Neoliberal World Reduction: Robert Heinlein and Milton Friedman's Free-Market Utopias
2023; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/sfs.2023.a900279
ISSN2327-6207
Autores Tópico(s)Political and Economic history of UK and US
ResumoIn the 1960s and 1970s, sf writer Robert Heinlein and Chicago economist Milton Friedman emerged as voices for the American libertarian right, promoting idealized visions of absolute, laissez-faire capitalism. These visions depended on the authors' use of world reduction (Jameson). They stripped away many of the complexities of global capitalism, creating appealing pictures of a frictionless free market. This essay reads Robert Heinlein as an amateur economist, exploring his fascination with monetary theory from his early H.G. Wells-inspired socialist utopias to later libertarian fictions such as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). Heinlein's right-ward drift between these fictions hinged on his changing conception of risk, an idea that he at once celebrated and attenuated, rarely exposing the consequences of unfettered laissez-faire. Conversely, the essay reads Friedman as a science-fiction writer whose works for a popular audience (Capitalism and Freedom [1962], Free to Choose [1980]) extrapolate free-market futures that draw on nostalgic recreations of America's frontier past. Heinlein's and Friedman's books made their respective versions of libertarianism compelling for a generation of (mostly) white male middle-class readers. Their world reductions helped usher in a specifically neoliberal vision of the individual's place in society, one that celebrates economic freedoms while disavowing democratic liberties.
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