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.
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.