I've read one of the robot novels and the entire Foundation series, and took away from it that Issac Asimov envisioned robots would become the incorruptible agents needed to install a communism that worked and was invincible.
What's worse, he tries to make this future sound objectively good by showing how it will arise from 3 laws which he clearly intends to appear objectively good. Who can argue with the concept of not allowing humans to come to harm through inaction?
Any good libertarian should be able to, and it is this concept which the robots use to justify taking control of human society. The movie version of I, Robot actually does a good job of exposing this while the book version sugar coats it. The main character in the movie played by Will Smith, who fights agaist robot control, doesn't even exist in the book.
The Foundation novels are even scarier. Asimov foresees a super-human race of math geniuses with pyscho-powers guiding all of humanity to a peaceful state by mapping out thousands of years of events in advance, and predicting what manipulations will be needed to guide it to a state they feel is good. In order to do this, Asimov assumes that all of humanity is completely predictable as long you are good enough at math and have the data.
As an author, he is highly skilled and his novels are tough to put down, but they consistently show no understanding of the individualistic nature of humanity, and explore ways that the individual can be conquered in the future.
In Foundation, the ideal world he maps out is one where every living creature, every blade of grass, and every rock comes together with one consciousness, one being.
Disgusting.
