E. J. Erichsen Tench

Isaac Asimov was an avowed secular humanist and a science fiction writer.  Since worldviews will always color and form books and other artistic works, it is possible to trace themes of Asimov’s humanism in the first of his major science fiction trilogy, Foundation.  Apart from the humanist strains, Asimov also worked in foundational elements of Marxism.  The purpose of this paper is to explore the strains of Marxism within Foundation and find the comparisons between Asimov and Marx in religious, socially materialistic, and fatalistic ways.

The main component of any worldview is the religious component.  The ideas of the metaphysical universe will color all the rest of the laws of the universe in Foundation.  In order to understand the worldview of Foundation and the worldview of Marxism, one must understand how Asimov and Marx portray and discuss religion.

In Foundation, religion is brought up as an older belief, one that a scientific Empire like Trantor does not believe in.  Religion is an explanation for what the inhabitants of Foundation cannot explain.  For the Foundation itself, located on Terminus, religion becomes a tool by which the Foundation peacefully maintains its defense; it becomes a crowbar by which the Foundation holds sway over less intelligent and advanced empires.  For the empires the Foundation deals with, such as Anacreon, religion contains all the technological knowledge they possess, entrapping the inhabitants within the technological mind frame the Foundation wants them to have, thus ensuring they cannot advance and threaten the somewhat defenseless Foundation.

This use of religion to dull down Anacreon’s desire to defeat the Foundation is similar to how Marxism views religion.  “Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said, ‘Communism has not changed its attitude of opposition to religion.  We are doing everything we can to eliminate the bewitching power of the opium of religion’” (Nobel 68).  As Doctor Nobel summarizes from the Marxist’s view of religion:

The idea of God, insists Lenin, encourages the working class… to drown its terrible economic plight in the “spiritual booze” of some mythical heaven….  Even a single sip of this intoxicant decreases the revolutionary fervor necessary to exterminate the oppressing class…, causing the working class to forfeit its only chance of creating a truly human heaven on earth: global communism.

(Nobel 65)

In Marxism, religion tones down the proletariat’s desire to revolt.  In Foundation, religion keeps Anacreon peacefully dependent upon the Foundation.  Anacreon is less willing to attack the Foundation because their entire way of life suddenly depends on the religious technologies and beliefs given to them.  The religion infiltrated in by the Foundation destroyed Anacreon’s desire to rise up, be free, and seek to conquer new areas.

With Foundation and Marxism’s denial of the supernatural and religious aspects of reality, the laws of the universe are merely materialistic and mathematically quantifiable substances.  This includes psychological history, economics, and sociology.  The very roots of the Foundation are based in psychohistory, an idea that the actions of massive groups of people can be mathematically predicted and quantified.  This allows Hari Seldon to predict the overall path of the Foundation and prepare its rulers in advance.  This materialistic idea of psychohistory reduces mankind to a robotic and mathematical system, where only masses count and human behavior can be reduced to externally-influenced behavior, excluding the free will of individuals.  With free will, the people would knock Seldon’s mathematical variables out of place.  “[Seldon] worked with mobs, populations of whole planets, and only blind mobs who do not possess any foreknowledge of the results of their actions….  Interference due to foresight would have knocked the Plan out of kilter” (Asimov 3:2).

This idea of predicting the behavior of the masses through materialistic laws is foundational to Marxism.  “Karl Marx says, ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness’” (Nobel 412).  Marx’s atheistic and materialistic worldview led to the belief that humans’ behavior could be materialistically governed and always worked on set laws.

Similarly, just as Seldon concentrates not on the individual but the masses, so — as Lenin says — “historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions….  Marx drew attention and indicated the way to a scientific study of history as a simple process which, with all its immense variety and contradictions, is governed by definite laws.”

(Elkins)

This belief is necessary for Marxism.  Communism is attained when the masses revolt together; their revolt is predicated by economic conditions that act as external stimuli to impact how they behave.  For Seldon and Marxism, material forces are the causes by which humans act.  The forces that govern humans’ sociological acts are materialistic economic forces that lead to social evolution.

The idea of man bettering himself over time through materialistic forces governing his way is entrenched in Foundation.  The entire history of the Foundation is the story of its upward struggle for existence.  On a large scope throughout the trilogy,

Seldon’s Plan predicts the fall of the decadent First Galactic Empire (read Roman Empire), the rise of the Traders and Merchant Princes (read bourgeoisie and nationalism), the growth of the First Foundation (read postindustrial, bureaucratic-technological society), its interaction with the long hidden Second Foundation and the eventual creation of the Second Galactic Empire, a civilization based on “mental science” (read Asimov’s utopian vision?).

(Elkins)

On a smaller scale, the Foundation shows its own social evolution.  Within the social evolution in the first books, a major interplay between religion and economics takes place, much like Marx’s idea that economics propel history and erode away religion.

The Foundation’s original setup was for the preservation of materialistic human knowledge in Part 1, which moved next into preserving the Encyclopedia in Part 2.  Part 3 brought in the idea of preserving the Foundation itself and the setting up of the first mayor, Salvor Hardin.

Salvor Hardin parallels the dialectic struggle in Marxism.  While the Encyclopedists are content to focus on preserving the past and remaining entrenched in their present state, Hardin believes in progress and continual movement upward.  “Have you ever thought of working onward, extending their knowledge and improving upon it?  No!  You’re quite happy to stagnate.  The whole Galaxy is, and has been for space knows how long” (Asimov 2:3).  Hardin understands the dangers of remaining socially stagnate.

Hardin’s idea is to dull the rebellious idea of the Foundation’s threat through taking over their enemies with religion.  His emphasis on a peaceful takeover and the use of religion is partially contrary to Marxism.  Marx would argue Hardin’s belief that “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” (Asimov 3:1) as a deficient means to socially progress.  The use of religion to dull down the social progression of opponents ties in with Marxism, as explained before.  Even though Hardin sees non-Marxist peace as the means to social progression, the religious days of the Foundation have an end and are replaced by the greater workings of economics, as Marxism teaches.

The Merchant Prince Hober Mallow, in Part 5, represents the rising social progression of the Foundation through the replacement of religious power with economic power.  Trading becomes the crowbar by which the Foundation maintains its weak defenses and impressive power of its enemies.  Much like the dialectic clash found in Marxism, the Foundation’s clash of religion and economics (Marxist thesis and anti-thesis) leads to the next stage of the Foundation’s social progression (the Marxist synthesis).

The last streams of Marxism found in Foundation involve the overall sense of historical fatalism.  “[Marx] writes, ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’” (Nobel 412).  This is exactly the case with the Foundation.  Hari Seldon has foretold the Foundation’s entire history through psychohistory, and now the masses will simply fulfill the materialistic equations Seldon deduced.  The Foundation does not make history as they please, but are already on a programmed plan created by Seldon.  “Circumstances directly encountered” have already been calculated by Seldon.

In Foundation and in Marxism, the individual and his choices do not matter in the long run.  No one can escape the plan Seldon has foretold.

Asimov’s characters are not tragic heroes.  They are nondescript pawns, unable to take their destiny into their own hands.  There is no fear or pity to evoke a tragic catharsis.  Instead there is complacency.  The Foundation Trilogy ends on a note of one-upmanship.  After all that has happened, history is still on its course and Hari Seldon wins again.

(Elkins)

In Marxism, no matter what happens, the world is predestined to socially evolve toward Communism.  Every action only furthers the gradual progression toward a global Communist world.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is riddled with and internally structured by the ideas of Marxism, whether or not Asimov was an avowed Marxist.  Religion is a means to subdue the social progression of Anacreon, just like religion in Marxism dulls the proletariat’s desire to revolt.  Social progression and the history of humankind can be materialistically calculated through psychohistory, just like in Marxism social progression is pushed forward through materialistic economic processes.  Foundation holds to a fatalistic structure that Seldon’s plan will be accomplished, no matter what, just as Marx holds to a fatalistic belief in the eventual victory of global communism.  In religious, socially materialistic, and fatalistic ways, Foundation is elementally similar to Marxism.