In a conversation with my sons last weekend the subject of Star Trek came up. My oldest, Nigel, told me he had read that one of the writers became frustrated with Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that the Federation was a crime-free, money-free utopia. Where would the conflict for drama come from? I was suddenly struck by an idea, after a lifetime of being a Star Trek fan—starting with the original series that was my absolute favorite TV show when I was a child—that had never occurred to me before: the economic system described in the Star Trek canon was fundamentally Communist in nature. And in one of the subsequent series of the Star Trek universe—Deep Space Nine—free market economics (aka Capitalism) is mocked and vilified in the form of the alien race the Ferengi. Not only are the Ferengi portrayed as icons of greed, bigotry and exploitation, but physically ugly and repulsive to drive the point home on subconscious levels.
Later I got curious about this and looked it up on the web. It turns out I’m not the first to whom this has occurred, at least not the broader subject of the economics of Star Trek. There’s quite a few YouTube videos on the subject and two economists have even written books about it, Trekonomics by Manu Saadia and The Economics of Star Trek by Rick Webb. It seems that both books deny that Star Trek society is Communist because it still allows the ownership of personal property and individual freedom, and instead they talk about it being a “post scarcity” society. Perhaps because, as Thomas Sowell has written, the definition of economics is “the allocation of scarce resources that have alternate uses.” And that Maynard Keynes described the central problem of social order is scarcity—a problem he predicted would end in 100 years (well, *that* didn’t happen).
Before I go further let me make clear that this whole moneyless economic system of Star Trek has not been a consistent feature throughout the Star Trek universe. There are references to Scotty “buying” a boat and Kirk “selling” his childhood home, as well as other, presumably, monetary transactions in the TV shows and films. But in several places where the economics of the Star Trek Federation has been specifically addressed, the writers have made it clear that there is no money and people work “to better themselves and mankind.”
So now to my argument that Star Trek society is, if not entirely, at least fundamentally Communist. Let me start with a definition of Communism. Most of us, when we think of Communism, think of the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China. What most people don’t realize is that neither of these is Communist, and in fact there has never been, nor will there ever be a Communist state. This is because, according to Marxist theory, Communism is the final condition of social evolution wherein there is NO state, a social utopia in which all countries and governments have faded away and everyone is simply sharing everything, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.” With this in mind, calling a country Communist is an oxymoron.
The fact that the Star Trek Federation has a military and some sort of elected government (although that’s never been made clear) and that private ownership of property exists, would also preclude it from being strictly Communist. But I would assert that it being a moneyless society in which work is motivated solely by personal improvement and the “betterment of mankind,” makes it much closer to the Communist ideal than any of the countries currently called Communist, all of which still have a monetary system and a hierarchy of work, the lower echelons of which are forced—nobody in “Communist” countries gets a complete free ride; everyone that can still has to work.
So the next question is how does this Star Trek economy actually *work*? All this talk about working to improve one’s self and better mankind sounds great…if you’re a doctor or a teacher or a starship captain. But who’s going to want to work cleaning toilets or slopping hogs, or any number of other jobs that are boring or dirty or just downright unpleasant? Because I don’t see a bunch of robots toiling away at this kind of thing in any Star Trek TV shows or movies. The presumption of the Star Trek economy is that it’s “post scarcity”, that due to scientific advances and replicator technology all disease, hunger, shelter—all the basic needs of life—are met and no one needs to work for money to supply those necessities. This is wish fulfillment of the most fanciful nature; you might as well say that there’s an infinite number of genies who are magically producing everything we want. But, for the sake of argument let’s say that future technology could actually accomplish this: would that inevitably lead to peace, the end of crime and the kind of utopian social order depicted in Star Trek? No, because this denies basic realities of human nature. But of course that conceit has been at the heart of Marxism and the Communist ideal—that man is perfectible under the right social conditions, that crime, antisocial pathology and human misery are all results of unmet needs and inequality of results, or as Rousseau said, man in his natural state *is* perfect but is enslaved by corrupt governments.
The problem with the vision of Star Trek economics and Federation utopianism is two-fold: the first being a complete misunderstanding of human nature, the second being a complete misunderstanding of free market enterprise (Capitalism). I think I can deal with both of these at the same time.
Thomas Sowell has written about the two main concepts of human nature which he calls the “constrained” or “tragic” view of human nature and the “unconstrained” view of human nature. The “unconstrained” view is that held by Marx and other social utopians, the view that human nature is perfectible if only the right social conditions are met—conditions which *they* know how to implement. The “constrained” or “tragic” view might also be called the biblical view, that man is fallen and irredeemably flawed—this side of heaven—and can never be perfected, only ameliorated. Free market enterprise understands human nature in the constrained view and realistically incorporates that reality in its system of incentives and disincentives. As Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” In other words, benign self-interest (but *not* greed—more on this later.)
Why do people work at boring, dirty and generally unpleasant jobs now? The Marxist says it’s because they are oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie and I can presume that would be something like the answer given by Kirk or Picard. But watch a few episodes of Mike Row’s Dirty Jobs and you come away with a much different picture. People take pride in their work, even when it consists of unpleasant, dirty conditions and even drudgery; and not just in the work itself but in the fact that they are making their own way in the world, providing for themselves and their loved ones. This is what economist and social scientist Arthur Brooks has called “happiness due to earned success.” The data is voluminous and very clear on this: people are happy when they feel they have *earned* their success, not when it’s just given to them; and this is regardless of how much money that success has afforded them. It’s essentially tied to the dignity and feeling of accomplishment of making their way in the world, of earning their living. (Brooks has written a number of books on this, by the way.) An essential part of this equation is *earning*—the very fact that a market transaction occurs, you work and you get *paid* for your work. A feeling of “improving yourself and bettering all mankind” could never begin to substitute for that, or motivate anyone to work a “dirty job.”
At the core of all misconceptions of free market enterprise (Capitalism) is the zero sum myth. This is the idea that all wealth, all money, all resources, are a “fixed pie” and for one to get a larger slice means that someone else gets a smaller slice. In other words, wealth is accumulated at the expense of others: for one to become rich, someone else must become poor. This faulty thinking has a long history and can be heard in old axioms such as the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” and to other myths such as that Capitalism is “driven by greed.” Remember the movie Wall Street and the Gordon Gekko character’s speech, “greed is good?” The fact is that free market enterprise is driven by altruism, by serving the customer the absolute best that you can, because only in that way can you hope to have a successful business. Rip off your customers and see how long you stay in business. And yet listen to anyone with the anti-Capitalist viewpoint—and it’s hard to find anything *but* an anti-Capitalist viewpoint in the press or any form of popular media and entertainment—and you’ll come away with the idea that Capitalists do nothing but rip off their customers. As for the “fixed pie” myth, in man’s natural state, the pie is not only not fixed in size, the pie doesn’t even exist. First somebody—let’s call her entrepreneur—had to *think* of a pie. Then she had to gather the ingredients. Then she had to *make* the pie. That’s how it went with every single thing that makes up what we call an economy: every product, every service, every building, every car…everything. It had to be conceived and then built, one at a time. And each one of those things built *added* to the size of pie.
In one of the videos I watched the presenter made a big deal about how something like the 26 richest people on earth own as much as the poorest 3.8 billion people. My question is, did they acquire their wealth by stealing it from those poor people? If not, if what they actually did was *create* that wealth that didn’t exist before, what’s your problem? A more interesting statistic to me is that in about 12 years world poverty was cut in half. It wasn’t foreign aid that did that, it wasn’t non-governmental organizations that did that—it was free market capitalism that did that. No economic system in the history of mankind has enriched humanity and improved living conditions all over the globe as has free market capitalism. Economist Deirdre McClosky has written extensively on this. She calls it “The Great Enrichment.” According to the data, since the 1800s the developed world experienced an increase in wealth of 3,000%!
So after all that I can say that I still like Star Trek, at least its science fiction elements, but their economic system is pure fantasy nonsense.
