this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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The Federation is Socialist, but Star Trek is not a Marxist piece of media.
It follows a Liberal, Democratic-Socialist, Reformist line of thinking - that, at least once the world has been shocked by the brutality of global war and eugenics - Humanity will "come to it's senses" and move towards Democratic Socialism through reform. When post-scarcity is achieved, the Capitalist class will just let this happen.
It is a Socialist world devoid of the ideas of class conflict; it presents a world compatible with Socialist ideals but not one compatible with scientific Socialist theory.
That's not to say you can't still like Star Trek as a show or use the Federation as an example of a good Socialist society. You just have to keep in mind that the world's history does not make sense when viewed through the lens of Marxist class conflict.
The "brutality of global war and eugenics" already happened in WW2, but did Humanity come to it's senses? Even after it ended?
Even if it did, has a certain bald eagle allowed them to come to senses?
Just because Star Trek depicts a post-class society (and is vague about how it arrives there), doesn't make it not Marxist. It just focuses on the end result of Marxism (the abolition of classes / post-class), rather than the historic period of class conflict.
My point was that the Socialist society of Star Trek's Federation was not arrived through class struggle - it imagines a world where the Capitalist class just "allowed" Socialism to happen, instead of manufacturing scarcity to maintain their positions.
I was not claiming that the Federation in Star Trek is not compatible with Marxism/is not a Marxist state; I am claiming that the world of Star Trek does not work according to the Marxist understanding of historical materialism. Instead, it uses the Democratic-Socialist framework - it ignores bourgeois class interests and imagines a world where progress can be made through peaceful Democratic reform.
You're focusing on a period of socialism that Star Trek doesn't depict, and criticizing things that are missing (the historic period of class struggle), not what's there (a post-class society focused on exploration and mutual cooperation with other worlds).
It seems a stretch to say trek is demsoc, or that the transition was a peaceful reformist one. We're given hints that the abolition of classes occurred after a violent nuclear world war which nearly destroys humanity, massive internal upheavals and poverty, and the arrival of vulcans. I agree it'd be nice if that was elaborated upon more, but that's a different show, and certainly not one that would be allowed to be made in the belly of the beast.
If anything, i've seen much more direct claims (not mine) that it's anticommunist: https://communistkenobi.tumblr.com/post/737508042870079488/the-missing-context-from-this-post-is-that-any
https://communistkenobi.tumblr.com/post/737463878390366208/ok-so-the-omega-glory-episode-in-tos-written-by
I do, however, have no first-hand experience of watching any ST installments.
This is completely wrong, and you probably shouldn't be answering if you haven't watched a single trek show.
Can you explain further? Or do the articles you posted in your top level comment do so?
That specific TOS episode sounds pretty dire as described. So id like to know what the counterpoint is.
Yeah, read those first, or better, watch the show. I'd have to recall that specific episode, but a single star trek episode can't undo several series each with hundreds of episodes of fully automated luxury gay space socialism. The op had not seen a single series, and was arguing by proxy.
The old show had some cringe moments and episodes, but it's spirit was also anti-imperialist and socialist. It even had chekov, a russian character, at the height of the cold war. Could you imagine a show nowadays having a chinese or russian character that isn't openly liberal.
Using the Original Series episodes for this examination is a bit unfair. That show was on a shoestring budget and they were making up the world building as they went along. Thr futuristic post scarcity utopia thing came more with TNG. In the time between TOS and TNG, Roddenberry wasn't getting much TV work and did the convention circuit a lot where he was worshipped a bit too much and too often by fans and was also a beatnik sex guy who was drinking and doing pills a lot and started believing his own hype. Star Trek always presented a better future and something to strive towards but in TOS the society and economic model was shown to still be pretty similar to 1966 America (tos had currency, it gets mentioned often), but it the time between with Roddenberry's ego getting pumped and him attending Q&A sessions where he'd just make shit up about the world building. By the time TNG came around he had all these half baked utopian ideas going around his drug addled brain and was given wayyyy too much creative control at the start of tng and took things too far in many places like arguing that a child wouldn't morn his dead parents cause they were too enlightened for that now. After he died things got rolled back by about a third to a semi reasonable but poorly thought out utopia.
As a big retro Dungeons and Dragons fan, I've grown really tired over the years of the "Anything that even remotely resembles a 'Colonial Trope' is bad" arguments.