Is the Federation communist?
- Thread starter qmithani
- Start date
But then again, the Federation society as presented in TNG onwards does not strike me as realistic either - for similar reasons.
The DS9 writers agree with you, there. They went to great lengths to show that the Federation wasn't gleaming all over.
I beg to differ.
TNG in the early seasons showed what civilized humans could look like.
I personally liked the premise.
They were NOT perfect though ...
If you consider the elimination of mindless shouting, losing temper at every insignificant stupidity and cursing at every possible turn as 'perfect' ... lol ... if anything, it's a sign of a civilized society that learned to deal with things differently (as actual adults compared to 'childlike behavior' exhibited by many adults today).
You have people in this day and age who behave like early TNG humans did.
I hardly call that unrealistic, and if anything, what DS9 did ... well, it only recreated contemporary people in the future and dumb down the technological aspect significantly to allow the drama to 'flourish' ... which is why I considered DS9 to be not on the same level as previous Trek shows (however, still entertaining enough to watch).
The DS9 characters were FAR from being modern humans - they simply weren't spolied naive propaganda-filled twits like the TNG and VOY crews - unlike them, they've lived most of their lives in tough situations or on the fringe.
Humans lose their temper. Humans get mad at each other. We disagree. Remove that energy from a society, and honestly, what do you have? A society where everyone agrees with each other. Screw that. That society would stagnate endlessly. There would be no change, no progress. It would be an anti-utopia.
Honestly? The impression I have of the 24th Century Federation is not a good one. I like the 23rd century Federation - it seems they've made a good niche for themselves, but frankly, the 24th century Feds are full of themselves. They don't just think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, they seem to think they know it, and they love rubbing everyone's faces in it. Talk about childish. Their favorite pasttimes seem to be lecturing people from the 20th/21st century about how superior they are, and lecturing people from "backwards" alien cultures about how superior they are. Sure, personal freedoms have reached a new high - but I'll bet most people won't want to set foot off of their own planet. Adventurous people are an anomaly even in today's world, most are content to be sheep. And sheep are what most in the Federation are likely to be, even though they have the potential to be so much more.
Sorry, I'd much prefer to be hanging around on the edge of the Federation, far from its civilized core, just so I don't have to listen to pedantic drones babble about how great their society is.
Despite this - it certainly is insidious - far more appealing than any of the other major powers, but I'm sure there are plenty of minor space powers who provide similar freedoms without being full of their own shit.
Yeah, I think that it's more about the self satisfaction than any political ideology.
The 23rd Century Federation was really nothing more than taking 20th century people and putting them in space. There wasn't nothing there that made it the "future" other than the tech. At least the other shows did show that all that tech plus finding out how many alien races were out there would affect society.
As for the TNG+ crews looking down on 20th/21st century people, it's no different than what we do nowadays when we talk about how primitive people used to be 200-300 years ago. It's just that we don't like how the tables have been turned and now it's being done to us by the people who logically WOULD look down upon us as primitive: our own future selves.
As for the DS9 characters, they really aren't any different from the TNG+ crews, most of their conflict and such came from external sources and not from each other.
As for the TNG+ crews looking down on 20th/21st century people, it's no different than what we do nowadays when we talk about how primitive people used to be 200-300 years ago. It's just that we don't like how the tables have been turned and now it's being done to us by the people who logically WOULD look down upon us as primitive: our own future selves.
As for the DS9 characters, they really aren't any different from the TNG+ crews, most of their conflict and such came from external sources and not from each other.
I never understood why people got so hysterical over this question.
There are two things here, the economy and the culture:
The Economy
The only thing that made it communist (in the sense of the real meaning of communism as opposed to those dictatorships that called themselves communist) was that there was no currency based economy, of course today that would probably be impractical but with the tech like replicators money would become obsolete for anything but very rare items or things replicators could not produce, hence the "credits" etc..
Personally I'd love a world like this if it could be made to work but with our current level of technology it probably can't.
Why does it confuse people that there were restraints and wine companies in the future? You must not see the future (just as the past) through the prism of your own cultures current values and outlook, the profit motive may motivate some things but not everything, and people still need to eat so why would restraints not exist? Is it so unusual to think people would want the nice eating out experience of properly cooked food instead of eating out of a replicator?
and Sisko seems to love interacting with people, love cooking and clearly cooks in a way thats very unique and popular so why would he not want to provide this need?
The Culture
Why people are making this connection here I don't know, this has nothing to do with communism.
I think we can all agree that many of the TNG characters were up their own asses in many ways, the way they described humanity to others was more than pride it was arrogence...now why would this make their society communist? The people of the USA and Europe today are EXTREMELY arrogant and totally confident in the superiority of their/our way of life looking down on other parts of our planet.
Luckily DS9 undid this damage, as Sisko said "people look at earth and they see paradise well it's easy to be a saint in paradise, the people in the DMZ do not live in paradise", or as Quark said:
"let me tell you something about humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people become as nasty and as violent as the most blood thirsty Klingon."
This reflects the reality, humans are only civilized because the socialisation process and civilization process in their society makes them that way, change the conditions and you get a different culture, we can see this on Earth today.
DS9 gets a bad rap for "abandoning the Roddenberry image of the future" well I disagree, it was just as optimistic about what humans could acheive (take the bell riots episode) but accepted that flaws are also part of our nature and more evolved does not mean perfect.
TNG also got rid of this up it's ass attidue when Lilly ripped Picard a new one in First Contact: "you didn't even try!! WHERE WAS YOUR EVOLVED SENSIBILITY THEN??"
As for individuality ....did you miss the whole speeches to the borg on it's importance they had characters making every 30 seconds?
Evolution (the correct sociological term for what most people here say "evolution" is actually civilization process) is a process not an end in itself and what bugged me about some TNG characters was they preented themselves as a perfect evoloutionary end point, we have reached perfection kinda thing, it was smug.
There are two things here, the economy and the culture:
The Economy
The only thing that made it communist (in the sense of the real meaning of communism as opposed to those dictatorships that called themselves communist) was that there was no currency based economy, of course today that would probably be impractical but with the tech like replicators money would become obsolete for anything but very rare items or things replicators could not produce, hence the "credits" etc..
Personally I'd love a world like this if it could be made to work but with our current level of technology it probably can't.
Why does it confuse people that there were restraints and wine companies in the future? You must not see the future (just as the past) through the prism of your own cultures current values and outlook, the profit motive may motivate some things but not everything, and people still need to eat so why would restraints not exist? Is it so unusual to think people would want the nice eating out experience of properly cooked food instead of eating out of a replicator?
and Sisko seems to love interacting with people, love cooking and clearly cooks in a way thats very unique and popular so why would he not want to provide this need?
The Culture
Why people are making this connection here I don't know, this has nothing to do with communism.
I think we can all agree that many of the TNG characters were up their own asses in many ways, the way they described humanity to others was more than pride it was arrogence...now why would this make their society communist? The people of the USA and Europe today are EXTREMELY arrogant and totally confident in the superiority of their/our way of life looking down on other parts of our planet.
Luckily DS9 undid this damage, as Sisko said "people look at earth and they see paradise well it's easy to be a saint in paradise, the people in the DMZ do not live in paradise", or as Quark said:
"let me tell you something about humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people become as nasty and as violent as the most blood thirsty Klingon."
This reflects the reality, humans are only civilized because the socialisation process and civilization process in their society makes them that way, change the conditions and you get a different culture, we can see this on Earth today.
DS9 gets a bad rap for "abandoning the Roddenberry image of the future" well I disagree, it was just as optimistic about what humans could acheive (take the bell riots episode) but accepted that flaws are also part of our nature and more evolved does not mean perfect.
TNG also got rid of this up it's ass attidue when Lilly ripped Picard a new one in First Contact: "you didn't even try!! WHERE WAS YOUR EVOLVED SENSIBILITY THEN??"
As for individuality ....did you miss the whole speeches to the borg on it's importance they had characters making every 30 seconds?
Evolution (the correct sociological term for what most people here say "evolution" is actually civilization process) is a process not an end in itself and what bugged me about some TNG characters was they preented themselves as a perfect evoloutionary end point, we have reached perfection kinda thing, it was smug.
I tend to agree.
I don't think it has ever been expressly stated that people do not own things in the time of Trek on screen. I know that Roddenberry had some particularly unconventional ideas regarding that (many of which were espoused in the TMP novelization) but I don't think we ever heard anyone say 'we don't own stuff.'
To me, the thing that sets the 22nd/23rd and 24th centuries apart ideologically is the replicator. From what we saw in the 22nd/23rd centuries, I'm reasonably sure the synthesizers of those eras were relatively far removed from being able to meet everyone's needs, as we saw direct conflicts involving planets and resources, but I think by the 24th century the Federation has replicators that have pretty much taken care of the material needs of its citizens - hence the 'We work to better ourselves' bit.
The idea, I think, is that the replicator basically eliminates the need for redistribution of wealth that socialism and communism suggest is necessary to 'free' people and creates an egalitarian society where people can do what they want rather than worrying about where their meal or clothes are going to come from. In that regard, I'd say the Federation doesn't have an economic system that we could truly categorize by our modern standards, nor it is really worthwhile to try.
The general idea of Star Trek to me is the suggestion that we would work it all out on our own by then, so I'd say great pains were made by most of the creative folks involved not to promote one particular political ideology over another.
^A moniless economy, if we do want to assume it's truly moniless, and not just a bunch of Starfleet officers with expense accounts, would have to be a command economy. There is simply no other way for an advanced, scientific-industrial economy to run. It cannot run on barter. It is said not to run on money (and hence credit, in the sense of banker's credit, not 23d century credit). It is thus run by the state and controlled by the party bosses, or more likely experts appointed by the duly elected officials of the Federation's constituent governments through something resembling and possibly even surpassing our own democratic process.
Of course, the wide distribution of replicators means, effectively, real ownership of the means of production by the people. There would certainly be no bread lines.
The way I see it, the commissars still have plenty to do, however:
1)maintaining the energy regime, which I continue to insist is based on antimatter and not phlogiston or ether or yellow sunlight or the tragic death of both parents leading to a lifetime of fighting violent crime and also free energy from nowhere. God knows where they're getting the antimatter, but I've suggested x-ray binaries powering colliders in the past. Black holes and neutron stars are other possible large-scale natural energy sources.
2)running the real property system, which does apparently permit renewable conditional life estates, but fee ownership must be vested in the state, as without money, there's simply no prospect of alienability. The alternative to state ownership is a return to medieval concepts of land ownership.
3)tied in to (2), large scale construction projects.
4)maintaining the planetary transporter and interplanetary flight networks.
5)procuring everything Starfleet needs.
6)certifying professionals, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and so forth.
7)making sure everyone has a replicator and possibly a holodeck or public holodeck access.
8)keeping the Genetically Engineered Man down.
9)licensing private cooperatives such as, perhaps, the Daystrom Institute.
and
10)encouraging and financing deep space colonization efforts, which definitely ties in to responsibility (2) and possibly also (9).
Of course, the wide distribution of replicators means, effectively, real ownership of the means of production by the people. There would certainly be no bread lines.
The way I see it, the commissars still have plenty to do, however:
1)maintaining the energy regime, which I continue to insist is based on antimatter and not phlogiston or ether or yellow sunlight or the tragic death of both parents leading to a lifetime of fighting violent crime and also free energy from nowhere. God knows where they're getting the antimatter, but I've suggested x-ray binaries powering colliders in the past. Black holes and neutron stars are other possible large-scale natural energy sources.
2)running the real property system, which does apparently permit renewable conditional life estates, but fee ownership must be vested in the state, as without money, there's simply no prospect of alienability. The alternative to state ownership is a return to medieval concepts of land ownership.
3)tied in to (2), large scale construction projects.
4)maintaining the planetary transporter and interplanetary flight networks.
5)procuring everything Starfleet needs.
6)certifying professionals, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and so forth.
7)making sure everyone has a replicator and possibly a holodeck or public holodeck access.
8)keeping the Genetically Engineered Man down.
9)licensing private cooperatives such as, perhaps, the Daystrom Institute.
and
10)encouraging and financing deep space colonization efforts, which definitely ties in to responsibility (2) and possibly also (9).
You coudln't really cal it a command economy though could you? That suggests it's centralized but in fact it's even more decentralized than a market economy, anyone in their own kitchen with a replicator can produce more than a major supermarket in our present time.
With that kind of technology the prospect of shortages would be non existant as you would not have to worry about some planner forgetting to carry the 1 and leaving a whole country without bread just as you would not have to worry about getting a job you hate just to make money to live.
It's much more free than either a command or market system.
Clearly private property still exists as Picard home is still in their hands after all these years and Trills and Humans have been seen with their own businesses, though maybe not working for money.
With that kind of technology the prospect of shortages would be non existant as you would not have to worry about some planner forgetting to carry the 1 and leaving a whole country without bread just as you would not have to worry about getting a job you hate just to make money to live.
It's much more free than either a command or market system.
Clearly private property still exists as Picard home is still in their hands after all these years and Trills and Humans have been seen with their own businesses, though maybe not working for money.
The examples of private industry we see shed little light on the Federation economy's overall workings.
Ezri's mom's mining concern on New Sydney is capitalistic, true, but it is also not on a Federation member world. That a clearly human colony has resisted Federation membership is a whole other can of worms.
The Picards and Ben Sisko don't necessarily own their businesses, and need not own their land absolutely. A conditional life estate, conditioned on the maintenance of a business the Federation bureaucracy has found socially desirable, is a possible alternative to fee ownership in those cases, and fee (or outright) ownership is at the very least hard to imagine in an economy where private actors cannot use money and credit to efficiently alienate their land, and such an economy is probably repugnant to our sensibilities.
A little thought experiment:
Let's pretend the Federation isn't a command economy but still doesn't have money. Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan are newlyweds who have decided to move to Earth from their respective homeworlds. They decide to live in Paris, capital of the Federation. So they...
Well, what do they do? They of course have no money, so they cannot rent a room or buy a house. They cannot give a mortgage and note to a bank, and even if they could somehow arrange financing with, say, the Bank of Bolarus, no one is going to take their money because money is at least useless, and perhaps outlawed, for the established people of Earth. Jane and Johnny try to barter goods to obtain a dwelling space, but no one needs their goods either, due to replicators. So they fall back on the only valuable consideration still available in the Federation, personal services: Billy Earth says, fine, you can stay on this vineyard Billy owns in fee simple absolute, but Jane Andor has to tend to the vines and Johnny Vulcan has to mop up the estate's holodeck. They agree...
Due to the lack of money and credit, poor Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan have become the serfs of the dastardly Billy Earth!
You can change Billy Earth to the San Francisco Shipyards and Jane and Johnny's job to super-science engineers working on starships if you want. The economic relationship remains the same.
Land ownership without money does not work. We know this, because several hundred billion human beings have lived through similar property regimes, and, from England to Mexico to Russia to China, they have universally found it distasteful.
Now, in a command economy model, Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan simply apply with the appropriate agency and are assigned one of the available living quarters, which they receive as their right as Federation citizens.
There, of course, always exists the possibility that Picard was exaggerating, and the Federation has money. But absent a command economy, money is the only method I'm aware of for the efficient exchange of goods, services, and real estate.
Generally speaking the command economy is much less efficient, but technological advances have presumably made it so such inefficiencies are marginal and the potential for greater fairness the command economy offers has been embraced.
Ezri's mom's mining concern on New Sydney is capitalistic, true, but it is also not on a Federation member world. That a clearly human colony has resisted Federation membership is a whole other can of worms.
The Picards and Ben Sisko don't necessarily own their businesses, and need not own their land absolutely. A conditional life estate, conditioned on the maintenance of a business the Federation bureaucracy has found socially desirable, is a possible alternative to fee ownership in those cases, and fee (or outright) ownership is at the very least hard to imagine in an economy where private actors cannot use money and credit to efficiently alienate their land, and such an economy is probably repugnant to our sensibilities.
A little thought experiment:
Let's pretend the Federation isn't a command economy but still doesn't have money. Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan are newlyweds who have decided to move to Earth from their respective homeworlds. They decide to live in Paris, capital of the Federation. So they...
Well, what do they do? They of course have no money, so they cannot rent a room or buy a house. They cannot give a mortgage and note to a bank, and even if they could somehow arrange financing with, say, the Bank of Bolarus, no one is going to take their money because money is at least useless, and perhaps outlawed, for the established people of Earth. Jane and Johnny try to barter goods to obtain a dwelling space, but no one needs their goods either, due to replicators. So they fall back on the only valuable consideration still available in the Federation, personal services: Billy Earth says, fine, you can stay on this vineyard Billy owns in fee simple absolute, but Jane Andor has to tend to the vines and Johnny Vulcan has to mop up the estate's holodeck. They agree...
Due to the lack of money and credit, poor Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan have become the serfs of the dastardly Billy Earth!
You can change Billy Earth to the San Francisco Shipyards and Jane and Johnny's job to super-science engineers working on starships if you want. The economic relationship remains the same.
Land ownership without money does not work. We know this, because several hundred billion human beings have lived through similar property regimes, and, from England to Mexico to Russia to China, they have universally found it distasteful.
Now, in a command economy model, Jane Andor and Johnny Vulcan simply apply with the appropriate agency and are assigned one of the available living quarters, which they receive as their right as Federation citizens.
There, of course, always exists the possibility that Picard was exaggerating, and the Federation has money. But absent a command economy, money is the only method I'm aware of for the efficient exchange of goods, services, and real estate.
Generally speaking the command economy is much less efficient, but technological advances have presumably made it so such inefficiencies are marginal and the potential for greater fairness the command economy offers has been embraced.
I always understood it as money didn't matter on Earth, not the Federation in general, hence why even the humans on DS9 had money, except for Jake until he got a job. I suppose Earthers (as human cultures on other worlds may vary) get an expense account from Starfleet which they can draw from if they want to spin a dabo wheel every once in awhile or bring a souvenir home. Whereas those not in Starfleet have to get a job, such again as Jake when he becomes a journalist for the Federation.
But as well as the replicator being a huge reason why Earth feels it no longer needs money, there's another thing to consider that is mentioned in DS9. Earth has adopted a philosophy of bettering itself and therefore has given up many of the things they once thought important. This probably stims from humanity's first contact with the Vulcans. In one night the course of history is changed for the better because some guy thought it would be cool to make a ship go faster than light. And for all of Cochrane's protesting in the movie about how it was all about the money, it boiled down to just being something he wanted to do and maybe sell the specs to someone. But that one thought that humanity can move forward just on an idea, and without a lot of money, probably became the basis for getting rid of what a lot of people would see as something that just gets in the way.
But as well as the replicator being a huge reason why Earth feels it no longer needs money, there's another thing to consider that is mentioned in DS9. Earth has adopted a philosophy of bettering itself and therefore has given up many of the things they once thought important. This probably stims from humanity's first contact with the Vulcans. In one night the course of history is changed for the better because some guy thought it would be cool to make a ship go faster than light. And for all of Cochrane's protesting in the movie about how it was all about the money, it boiled down to just being something he wanted to do and maybe sell the specs to someone. But that one thought that humanity can move forward just on an idea, and without a lot of money, probably became the basis for getting rid of what a lot of people would see as something that just gets in the way.
Nope. Communism doesn't work. The Federation does.
Stop right there.
What you're describing is not possible. It's a contradiction in terms.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Uh... capitalism doesn't work at all. The only reason more people aren't working for hunger wages, 15 hours a day in body breaking exercises, are because there are laws that limit what people in charge of companies can do; which basically means we're not really living in a true capitalism anymore - and we still got people living on the streets, and the hunger wages and 15 hours workdays simply migrated to countries without those laws.
Democracy, like Marx's basic ideas, only works if not abused. ^
We don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic. If we're talking about the U.S. that is.
Well of course when you REALLY get into thinking about the nuts and bolts of a moneyless economy, even with replicators, it gets quite complicated, but just because it's hard to think of how it would work doens't mean it coudln't.
Also of course, if the show showed how such an economy could work in detail that kinda detail would take away from the entertainment thus bore the fans and if it was easily explained how a system like that could work then we'd be using that system already because it looks pretty damm good!
Capitalism as we know it has only existed for a sliver of human history, so I think the point is not as such to advocate a specific economy model (which is why it was so vague, and showing the principles it operates on rather than specifics) but to get the viewer to do some consciousness raising, and sort of...zoom out a bit and realize that the way things work now is not necessarily the way they always will.
The Federation is portrayed as a Utopia, and many people say Utopianism is dangerous as it leads to extremism as people think "x is not perfect enough", but utopianism is relative, the modern welfare state we live in in Europe and North America would be a utopia compared to Somalia today or Europe and the US 200 years ago.
It's all relative.
BUT...at the rate were currently developing, worldwide it looks to me like it's going to take a lot longer than 200 years to get to the kind of world we see on the show...
Also of course, if the show showed how such an economy could work in detail that kinda detail would take away from the entertainment thus bore the fans and if it was easily explained how a system like that could work then we'd be using that system already because it looks pretty damm good!
Capitalism as we know it has only existed for a sliver of human history, so I think the point is not as such to advocate a specific economy model (which is why it was so vague, and showing the principles it operates on rather than specifics) but to get the viewer to do some consciousness raising, and sort of...zoom out a bit and realize that the way things work now is not necessarily the way they always will.
The Federation is portrayed as a Utopia, and many people say Utopianism is dangerous as it leads to extremism as people think "x is not perfect enough", but utopianism is relative, the modern welfare state we live in in Europe and North America would be a utopia compared to Somalia today or Europe and the US 200 years ago.
It's all relative.
BUT...at the rate were currently developing, worldwide it looks to me like it's going to take a lot longer than 200 years to get to the kind of world we see on the show...
Utopias only work if they're inhabited by saints, and as we have all seen, that does not in fact occur, even in Trek.
I'd argue that any economic system is only workable if it is 'diluted' and protected by a particular political ideology and not abused by those in charge. I'd say the reason communism has been shown to fail is because it's both an economic and political system in one.
Clearly then, Trek has figured out how to make their system work, so it can't be true communism, unless by the time of Trek the fundamental nature of people has changed.
Clearly then, Trek has figured out how to make their system work, so it can't be true communism, unless by the time of Trek the fundamental nature of people has changed.
Keep in mind that it wasn't just 200 years of humanity developing on its' own that led to what we see, it also had several civilization-altering events like WWIII (Which likely wiped out most people who would oppose a United Earth), seeing we weren't alone in the universe (a good enough reason for the surviving humans to not want to repeat their silly past hatreds and work together better), and the interactions with said greater universe bringing forth more advanced technologies than anything we have today.
So it's fair to say Trek Humans had more of a quantum leap in development (or at least more drive to develop themselves) than just humans alone for 200 years.
So it's fair to say Trek Humans had more of a quantum leap in development (or at least more drive to develop themselves) than just humans alone for 200 years.
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