Spanish Anarchism and the Utopian
Novel in the 1930s:
The Libertarian Society of the
Future in El amor dentro de 200 años
(Love in 200 Years) by Alfonso Martínez Rizo
Mariano
Martín Rodríguez
Independent
scholar
Abstract
The concept
of critical utopia has been widely accepted since Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), which is more a utopian novel than a typically
descriptive utopia. In The Dispossessed, Le Guin also touched upon
anarchist utopian science fiction, which had already been cultivated much
earlier in the context of Spain’s thriving anarchist movement in the 1930s. Love in 200 Years (El amor dentro de 200 años;
1932) by Alfonso Martínez Rizo presents a society following libertarian
communist principles in a technologically advanced future. This is a
consumerist society, fully democratic and sexually liberated—homosexuality is
not an issue, and even one of the love interests in the novel is queer—but it
is not a truly anarchist utopia. The shortcomings of libertarian communism,
which Salvio Valentí criticized in his contemporary Spanish dystopia, From Exodus to Paradise (Del éxodo al paraíso; 1933), are
presented with wry humor through plot devices reminiscent of those frequently
encountered in modern dystopias. Love in 200 Years, an original
popular modernist scientific romance, is an early critical utopian novel which
deserves to be rescued from oblivion.
Keywords: Utopian novel, libertarian
communism, anarchist science fiction, Martínez Rizo
Author’s Note: An early
version of this paper was published as “La ciudad libertaria del
futuro en la distopía El amor dentro de
200 años (1932), de Alfonso Martínez Rizo” in the Spanish online journal Ángulo Recto (2011, 3:2, pp. 151-169). The version published herein is quite
different from the aforementioned work.
According to
Trousson (1998), “utopia is an essentially descriptive genre”[1] (l’utopie est un genre essentiellement descriptive; p. 31), meant to display the imagined place—whose intended
perfection excludes any change, as any modification would dialectically imply
that the perfection, in reality, has not been achieved—to a traveler visiting
the utopia and, through this traveler’s records, to the reader. In the
unquestioned and unquestionable utopian world, the figure of the visitor only
serves to advance the description of the ideal society through their questions
regarding its workings. Any event that could distract the reader’s attention
and stress individual experience, thus undermining the exclusive focus on the
collective, is reduced to the barest minimum, so that “the description
literally dismisses the narration” (la description évacue littéralement la narration; Trousson, 1998, p. 31). In the utopian landscape, plot-related action remains
suspended and the figure of the hero remains empty of any believable
characterization through his or her actions. The narrative framework is reduced
to a mere afterthought by the description, even disappearing entirely, as
occurs in some nineteenth century anarchist utopias such as Ricardo Mella’s The New Utopia (La Nueva Utopia;
1890).[2]
Utopia as a
literary genre is, therefore, distinct from the utopian novel. If their raw
material is analogous (i.e., an imaginary society whose plausible and rational
appearance is presented in dialectic relation to a real society that serves as
a point of reference), their verbal construction tends to be opposite: static
and descriptive in utopia, but dynamic and narrative in the utopian novel. In
the latter, the “utopian” element is adjective, while the narrative (the
“novel”) is substantive. A utopian novel can very well be studied for its
ideological contents, for its potential usefulness as a blueprint for a utopian
order, but such a reading would be reductive. As a novel, its main point is to
tell a story that presents a particular utopian (either eutopian or dystopian[3]) society and its
relationship with its denizens so that the deeds and thoughts of the characters
reflect and reveal how they negotiate conflicts that arise in this society.
Conflicts cannot exist in classic utopias because a being perfect society means
it has achieved full harmony, but the inner and outer conflicts of men and
women are the core of traditional storytelling. This lack of action and defined
conflict may explain why eutopian novels rarely make satisfactory narratives
while dystopian novels, which thrive in conflict, include several masterpieces.
This is also perhaps why an ambiguously
utopian real novel such as Ursula K.
Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974)
received both critical acclaim and quite a few ideologically-charged criticisms
for not having portrayed a fully positive, utopian,
anarchist social order, in spite of her personal commitment to anarchism at the
time she wrote the novel. In Political Theory, Science Fiction and Utopian
Literature: Ursula K. Le Guin and The Dispossessed, Burns (2008) argued
that Le Guin was first and foremost a novelist (pp. 19-55). The Dispossessed
was significant not for its doctrine, but for its effective presentation of a
society that appeared as much eutopian as real. Though Le Guin’s
anarchist world seems close to the ideal harmony of freedom and equality, its
failures and inadequacies make it all the more credible and human. Le Guin’s
utopia is inhabited by fellow beings, not by the one-dimensional allegorical
figures characteristic of (descriptive) utopia.
The literary
success of The Dispossessed, a primarily eutopian novel, was
comparable with that of classic dystopian
novels such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We
(Мы; 1920; 1924) and is now rarely
questioned. Although The Dispossessed was not a utopia stricto sensu,
it was arguably the first masterpiece of its genre, having also contributed
to suggest the concept of “critical utopia” (Moylan, 1980). In any event, The
Dispossessed's literary value facilitated a welcome broadening of
utopianism in fiction. The contents (“critical utopia”) and writing (“eutopian
novel”) of Le Guin's novel were the successful culmination of a battle begun
much earlier by other writers who did not wish to give up the human perspective
of the novel when presenting their readers with utopias that were
still-to-be-perfected, yet already much-improved societies. Alfonso Martínez
Rizo,[4] a Spanish
engineer, author, and distinguished anarchist intellectual, can be considered
an overlooked forerunner to Le Guin for his novelistic approach to anarchist
utopianism in Love in 200 Years (El
amor dentro de 200 años; 1932).
El amor
dentro de 200 años was not the
first anarchist utopian novel, as French writers had used this genre since the
late nineteenth century to present the workings of an anarchist society. For
instance, in The Pacifists[5]
(Les Pacifiques; 1914), Han Ryner imagined such a society on an island
whose pacifist inhabitants are confronted by some Western castaways. These
Westerners murder the pacifists in order to impose colonial authority, but are
ultimately defeated, and pardoned, by the sheer number of non-violent islanders
(Grenier, 2005, pp. 294-297). In this work, as well as in a Brazilian anarchist
utopian novel with a very similar plot (Afonso Schmidt’s Zanzalá, 1938),[6]
there is no conflict within the anarchist society itself, which remains starkly
utopian in its unchanging balance. Martínez Rizo, on the other hand, does not
present an exterior foe with a compact utopia. As in The Dispossessed, his anarchist world has its own shortcomings that
inspire the main characters of El amor dentro de 200 años to question
the prevailing order in a manner similar to contemporary dystopias.
Furthermore, unlike Ryner or Schmidt, Martínez Rizo does not place his utopia
on an island or in a secluded place during present times, but instead follows a
tradition set forth by Zamyatin and similar setting it in a technologically
advanced future, far-removed from any pastoral stasis. However, Martínez Rizo's
portrayal of the future libertarian society is quite different from the
oppressive organization made possible by industrial technology in modern
European dystopias, as a more detailed description of El amor dentro de 200 años will show.
The
population of Martínez Rizo’s novel is not centered in a
technologically-advanced megacity surrounded by countryside filled with a
spontaneous wild population and untamed nature, an otherwise common
population distribution in dystopian fiction.[7] The anarchist preference
for a decentralized organization that breaks with capitalist production made
possible by concentrating large proletarian masses around enormous factories
corresponds with a preference for a similarly decentralized pattern of urbanism
in anarchist utopias. In El amor dentro de 200 años, communes are
populated by a few thousand inhabitants maximum, in which collective control
and the genuine participation of each and everybody in public affairs is
guaranteed and the distinction between city and countryside has disappeared.
Similar to Argentine author Pierre Quitoule's former anarchist utopia, The Anarchist American City (La ciudad
anarquista americana; 1914).[8] Martínez Rizo himself was
a strenuous defender of ecological urbanism, as evident in the garden cities of
his essay The Urban Development of the
Future (La urbanística del porvenir; 1932).[9] In El amor dentro de 200 años “the population of the Earth was spread
across its surface” (la población de la Tierra estaba diseminada en toda su
superficie; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 18), because people could build wherever and however each person
wanted, no matter the climate zone. In the society of the future, there is no
need to adopt a pastoral or Luddite lifestyle to enjoy the natural landscape,
fulfilling the dream of many current urbanites. On the contrary, it is “thanks
to the telecommunication advances and the ease of transport” (gracias a los adelantos de la telecomunicación y a la
facilidad de los transportes, Martínez Rizo, p. 18) that the
inhabitants of the communist libertarian world-city system described in the
novel have reached this ideal. With an engineer's delight, Martínez Rizo
describes fast journeys made possible thanks to “estereonautic” (estereonáutica) travel, which features flying ships employing aeromagnetic propulsion
(pp. 44-46), and such advanced communication technology that everyone enjoys
not only television, but also “retrotelevision” (retrotelevisión)—a visualizer of the past (1932, pp. 38-40).
In addition,
technology has even allowed abolishing the local assemblies that, in anarchist
utopias, often meet to make decisions because “every man decided daily upon all
things with his direct and secret vote via the immediate totalization of
statistical devices” (todos los hombres decidían diariamente sobre todas las
cosas con su voto directo y secreto, mediante la totalización inmediata de los
aparatos de estadística; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 19), i.e. personal devices that allow the individual to
immediately give his opinion on topics of common interest from any place at any
time.
Technology
in El amor dentro de 200 años has also allowed labor and work
traditionally accomplished in anarchist utopias through free solidarity of the
society’s membership to disappear. No one tends to do anything useful
because “machines do everything better” (todo lo hacen las máquinas mejor;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 19) and produce everything. The
mechanization of the world is absolute and humans perform labor activities for
recreation. The machines, capable of auto-perfecting themselves, are powered by
inexhaustible “intraatomic” (intraatómica) energy, which is based on a
form of nuclear fission. Some citizens even engage in ‘army’ play acting, complete with
uniforms and military parades comprised of a real armed force of “automatic
soldiers” (soldados automáticos). These soldiers are anthropomorphic
automatons created to battle possible extraterrestrial threats and, more
importantly, to distract people who are nostalgic for martial arts, a sport of
which the author amusingly makes fun.
In the
decentralized landscape of El amor dentro de 200 años, common urban
spaces are very scarce, limited in fact to a gigantic stadium that seats
hundreds of thousands of spectators, highlighting the future libertarians’
passion for sports and, in particular, the so-called “Love-Gardens” (Jardines
del Amor). The Love Gardens are outdoor places among the
greenery where people can dance and engage in sexual activities with the same
freedom (or more so, thanks to universal nudism)[10] found decades later in
the sexual revolution in the Western cultures. “The new sexual morality” (la
nueva moral sexual; Martínez Rizo, 1932, pp. 15-17), clearly supported by the author, focuses on pure pleasure,
contrasting with the sexual puritanism prevalent in contemporary utopias. The
title “El amor dentro de 200 años”
indicates the importance of eroticism in the novel. Sex is a physiological need
that is freely satisfied, without consideration for traditional taboos such as
the obligation of fidelity, in Martín Rizo's anarchist utopia because
“exclusivism was an absurdity against Nature” (el exclusivismo era un
absurdo contra la Naturaleza; 1932,
p. 56).
Homosexuality is also embraced because “each one satisfies their sexuality in
accordance to their character” (cada uno da satisfacción a su
sexualidad como su temperamento le aconseja;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 27), thus offering a true utopia for contemporary queer people who
were rarely accepted in such natural way even in anarchist circles.[11] This anarchist world is,
therefore, endowed with not just utopian, but also prophetic features: the
then-infant consumerist and sexually liberated society has reached a level of
tolerance and acceptance beyond that of our own times. Not even the phenomenon
of sexual tourism is missing in Martínez Rízo's world: the progress in
transportation has made pleasure trips to other planets, such as Mars, possible
despite the “intelligent arachnids” (arácnidos inteligentes; 1932, p. 93) hindering any access to the planet’s surface.
In spite of
all of these positive characteristics, the future united anarchist Earth is not
a full utopia yet. Commodity-induced political passivity of the consumerist
society and the growing conformism in the exercise of democracy as mere routine
poses a danger felt by the narrator, who reacts using the rhetoric and
structural devices of contemporary dystopia to advance his individualistic and
eminently dynamic concept of anarchism.
The subtitle
of Love in 200 Years is eloquent:
“Fictional vision of future rebellions” (Visión novelesca de rebeldías futuras). The allusion to “rebellions” links El amor dentro de 200 años to Martínez Rizo’s previous novel, 1945. The Coming of Libertarian Communism. A Fictional Vision of Things to Come (1945. El advenimiento del comunismo libertario. Una vision novelesca del porvenir; 1991). This short
political novel narrates the peaceful triumph of libertarian communism in Spain
following a general strike declared by anarcho-syndicalist unions, which
represent most of the population, thus expanding the already large base of
Spanish anarchists at that time. Money, private property, and all prior
institutions are peacefully extinguished as anarchist unions take over their
functions. The end of the book promises a sequel, suggesting a possible
dystopian development of the society born in 1945:
I have limited myself to narrating the coming of libertarian
communism and leaving it in its infancy. Perhaps at another time I will indulge
in narrating something concerning the said regime which will be powerful, too
powerful perhaps, since it will hinder the progress of anarchy, by narrating a
love story in two centuries[…](Me he limitado a contar el advenimiento del
comunismo libertario dejándolo en su cuna. Quizá
otro día me complazca en cantaros algo de dicho regimen ya fuerte, tal vez
demasiado fuerte, obstaculizando la marcha de la anarquía, al narrar una
historia de amor dentro de dos siglos[...]; Martínez Rízo, 1991, p. 303)
After showing how libertarian communism is superior to the replaced
capitalist order in its consideration of the utopian body’s material needs,
which classic utopias (including the ones mentioned by Ryner and Schmidt)
usually overlook, El amor dentro de 200 años describes the nature of the
future obstacles anarchy will face. In spite of its clear utopian results, the triumphant libertarian
communism across the world has evolved toward a mockery of democracy, in which
the machine has also assumed the managing functions, replacing trade unions:
“the federal system had disappeared thanks to the imposition by the Automatic”[12] (había desaparecido el
Sistema federal por imposición de la Automática; Martínez Rizo,
1932, p. 19), which is a “governing
machine” (máquina gubernativa; p. 19) that
seems to work as a huge central computer administering the planet instead of
mankind. Individual voting is meaningless because “making suggestions is
prohibited as they would be inferior to those made and disseminated daily by
the governing machine” (está prohibido hacer sugerencias, porque serían
inferiors a las que la máquina gubernativa hace y difunde todos los días;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 20). Moreover, the “governing function” (función
gubernamental) is based on a series of ruling principles that are universally
enforced, such as the “prohibition of every harmful thing, subordination of the
individual to the collective and, with these exclusive limitations, absolute
individual and collective freedom” (prohibición de todo lo nocivo,
subordinación del individuo a la colectividad y, con estas exclusivas
limitaciones, libertad absoluta individual y colectiva; Martínez
Rizo, 1932, p. 66). In the name of these
principles, the organization of mechanical libertarian communism imposes, among
other things, radical eugenics in accordance with some prevalent tendencies in
Spanish anarchism.[13]
The expected result is achieved: “all of the factions were nobly beautiful and
all of the bodies were graceful and all of the movements were rhythmical” (todas
las facciones eran noblemente bellas y todos los cuerpos armoniosos y todos los
movimientos rítmicos); Martínez Rizo adds with wry
humor, “the few ugly ones were almost proud of it” (los pocos feos que
había, casi se engorullecían de ello; 1932, p. 62).
However, this improvement of nature comes with a price. Only couples with
eugenic compatibility endorsed by the central computer’s automatic program are
allowed to have children. Breeding without this prior approval immediately
entails a sentence of destruction carried out, literally, by the collective. If
the computer so determines or if a sufficient number of people believe that any
other person or group presents a danger for the libertarian community, rays
emerging from the voting device are focused upon the victim(s). These rays,
when isolated, are harmless, but their large scale convergence from several
devices causes “a death that seemed fair for to the plebiscite” (una muerte
que parecía justa por lo plebiscitaria; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 58). Fair or not, Martínez Rizo makes clear that to him, the
repression of inalienable freedom is just as decentralized, and even as personalized,
as extreme manifestations of control in classic dystopias. Unlike the
modern Internet, the Automática
operates from a uniquely physical place in a center separated by a symbolic
wall from the rest of the world: “the Bedaón laboratories and the great
governing machine were surrounded by high walls” (los laboratorios de Beda y
la gran máquina gubernativa estaban rodeados por altas
tapias; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 101). These walls, meant to
protect the computer or statistical machine, also indicate the real power core
of the alleged libertarian society of the future. Bedaón’s machine and
laboratories (the scientist who has created it and, consequently, also created
the ruling governing system)[14]
are the places where the citizens’ fates are decided in the name of (eugenic)
common good and, from this point of view, “the architecture of the city is
presented as conterminous with the machine and with its attendant power
structure” (Horsley, 1995, p. 248).
Martínez
Rizo introduces original nuances to the dystopian theme of the opposition
between the organic-rural and the mechanic-urban. Thus, Bedaón, the scientist who
holds the real power, is not a stereotypical dictator. He is rather a mythical
figure venerated for the comfort and pleasures he has provided his subjects. A
part of the population is, indeed, more than happy with the system, while the
true anarchists fight to end this type of libertarian communism because they
consider it oppressive, particularly the collective executions implemented as a
form of technologically-enabled mob justice. Their dissent is purely political
and based on the development of the same principles that inspired the velvet
revolution Martínez Rizo described in 1945.
Here, there is no nostalgia for a bygone pastoral, simpler way of life;
instead, in keeping with Spanish anarchist tradition,[15] the author believes a
technological civilization and the full enjoyment of human freedom are
compatible and possible.
As in
contemporary dystopias, love is the uncontrollable force that threatens to
overthrow the system in El amor dentro de 200 años. The main plot device
in the novel is love, which unites its protagonists within the framework of
their society. The outside witness plays the typical role of the
traveler-to-utopia. Through Martínez Rizo’s adaptation of the chronotope of a
sleeper awakened centuries later in the future, he enables his contemporary
readers to identify with the character who comes from the past and is
confronted, just as the readers are, with the posited future. In El amor dentro de 200 años, the sleeper
is a soldier named Fulgencio Chapitel, but his function as a docile admirer of
utopia is comically negated when he is shown the libertarian world-city. His
utopian guide performs his task with little enthusiasm, while Chapitel spends
half of the novel running away from the authorized cicerone instead of taking
all the utopian propaganda at face value. Chapitel also falls in love with his
guide’s daughter, Dasnay Paratanasia, with whom he eventually visits the
libertarian communist planet of Mars. Chapitel’s role in El amor dentro de
200 años allows Martínez Rizo to adopt a critical perspective regarding the
love interests the utopia (and the sleeper chronotope) similar to that found in
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward
(1888). Upon each featured wonder of the future, the ironic, or decidedly
controversial commentary of the companion invites the reader to adopt a
nonconformist stance. Chapitel embraces Dasnay’s individualist anarchy as their
relationship deepens in accordance with the concept of love as an impulse
oriented toward forming a family, rather than libertarian hedonism, “uniting it
to reproduction desires, distinct from physiological pleasure” (vinculándolo
en los anhelos de reproducción, con distinción del placer fisiológico;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 68). This couple, as well as the
one composed of Zaraíto, Dasnay’s teenage nephew, and a “most ugly” (feísima; Martínez Rizo, 1932,
p. 62) girl of
thirteen, are living expressions of dissidence against the eugenic canon and
rules because the Automática forbids
their union harmful to the human race. Both couples, however, have children,
placing them outside their society's system and, in the end, exposing them to
the dangerous collective ray.
Martínez
Rizo seems to share the underlying sentimental conservatism of dystopias such
as Zamyatin’s, Aldous Huxley’s and George Orwell’s, where “in the end, what is
opposed to the massive tyranny of state is little more than a bourgeois
domestic idyll, a brief, fragile dream of quasi-marital bliss” (Ferns, 1999, p. 124).
In El amor dentro de 200 años, sex is definitely not subversive, but
romantic love is. Nonetheless, Martínez Rizo resolves this conflict very
differently than in those aforementioned dystopian examples, in accordance with
his own personal humorist approach. Omnia
vincit amor: love is, indeed, what persuades the true controller of the
machine, Bedaón, to deactivate its governing functions, which impede true
anarchy. According to the rules, Bedaón would otherwise be forced to lose the
object of his (platonic) love, Zaraíto, the handsome boy involved in one of the
couples practicing romantic, reproductive dissidence. This is not certainly the
sort of romantic infatuation that most contemporary readers would expect as deus ex machina. Martínez Rizo uses the
stereotypes of both utopias and dystopian novels, the two main genres of
literary utopianism of his age, to deflate expectations. Despite its
appearances, the world in El amor dentro de 200 años is not fully
utopian, but Martínez Rizo ironically deconstructs the dystopian plot devices.
The Big Brother, Bedaón, ends up being a Platonic philosopher in every respect,
whose unrequited homosexual infatuation makes possible in a surprisingly
unconventional way the happy ending that cancels the expected dystopian
tragedy. Thanks to Bedaón's decision, the individual will not be crushed by the
established system, and the anarchist ideals seem to have won the day. Martínez
Rizo also, however ideologically deconstructs this reassuring ending.
The fight to
achieve anarchy ultimately leads to an illustrated despotism: “The governing
machine is dead! The voting and destruction devices have been rendered useless
forever! The mechanical soldiers will never again attack men!” (¡La máquina
gubernativa ha muerto! ¡Los aparatos de votar y fulminar han
quedado inutilizados para siempre! ¡Los soldados mecánicos no atacarán jamás a
los hombres!; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 106). This, too, ends the attempt at
democracy because Bedaón assumes total power. Although he claims to do so
unwillingly, declaring to his lover, “you cannot imagine how abhorrent being a
ruler is to me!” (¡no puedes imaginarte lo violento que
me es ser providencia!;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 107), he assumes a “ruling role”
(papel providencial) because most of the population is not prepared for
the regimen of true anarchy. Therefore, he and his successors will have
“humanity’s civilized life” (la vida civilizada de la Humanidad; p. 107) in their
hands until the society has sufficiently prepared itself. In the meantime, he
tells the future anarchists: “You must make do with my immense power and fear
my decisions” (tenéis que contar con mi inmenso poder y temer mis decisiones;
Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 107). Individualist revolution
may have overthrown eugenics, but it also enthroned a kind of scientific
superman whose government may not be benevolent. Through Bedaón's reclamation
of power, was Martínez Rizo referring to the philosophical tradition that stems
from Max Stirner’s individualism and, through Friedrich Nietzsche, promotes an
anarchism of Übermenschen[16]?
Was he turning upside down former anarchist utopias such as Quiroule’s La ciudad anarquista americana?[17] His ironic approach to
libertarian utopianism illustrates how his political commitment obscured
neither his mind, his logic when it came to addressing the issues that
fulfillment of any utopia entails, nor his duty as a novelist to produce an
effective story. On both fronts, El amor
dentro de 200 años is a critical novel in a similar way as is The Dispossessed and, therefore, despite
the differences in their writing, it should be mentioned as an early example of
the modes and genres that Le Guin’s novel has established in the utopian canon.
While The Dispossessed is a serious novel that
assumes and develops the great tradition of the nineteenth century realist
novel, by adapting it to both utopian and science fiction, El amor dentro de 200 años becomes a popular modernist narrative.
Martínez Rizo's skillfully concise style seems equivalent to the geometric
architecture he featured in the buildings of his future libertarian city. One
could argue his writing has an Art Deco flavor, since its simple functionality
is compatible with the presence of some rhetorical devices that animate the
text and, at the same time, contribute to its meaning, such as irony. Martínez
Rizo's ironic perspective tends to blur the lines of the thematic opposition
between eutopia and dystopia, creating a middle ground that allows the work to
remain optimistic regarding the prospect of true anarchy despite the
intermediary dictatorship imposed at the end of the novel. Therefore, El amor dentro de 200 años is rather
tragicomic, thus following the trend set by other Spanish early dystopias[18] in which the author’s
voice softens the admonition with comedy, such as Ramón Pérez de Ayala’s short
play Sentimental Club (1909) and
Miguel A. Calvo Roselló’s A Strange
Country (Un país extraño;
1919).[19] These works are all quite
different from many of the canonical European dystopias. Perhaps the context in
which Martínez Rizo wrote permitted him to craft a hopeful vision of the
future. The peaceful 1931 proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic and the
subsequent lifting of any bans against political activity as well as the
expectations of change it elicited in the population must have favored belief
in a possibly near libertarian victory, reflecting the daydreams about the
future from both within and outside the anarchist movement.
Martínez
Rizo’s work is, perhaps, the most representative example of pro-anarchist
speculative fiction in Spain, while the anarcho-syndicalist society of the
future was described in fully dystopian terms in a further anticipation
inspired by anarchism in Spain, entitled From
Exodus to Paradise (Del éxodo al paraíso; 1933) by Salvio Valentí,
whose literary production seems limited to this “essay of libertarian
communism” (ensayo de comunismo libertario), in truth a
novel. While Valentí's work shows a consistency of vision and literary
expertise perhaps greater than that demonstrated by Martínez Rizo, he does so
with less originality than Martínez Rizo. Although Valentí's Del éxodo al
paraíso described a fully dystopian anarcho-syndicalist future society, El
amor dentro de 200 años remains the best example of pro-anarchist Spanish
speculative fiction because the denizens of Martínez Rizo’s world lack
creativity. They limit themselves to taking advantage of ancient achievements,
especially the weapon factories inherited from capitalists, which will be used
to conquer new places to exploit and to distract the famished population
subjected to an oppressive and inefficient politico-economic system. Valentí’s
novel is certainly well written, but its one-sidedness contrasts with Martínez
Rizo's ironic approach to the future, which stresses the need for change and
warns against blind devotion to any ideological cause, even if it is utopian.
In El amor dentro de 200 años, Martínez Rizo maintains the important
ideal of remaining critically
pursued, against all biases of one’s times and ideology, true to the genuine
spirit of anarchist liberation from all chains, including the mental ones. This
idea is effectively conveyed by novelistic means. El amor dentro de 200 años might not be a masterpiece, as it is
sometimes quite heavy-handed in its humor and its unqualified praise of
technology in manner reminiscent of contemporary Gernsbackian pulps and its
writing might lack elegance. Nevertheless, it remains an excellent example of
anarchist utopian novels, as well as one of the earliest examples of queer
science fiction, and it deserves to be rescued from its current oblivion.
References
Ainsa, F.
(1986). La ciudad anarquista americana.
Estudio de una utopía libertaria. Cahiers
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[1] All translations to English in this article
were performed by its author.
[2] On this significant Spanish anarchist utopia,
see Ramos-Gorostiza
(2009).
[3] “Eutopia or positive utopia: a non-existent
society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space
that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably
better that the society in which that reader lived. Dystopia or negative
utopia: a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally
located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to
view as considerably worse that the society in which that reader lived”
(Sargent, 2005, p. 154).
[4] Alfonso Martínez Rizo (1877-1951) is still a
relatively unknown figure in Spanish utopian and science fiction literature.
Nevertheless, a historian of anarchism has discussed his political activity
(Paniagua, 1982, pp. 190-197) and, in a volume dedicated to Spanish
libertarian utopias, his anticipation 1945
(1932)
and a selection from El amor dentro de
200 años were reedited in 1991. El
amor dentro de 200 años is also briefly discussed in a history of Spanish science fiction (Sáiz
Cidoncha, 1988, pp. 100-101).
[5] There is an English translation of this novel
(Ryner, 2014, pp.183-325).
[6] For a description of this work, see Meneghello
(2009).
[7] “Science fiction’s romantic polarization of the
organic-rural and the mechanical-urban tends to generate plots in which there
is no middle ground; there is such a wholesale rejection of the ‘urbanization
of the territory’ that the only option, other than giving in, is to renounce urban
life altogether, either seeking an escape route or trying to break down the
walls which hold nature at bay” (Horsley, 1995, p. 250).
[8] For a description of this utopia, see Ainsa
(1986).
[9] “This project of the city-countryside
surpasses this dichotomy by creating an integrated fabric in nature with a
distance, between each house, of one hundred meters of countryside” (Su proyecto de ciudad-campo supera esta
dicotomía al formar un tejido integrado en la naturaleza con una distancia,
entre casa y casa, de cien metros de campo; Roselló, 2005, p. 3). Masjuan
(2000, pp. 176-187) discusses in detail Martínez Rizo’s ideas on urban
development.
[10] Martínez Rizo was, in fact, an enthusiastic
supporter of naturism, which he would later also defend in his 1936 novel Death (Óbito), which “shows us the role of nakedness alongside naturist
practices through a new model of society freed from capitalism, where there are
small populations comprised of freely sterile couples living alongside ones
with three or more children, putting into practice the free expression of human
aptitudes” (nos muestra el papel del
desnudo conjuntamente con las prácticas naturistas en un nuevo modelo de
sociedad liberada del capitalismo, donde existen pequeñas poblaciones en las
que hay parejas libremente estériles, y otras con tres o más hijos, y se pone
en práctica la libre expresión de las aptitudes humanas; Masjuan, 2000, p.
440).
[11] On the issue of anarchism and homosexuality in
Spain during this period, see Cleminson (1995).
[12] The Automatic is a mechanical system based on the
theories of engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo, who is a forerunner to modern
cybernetics.
[13] “Eugenics, the improvement
of physical human conditions and birth control grounded in a reading of
Malthusianism was one of the main axes of libertarian ideology in Spain” (El eugenismo, la mejora de las condiciones
físicas de la humanidad y el control de la natalidad fundamentado en una
lectura del maltusianismo fueron uno de los ejes principales de la ideología
libertaria en España; Barona, 2004, p. 16).
[14] “He
was the last of the wise men of the heroic age of science and, precisely, the
greatest amongst them and the one who had mostcontributed to the triumph of the
machine ideology” (Era el último de los
sabios de la edad heroica de la ciencia y, precisamente, el más grande de todos
y el que más había contribuido a entronizar el maquinismo). He also
“decreed the supremacy of the governing machine he invented” (hizo decretar la supremacía de la máquina
gubernativa de su invención; Martínez Rizo, 1932, p. 34).
[15] Spanish
libertarian utopia engages perfectly with the characteristic vision of great
technological power, of the trust in science and the machine expressed in
numerous contemporary European utopias: a constant vision of the positive role
of science and technology, all aimed exclusively at human liberation” (Le utopie libertarie spagnole si innestano
perfettamente nella caratteristica visione del grande potere tecnologico, della
fiducia nella scienza e nella macchina espresso da numerosissime utopie europee
a loro contemporanee: una visione costante del ruolo positivo della scienza e
della tecnica, tutte tese esclusivamente alla liberazione umana; Zane,
2007, p. 9). Here, Zane refers to the
libertarian utopianism of the nineteenth century that, in a country as backward
as Spain at that time, was reticent about condemning industrialism, evidenced
by William Morris’s pastoral style of making such condemnations. For such
influential anarchists like Ricardo Mella, “the new order is fundamentally
urban. New Utopia is a ‘great
city’ and a modern one. It has solid and functional aesthetics and iron and
electrical forces that are its defining features” (Ramos-Gorostiza, 2009,
p. 16). Martínez Rizo’s city is located, evidently, in the wake of
Mella’s.
[16] Nietzsch’s Übermenschen were “overmen”,
super-human beings with otherworldly qualities.
[17] If he was familiar with the work, Martínez
Rizo could have parodied Pierre Quiroule’s La
ciudad anarquista americana, in which a scientist with pretensions to
superhumanity is the one who has worked the most for the coming of the
libertarian city in the new continent and who has invented a ray capable of
ending all life within a determined radius that he intends to use against the
enemies of anarchy in Europe. Such class genocide is not narrated in the work,
which is a typical utopia and, therefore, almost fully descriptive, while
Martínez Rizo has written a novel with a certain carnavalesque quality in it.
[18] On early Modernist Spanish dystopia and
science fiction in general, see Martín Rodríguez (2010).
[19] In this short dystopia a telescreen appears
with exactly the same functions as the one allegedly invented by Georges Orwell
in 1984(1948). If Orwell could have
heard of this story during his Spanish stay is only matter for speculation.