Hi there, I’m not trying to start a political argument or anything, I’m just curious what people here think about this often repeated claim that the Federation is a socialist or even communist utopia? I know Strange New Worlds did say in dialogue it is socialist but I was wondering if people here think that’s accurate? I’m not a communist or a marxist or anything like that, but I’ve had people who identify as such tell me the Federation basically is communist. So anyway, what’s your thoughts?
The federation is a post-scarcity socialist utopia. They don’t even have money. Every single human being has ensured healthcare, housing, food, and education of their choice guaranteed from birth. Rise among ranks of the few hierarchical power structures is based on merit, performance, experience and training. I can’t recall anything specific about the productive sectors that allow this to happen, but since they have access to virtually infinite amounts of energy and everything can be done by machines and matter replicators, there’s no motive for hoarding means of production or wealth, so one would assume that most productive endeavors and enterprises are collectivists by default. Same with political institutions as hoarding power doesn’t guarantee anything significant beyond what the average person already posses. They also have wide social openness, tolerance and acceptance as the most common sources of intolerance and bigotry (wealth, religion, power, prestige, etc.) have been regulated or removed. So there’s no logical point on slaving, discriminating, oppressing or exploiting any particular class of people, some classes of people might not even exists, as there’s no concept of poverty, nor race or sexual discrimination in the culture of the federation.
As a result people don’t have to work, but most probably choose to involve themselves in some sort of productive activity as a form of hobby. Members of the Starfleet for example, aren’t doing so for any particular material incentive. But do it because they think space exploration is neat, or because they seek glory and honor on the Starfleet mission, or because they really really like fusion cores.
They are as socialist as it comes.
I’d say they’re post-scarcity anarchist. There’s no central/communal resource dispersal as needed for socialism, nor the central/communal resource allocation/planning needed for communism.
There’s seemingly no authority outside starfleet exerting any power, nor does anyone ever claim a motivation beyond exploration or study (to do something meaningful). The lack of money and unlimited access to replicated resources pending available dilithium also points to a society without exploitative discrepancies.
The humans also never are reported to have any resource hogging, the only tensions/stratification seem to be militarily (and against external parties also diplomatically), meritocratic, and even then the bottleneck seems mostly to be to not fall behind other races.
I don’t see neither capitalism, socialism, communism, despotism, theocracy, nor fascism, but many aspects of anarchism. If you’ve read anything about The Culture, they openly speak about being anarchist, and it’s very similar to Star Trek.
Anarchist doesn’t need to mean without government, simply that no one is above another, which is echoed in how the Federation is structured towards the other races.
I agree, this is also a perfectly valid read. Unfortunately Star Trek spends a lot of time with Starfleet and The Federation and almost not at all with Earth to understand the nuances of governance of productivity. But they are still supposed to be several billions of people, it’s hard to imagine there’s only ad-hoc organization going on to keep something as massive as Starfleet and The Federation going. Even the Vulcans had the High Command. Earth must have something akin to a government structure going on to produce a representative diplomatic corpus. The Federation is supposed to be a Republic after all, and that’s not anarchy. Perhaps a system of direct democratic municipalism, but we don’t know for sure.
It’s a federation, which means it’s a group of government who decided to get some of their rules and organzations in common. Each government in the federation can be different, although there are some implications for the federation to work: they must recognize the borders and laws of the federation, and they must participate in its function.
Which is inherently anarchist :P
As it seems a common confusion in this thread, I repeat, anarchism doesn’t have to be without government or rules, several forms of anarchism are focused on not limiting individuals freedoms and/or not allowing power over eachother (while accepting government and rules not contrary to that). Both of which I believe describe how the Federation works.
What I don’t understand is how some of them are obviously better off than others, like Picard. His family owns a sweeping vineyard and a huge house, and other people are living in trailers in the desert.
My head canon for this is that the only way tptb allowed such socialism without sabotaging it was after reserving a looot of rights and property, especially on Earth, for themselves. There was probably some excuse along the lines of ‘maintaining and respecting traditions and cultures’ that let them keep the bulk of their estates, without having to let the poors (who are welcome to their own vineyards anywhere else) take it over.
Some people are happy living in trailers in the desert. Not everyone wants a big house in a lush environment… And some people just like a bit of misery.
Does the term “socialist” make sense in a post scarcity world?
I guess the question is who controls the replicators and other things needed to provide what people need to live? Can it be taken away from them?
Post-scarcity is a socialist term. It came about from futurist elaborations on Marxist materialist ideology. The reduction of labour to the minimum necessary in a society is one of the tenets of communism in order to reach post-capitalism. Certainly by technology, but also by diverting the products of labour, not for the profit and enrichment of the capitalist class, but for the provision to the needs of all society via free distribution of goods and services to all. According to Marx socialism is a necessary stage to reach communism, but communism doesn’t mean the disappearance of socialism.
Post-scarcity is a socialist term.
I’m having a hard time convincing myself that the term automatically implies on universal access.
It came about from futurist elaborations on Marxist materialist ideology.
And if it did, it was just a historical accident. It could be much more promptly derived from Keynes than from Marx. Also, Keynes work leads to a working theory for how a post-scarcity economy would work, with or without universal access to it.
Hmm, I guess there is post scarcity - everyone works and everyone has what they need, there is no scarcity of resource.
But then there’s post-scarcity - everything you need to live is created instantly by replicators so no one even needs to work unless they want to. Maybe that has a different term.
