence, rape, sadness or worry i'd absolutely sacrifice a child.
I know im probably reading this way wrong (im not a good reader) and i dont want to shit on LeGuin but this reads like a conservative/fascist thing against liberals, who dont accept a necessary evil and therefore perform some sort of self harm or hermitism, like protesting or boycotting some product.
So, LeGuin is certainly not a utilitarian. She claims to be a Taoist, which I know little about, but the story's morality is almost Kantian. No suffering is morally permissible, there is no great balance. But I believe the story is trying to state that "This idealized world with only one suffering and all else reaping the benefits is still unethical, how much less is our world."
By the by, I am a utilitarian and can see the story as both a allegory in which I appreciate its message, and as a fiction where I'd choose this world over any realistic possibility.
have you tried not being an amoral dunce?
You could try being kinder.