[Unlike many classic works of sci-fi, Star Trek offered an
optimistic vision of humanity’s future — one where democracy
triumphs, exploitation is ended, and everyone’s material needs are
met.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

STAR TREK GAVE US A UTOPIAN VISION OF AN EGALITARIAN, POSTCAPITALIST
FUTURE  
[[link removed]]


 

Simon Tyrie
August 16, 2023
Jacobin
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Unlike many classic works of sci-fi, Star Trek offered an
optimistic vision of humanity’s future — one where democracy
triumphs, exploitation is ended, and everyone’s material needs are
met. _

Still from Star Trek: The Next Generation., (Paramount Domestic
Television, 1993)

 

It’s the year 2364 and a tatty old space shuttle containing former
Wall Street capitalist Ralph Offenhouse, who was cryogenically frozen
in 1994, has just been discovered floating through space by a starship
called the Enterprise–D. Upon waking, Offenhouse discovers that,
although science has found a cure for his previously terminal illness,
his bank accounts and investments have all gone. To his horror, not
even his beloved _Wall Street Journal_ has survived the ravages of
time.

“A lot has changed in the past three hundred years,” the ship’s
captain Jean-Luc Picard tells him. “People are no longer obsessed
with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the
need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”

It’s particularly striking that in a genre that trends toward bleak,
dystopian futures, _Star Trek_ is an outlier in science fiction for
offering an optimistic vision for humanity’s future. In fact, while
it may be overly simplistic to say that Star Trek depicts a socialist
society, its utopianism owes much to the ideas of Marx in that it
imagines a future where collectivism triumphs, money is obsolete, and
every material need is met.

Beyond Capitalism

The show follows, in various incarnations, a spaceship and its crew
whose enduring mission is to “boldly go where no one has gone
before.” But as Captain Picard explains in _First Contact_ (1996),
“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our
lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

Instead of working just to live, humans are free to spend their time
exploring the cosmos, or inventing, or making art — and sometimes
doing all three. This optimistic view of human nature is in stark
contrast to films such as Pixar’s _Wall-E_, which follows the
right-wing line of thinking that achieving a postscarcity society
(what Keynes calls the “economic problem”) would lead to sloth and
hedonism, and ultimately the demise of humanity.

In Star Trek, geopolitics is a thing of the past. Instead, there’s
the United Federation of Planets, a United Nations–inspired
organization founded on the principles of liberty, equality, justice,
progress, and peaceful coexistence, which is dedicated to the pursuit
of knowledge and the universal enfranchisement of sentient life. It is
a world in which economic conditions allow each person to contribute
to society according to their ability and consume according to their
needs.

 

It’s worth noting here that _Star Trek_ is a product of a
political era that preceded post-Fordist, neoliberal conditions, when
different futures were not only imagined but contested. _Star Trek:
The Original Series_ aired between 1966 and 1969 — a fertile period
for the political imagination in spite of great unrest.

Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator, certainly subscribed to this
optimism. He believed that humanity, rather than being doomed to
self-destruct, was destined to evolve out of our political myopia. It
was thanks to Roddenberry that _The Original Series_, though dated by
today’s standards, was ahead of its time with its multinational,
multiethnic, and multigender crew. Famously, the show featured the
first-ever televised interracial kiss (in an episode banned by the
BBC
[[link removed]]),
and Martin Luther King once said that Star Trek was “the only show I
and my wife Coretta will allow our three little children to stay up
and watch.”

Today, Roddenberry’s flaws and hypocrisies
[[link removed]] are
well documented. According to his last wife, Majel Barrett, he
identified as a communist. But we know from the many accounts of his
unethical business practices that he was also obsessed with making
money. He preached peace and love but was infamously difficult to get
along with. And he flew the flag for feminism while being a notorious
womanizer.

Rather than focus on Roddenberry the man, I find it more interesting
to evaluate Roddenberry the salesman. When the show aired, there was
widespread unrest; the United States was being torn apart by race
riots and antiwar protests; and the then–very new and horrifying
threat of nuclear Armageddon loomed large on the horizon. But rather
than offer an “extrapolation or exacerbation” of these conditions,
as culture is prone to do, Roddenberry saw the appeal of a brighter
future.

Perhaps he recognized this appeal because he knew better than most how
awful humans could be.

The Politics of Technology

When the show was rebooted in the 1980s, the political horizon was
narrowing. Yet it was in this decade, just two years before the fall
of the Berlin Wall, that _Star Trek_ became most notably Marxian.
This was all thanks to the introduction of the “replicator,” a
futuristic 3D printer that can create anything out of recycled matter,
thus solving the problem of scarcity. So far, so science fiction.

But in Star Trek, technology alone doesn’t bring about utopia. As we
learn through the introduction of the Ferengi — an alien race whose
culture centers around greed and profiteering — the socialization of
the replicator is a political choice. The Ferengi’s replicators are
privatized, whereas replicators in the Federation are publicly owned.

While concepts such as warp-speed propulsion and teleportation remain
firmly in the realm of science fiction, many of Star Trek’s
technological predictions have materialized or are coming to pass —
including the concept of 3D printing at the molecular level
[[link removed]] and
the increasingly exploitative applications of artificial intelligence.
What capitalism renders unthinkable is the politics behind technology:
that developments in technology might benefit us rather than usher in
further alienation.

_Star Trek_ provides an antithesis to how capitalism predisposes us
to view technology, allowing us to imagine what society might look
like if technology were used purely for improving our quality of life.
Instead of following this path, the morsels of convenience we’ve
received through technological advancements are only enough to numb us
to the realization that we’ve become locked into a cycle of
consumerism and surveillance capitalism.

Constructing Utopia

Another utopian aspect of Star Trek is its depiction of solidarity.
Roddenberry had many “rules” that he insisted upon the show
following, but his most infamous is what’s become known as
“Roddenberry’s principle”: a mandate that conflict must never be
between the main characters, only with external forces.

Roddenberry’s argument was that, for the utopian conditions
of _Star Trek_ to be believable, the characters must represent the
best of humanity. In the episode “Remember Me,” the ship’s
doctor Beverly Crusher notes that crewmembers are disappearing. But
each time a person disappears, they become forgotten by everyone else;
to the rest of the crew, they never existed.

In a typical drama, this would be what’s called a “Cassandra
Truth” plotline: the hero discovers a conspiracy, nobody else
believes them, and so the hero has no choice but to solve the mystery
alone. But in _Star Trek_, rather than treat the doctor as though she
has lost her mind, the possibility that people are being erased from
existence is taken seriously and investigated by her colleagues.

Instead of the show’s drama revolving around interpersonal conflict,
problems are overcome through teamwork, and very rarely as the result
of one person’s heroism. It’s one of the most unique aspects of
the show; as viewers, we’ve come to expect conflict between
characters to be one of the most fundamental aspects of drama.

There’s comfort in knowing that no matter the scale of the problem,
you can trust the characters to communicate their thoughts and
feelings, weigh the situation objectively, and work together. But more
than comfort, _Star Trek_ continuously offers examples of
cooperation, conflict resolution, kindness, and empathy that are in
short supply in most modern dramas.

To me, this is perhaps the most radical element of _Star Trek_. In
simply showing the possibilities of cooperation, the show offers
something for us to all strive toward — and solidarity is no doubt
the first building block required for constructing utopia.

Sci-Fi Optimism

When the time comes for the twentieth-century capitalist Ralph
Offenhouse to return to twenty-fourth-century Earth, he’s at a loss.
“What will I do? How will I live?” he asks; “_What’s the
challenge?_” The problem is, Offenhouse has never allowed himself to
imagine an alternative to capitalism. And to someone that has lived
his whole life in a prison, there is nothing more daunting than being
set free. Like the prisoner in Plato’s cave, the instinct is to
return to the darkness that he’s accustomed to.

In a sense, we are all Offenhouse. We might not all suffer from his
peculiar strain of capitalist Stockholm syndrome, but we all,
naturally, struggle to imagine an alternative way of living. We all
live under the same political system that snuffs out any threats to
its existence by design, and it becomes harder to imagine an
alternative each day that this system entrenches itself deeper into
our lives.

Here lies the power of _Star Trek_. It’s easy to dismiss utopian
science-fiction as escapist, as though capitalist escapism is a lower
form of art than realism, but what good does the constant reminder
that everything is bad do for society? Negativity is hardly inspiring.
And besides, as Gene Roddenberry recognized (politicians take note),
optimism sells.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

FacebookTwitterEmail

CONTRIBUTORS

Simon Tyrie is a musician and activist from Luton.

* SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]]
* DONATE [[link removed]]

Our new issue on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War is out
now. Subscribe today for just $20 to get it in print!
[[link removed]]

* science fiction
[[link removed]]
* TV
[[link removed]]
* Technology
[[link removed]]
* Star Trek
[[link removed]]
* collectivism
[[link removed]]
* utopias
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]