• thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
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    9 months ago

    It’s a great book but Heinlein is generally considered right wing not left I thought ?

    According to wiki while he started off leftish he was quite conservative/libertarian by the time of “moon is a harsh mistress”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein

    "yet Heinlein became a hero to libertarians: Milton Friedman praised Heinlein’s 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which chronicled an anti-statist rebellion on a lunar colony, as a “wonderful” book and commended Heinlein "

    https://gizmodo.com/how-robert-heinlein-went-from-socialist-to-libertarian-1588357827

    Edit to add

    Having read the gizmodo article again it seems a more complicated shift than a simplistic left youth, right in middle age and for most of his books. Seems to have a complex view point although “starship troopers” is certainly a right wing oriented novel.

    Thanks for triggering further investigation. Interesting

    • Eq0@literature.cafe
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      9 months ago

      Thanks for the extra info. In the meantime I finished the book, so I have a better outlook. At the beginning, the push is towards a revolution against the authoritarian regime, with some sprinkles of “workers unite”, so I expected to go more towards socialism. Then it becomes more clear that he is against all a d any government, even while accepting that it can’t work. Quite interesting overall!