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?
Yeah the Federation has private property and individual rights, so we wouldn't that be liberal?
Does the Federation really have private property? Are there landlords and business tyrants? Or does it just have personal property, things a person owns for their own personal use?
Personal rights also aren't monopolized by liberalism, as much as neoliberal media tells you it is so. Personal rights also existed in classical slave societies, under feudalism, and yes, under every Marxist state (I don't know about the weirdo ""communist"" ones like Peru or Cambodia)
I mean ppl own businesses, land and houses. Is that not private property?
I can't think of any societies that emphasize individual rights that aren't liberal
Consider Joseph Sisko's restaurant, Sisko's Creole Kitchen. Joseph owns the restaurant, but he doesn't sell anything. He provides goods and services, but he doesn't make any money. Sisko's Creole Kitchen is not a business, it is a labor of love that Joseph operates for himself and his community.
Additionally, the Federation is very socially liberal but it is not economically liberal. Economically, liberalism is a pro-capitalism ideology and capitalism has been abolished in the Federation.
Well an interesting question would be, could the government just seize his restaurant in the name of the good of society? If not, then it's private property as we understand it, no? Whether it makes money or not
Joseph Sisko's restaurant is his personal property, not his private property since it is not a money-making venture. Since money, and capitalism, do not exist in the Federation, there is no private property in any form. Furthermore, given Star Trek's egalitarian/utopian vision of the future, no one is going to take Joseph Sisko's restaurant -- the laws of the United Earth government (which has direct jurisdiction over Earth) exist (imo) to protect people's personal property, not take it away.
The government can seize private property in America via eminent domain. It's not a question of seizure, but what the space is actually being used for. Again, this is largely an economic question, so you can't sidestep economics.
It is interesting to consider that in the vastness of space that something like a single restaurant might be viewed similarly to a glass of water in the US.
Sure the government could come in and declare eminent domain on my glass of water, but it’s value is so low as to be effectively a nonissue.
In a future where there are tons of planets and tons of replicators, perhaps the idea of personal property has just been extended to include things like a restaurant or a vineyard.
If you use the definition that private property is the private ownership over the means of production, it could be reasoned that something like Sisko’s is not necessarily a means of production but more akin to personal property. If someone on earth wants some creole food they can use any number of replicators to produce and enjoy that. Sisko’s and Picard’s vineyard might be similar to how we would look upon historical preservation. Some people could choose to spend their lives making things the old fashioned way because they enjoy it and people enjoy experiencing it.
The economy of Star Trek is interesting, but I think there are plenty of times when the utility of storytelling ends up mucking with the clarity of the message. One example I was just thinking about the other day was the introduction of the borg queen.
I get why it’s nice for there to be a borg queen, she can embody a more nuanced thinking part of the borg collective and the audience can much more readily understand the idea of a queen ruling over her subjects (whether that be like the rulers of humanity or like the queen bee as they sometimes say). But it also kind of sucks. The borg are such a fascinating species, a collective hive mind acting to attain perfection, more a force of nature than any of the other species we encounter.
While the borg queen is a compelling character and is acted wonderfully, I can’t feel a bit sad that it’s so normal and pedestrian. It turns the borg from this almost incomprehensible force into something so regular, a bunch of drones carrying out the will of the queen. While expedient to the storytelling, I like the idea of what the borg are pre-borg-queen more than what they become post-borg-queen.
I think with the economy a similar thing happens in storylines. There are many scenes that make it clear that humanity doesn’t have money anymore, but when you are telling a story and you want to have some stakes and obstacles, money is soooooo useful. Money makes it trivial to have an obstacle, or shit we need some latinum. Money makes it trivial to introduce stakes.
Star Trek had to try to thread this needle of presenting a post scarcity society while also making a dramatic engaging show for people living in a capitalist society. Scarcity is at the heart of a lot of drama, if you can just replicate your way out of every problem it’s not a very interesting show. It also leads to a thing that once you spot it’s hard not to spot, so much of the tension is aided by the “oh no we can’t replicate that” McGuffin. It plays out in a lot of episodes because otherwise every episode would be 5 minutes of “there’s an outbreak of tallarian flu on Corso V, we emailed them the recipe for the medicine and told them to replicate it.” Then the credits roll.
That's a really good point, actually
Firstly, I thought it was a moneyless society. What do the so-called businesses operate with? Secondly, owning land is not the same as using land ownership to extract a rent from people who don't own land, which is what a landlord is. You're asking an economic question, so economic relations are important!
Genuinely, how hard are you thinking? Everywhere from Ancient Greece to Medieval Ireland to every iteration of China (except Japanese occupation) had personal rights.
"Emphasize" here is a weasel word, but can you really say it about the darling of neoliberalism, America? America abuses more rights abroad than any other country, so I guess you mean American denizens. Oh, but non-citizens get treated horribly, especially illegal immigrants but also immigrants in general, so you must just mean citizens. Then again, prisoners in America are kept in conditions consistent with its own definition of slavery, which is why there's a cutout in the Thirteenth Amendment to permit just that, so I guess non-criminal citizens? Of course, being homeless in quite a lot of America is de-facto criminal and the homeless suffer heinous abuse by the cops with little recourse, so I guess it's actually the housed, non-criminal citizens. Speaking of the cops, they kill over a thousand people every year, something that would be called "summary execution" if it was done by America's enemies. Do I need to keep going? And mind you, this is all at the relative zenith of human rights in America, ignoring chattel slavery, Jim Crow, the various forms of patriarchal domination, disenfranchisement of non-land-owners, and so on.
What I'm saying is that your definition needs work.
I'm pretty sure all those ancient societies didn't have universal human rights and civil liberties. The concept of rights doesn't really begin until the 1600s afaik and universal rights until the 1800s at the earliest. There are non liberal societies right now, they're all dictatorships with no freedoms, hence my statement
What in the world are you talking about? Most societies throughout history had rights for their citizens.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/video/significance-of-citizenship-in-ancient-greece.html
See my screed about America. Universal how?
But this flatly isn't true. Let's pick a country that both of us probably hate: Saudi Arabia. There are lots of backwards laws and abuses, but cops still typically need a warrant to search your house and aren't allowed to just go in and beat you to death. There are cases where they do anyway, but so it goes in most states. This black-and-white view where people are free in liberal states and there are "no freedoms" in other states is unserious.
It's also worth pointing out, and this might go a little way to explaining your argument with someone else in this thread, that the magical way neoliberals talk about "dictatorship" doesn't make any sense. A government might nominally operate in an autocratic way, where one dude's word is law, but it cannot subsist on one dude's authority. That autocrat's authority is dependent on some class of people who interests he serves creating the material basis for him to keep ruling (Saudi Arabia is a good example, since it is an absolute monarchy that serves the capitalist class). Thus, any so-called dictatorship is really the rule of that class and not of that individual, even if it nominally goes through the decrees of the individual. Likewise, if one class is fundamentally in power, it is no less of a dictatorship if the nominal system is more open, because the real power hasn't changed.
Land and houses aren't private property unless you're renting them out. If they aren't a financial asset, they're just personal property.
Businesses are an interesting question? The Federation, or at least its core worlds, doesn't use money (by the 24th century). The only business we see onscreen, on a Federation core world, as far as I can remember, is Sisko's Creole Kitchen. If there's no money, why does Joseph Sisko run it? My guess is to maintain the tradition of Creole cuisine, to perfect his skills as a chef, to meet and interact with guests, and to preserve an historic New Orleans building by keeping it in use. Is it private property? Does he own it? He owns the business in some abstract sense, but the building? Probably not. I'd expect he holds it in trust in some kind of legal arrangement with the city, but there's really no onscreen evidence.
No, the Federation has personal property, not private property.