Starship Troopers and Formalism
'Violence is the supreme authority, from which all authority is derived.'
Charles Haywood always says that his book reviews are an outlet for his own thoughts, that they are ‘essays posing as book reviews’. I don’t think that’s quite fair to himself, as his book reviews do tend to be about the actual book and what he thought of it. However I think I want to start a trend of doing exactly what he describes doing but with movies and novels. I will use the film/book as a backdrop to talk about political ideas, even if not the core focus of the work itself, like with my Blade Runner article.
In this article, I’m going to be talking about Starship Troopers, both the book and the film, (an absolutely terrible satire that unintentionally serves as a relatively faithful adaptation of the book.) However, the book gives more information about the fictional setting, so I will be focusing on the book slightly more, including quotes from it.
This subject has been tackled by Carl Benjamin in his video essay, and I don’t disagree with a single part of it. I highly recommend you go and watch that, as well as reading the book and watching the movie. But I think I have my own take and perspective which justifies the existence of this article.
I will explore the political theory behind Starship Troopers, and how they relate to various ideas on the Dissident Right; namely, Yarvin’s doctrine of Formalism. I will discuss the Politics of the fictional Terran Federation, compare it to the Formalism of Curtis Yarvin, and then conclude whether the system of the Terran Federation is a desirable one, predominantly praising but also critiquing some aspects of Robert A. Heinlein’s vision.
Politics of the Terran Federation
So, very simply the plot of Starship Troopers is that there are giant bugs, with a collectivist mindset and lacking in individualism, who try to invade earth, and humans, under the world government of the ‘Terran Federation’ have to stop them.
However, when it comes to the book at least, most of the plot is just a vehicle by which Robert A. Heinlein can explore his political ideas, which are very interesting, and what makes the book stand out from a typical sci-fi action novel.
Core Political Ideology
In Starship Troopers, all of earth is a federation known as the ‘Terran Federation’. One could call this ‘globalist’, but in reality, with the Bugs ‘the outsider’, Earth is mostly a stand-in for a republican federation like the United States or Switzerland.
In the Terran Federation, only those who have done ‘Federal Service’ get the right to vote and stand for office, becoming a ‘citizen’. This most typically involves military service, but can also mean working for any part of the defence industry. All are welcome to do Federal Service, regardless of age, gender, or disability, and ‘earn’ the right to vote through putting their life on the line in the defence of the collective. Those who are not citizens are ‘civilians’, of which many live comfortable and prosperous lives, like Johnny Rico’s father, the only difference being that they are not permitted to vote or stand for election
So, what is the rationale for only giving full ‘citizenship’ to those who have completed military service? The film and the book are almost word for word the same on this point.
Film:
Book:
I thought about it during the last session of our class in History and Moral Philosophy. H. & M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to take it but nobody had to pass it -- and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a question. Then the argument would start.
But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: "My mother says that violence never settles anything."
"So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn't your mother tell them so? Or why don't you?"
They had tangled before -- since you couldn't flunk the course, it wasn't necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, "You're making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!"
"You seemed to be unaware of it," he said grimly. "Since you do know it, wouldn't you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that `violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."
He sighed. "Another year, another class -- and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think." Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. "You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?"
"The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not."
"The exact words of the book," he said scornfully. "But do you understand it? Do you believe it?"
"Uh, I don't know, sir."
"Of course you don't! I doubt if any of you here would recognize `civic virtue' if it came up and barked in your face!" He glanced at his watch. "And that is all, a final all. Perhaps we shall meet again under happier circumstances. Dismissed."
So the Terran Federation correctly observes that violence is the supreme authority, from which all other forms are derived. There is no final means of dispute resolution beyond force, it is the last thing one resorts to. In the film, the example given is Hiroshima, and in the book it is Carthage, but the point is the same: both Japan and the Carthaginians needed to be forced into submission.
The Terran Federation prizes Civic Virtue. If everybody is given the vote, they believe people will not value it, and therefore will not be responsible with it. Therefore, the only people given the vote should be those who are willing to defend the polity with their lives, as a state can only survive if it maintains it’s monopoly on violence, from external and internal threats, and in doing so, an individual proves that they put the welfare of the collective above their personal desires.
So why did universal suffrage fail in the world of Starship Troopers, and why and how was it abandoned? In the film, Rasczak (a combination of two characters, one being Mr Dubois) talks about how the ‘Rule of the Social Scientists’ lead the world to chaos, something that feels eerily familiar today, in our HR-driven world, after which the ‘Veterans’ took control and imposed order. Let’s go to the book for some more explanation.
I found myself mulling over a discussion in our class in History and Moral Philosophy. Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the XXth century. According to him, there was a time just before they went down the drain when such crimes as Dillinger's were as common as dogfights. The Terror had not been just in North America -- Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.
"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably -- or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places -- these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."
This all at the hands of the ‘Rule of the Social Scientists’, it seems an accurate description of the ‘Summer of Floyd’, where academics and universities across the board fully endorsed an Anarcho-Tyranny despite there being a pandemic, responded to by crippling restrictions cheered by them, by saying the ‘pandemic of racism’ was more severe. In the world of Starship Troopers, the ‘Rule of the Social Scientists’ similarly had a warped view of human nature.
"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as `cruel and unusual punishment.' " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to `cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment -- and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
Mr Dubois continues when a girl in the class continues asking him questions, about why such lunacy was ever accepted. Even in the late 1950s, Heinlein knew which professions would become key bedrocks of the ‘Longhouse’ by the 2010s.
"I don't know," he had answered grimly, "except that the time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a prescientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves `social workers' or sometimes `child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder -- but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious `highest motives' no matter what their behavior."
One of the great flaws of the Woke liberal worldview, is that it assumes that one is born moral, and that morality is ‘self-evident’. Mr Dubois continues:
"I agree. Young lady, the tragic wrongness of what those well-meaning people did, contrasted with what they thought they were doing, goes very deep. They had no scientific theory of morals. They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives) but their theory was wrong -- half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry. The more earnest they were, the farther it led them astray. You see, they assumed that Man has a moral instinct."
"Sir? But I thought -- But he does! I have." "No, my dear, you have a cultivated conscience, a most carefully trained one. Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not -- and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind. These unfortunate juvenile criminals were born with none, even as you and I, and they had no chance to acquire any; their experiences did not permit it. What is `moral sense'? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, everywhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do."
"But the instinct to survive," he had gone on, "can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. Young lady, what you miscalled your `moral instinct' was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale. And so on up. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive -- and nowhere else! -- and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts."
Human societies ultimately operate on Darwinist principles, something that can be empirically demonstrated simply by looking at the history of human conflict. Successful societies conquer less successful societies. Morality is not divinely ordained, by God or by the even more superstitious notion of ‘human rights’, it is instead a rationalisation of a basic survival instinct, not just the individual, but the family, the tribe, and the nation.
Mr. Dubois then describes the Terran Federation’s notion of morality. Bear in mind, as this is an intergalactic civilisation, with competing species fighting for dominance (chiefly the humans and the bugs), ‘human’ is akin to a federal republic like the United States or the Swiss Confederation, and ‘country’ is akin to ‘state’ or ‘canton’.
"We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race -- we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations. But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: `Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.' Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.
The Critique of Liberal Social Contract Theory
Robert A. Heinlein, through the character of Mr. Dubois, skewers the romantic, egalitarian language of the US Declaration of Independence and the theory of the ‘Social Contract’ and ‘Natural Rights’ from which it rests. Heinlein predicted the modern Woke malaise, that the notion of ‘rights’ would be ever-greater expanded, and new ones ‘found’, by corrupt activist judges adhering to the latest elite trends, without off-switch, and without any sense of responsibility for the common good of social cohesion.
Heinlein/Dubois eviscerates both the moral and descriptive notion of ‘Natural Rights’, the notion underpinning Wokeness. He echoes Friedrich Hayek’s notion that ‘Positive Rights’ are thin on the ground because such things like food, healthcare, and shelter are inherently scarce resources. But also, sounding like Jeremy Bentham and (unbeknownst to him) Patrick Deneen, also calls ‘negative rights’ society and context-dependent.
"The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand -- that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their `rights.' " "The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature."
Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'?"
"Ah, yes, the `unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What `right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What `right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of `right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is `unalienable'? And is it `right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so called `natural human rights' that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
"The third `right'? -- the `pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can `pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."
Heinlein even predicted the way that spoiled, entitled students would be endlessly indulged by an establishment that caved to their every demand, even if it broke apart the very fabric of the society, due to a ‘Mythology of Rights’.
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. "I told you that `juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. `Delinquent' means `failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue -- indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a `juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents -- people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."
"And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of `rights' . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure."
Indeed this is what the ‘Boomer Truth Regime’ is, with its valorisation of Martin Luther King and the Student Counter-Culture, and believing that Rights-Based Liberalism is always on the ‘Right Side of History’. Starship Troopers shows how a ‘post-Woke Society’ would view Wokeism in hindsight.
Heinlein’s critique of liberal democracy is brilliant, as is the philosophy behind his fictional alternative. It removes the ‘beautiful sounding yet destructive lies’, and focuses on political realism, aka ‘Formalism’; and adds the ingredients for a successful moral code and successful society that can compete on a Social Darwinist basis.
Critique of Technocracy
Towards the end of the book, when Rico is training to become an officer, we get more background about how the Terran Federation came to be, and how and why the ‘Rule of the Scientists’ ended in such disaster.
It is made clear that the reason why only veterans can vote is NOT because they are smarter. But it argued that rule by technocrats does not end well, as people who are highly intelligent often have a very narrow-minded view about their specialism, and can fail to understand the reality of human nature on the ground.
"Is the word too long for you? I said it was a silly notion. Service men are not brighter than civilians. In many cases civilians are much more intelligent. That was the sliver of justification underlying the attempted coup d'etat just before the Treaty of New Delhi, the so-called `Revolt of the Scientists': let the intelligent elite run things and you'll have utopia. It fell flat on its foolish face of course. Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility. I've given you a hint, Mister; can you pick it up?"
This could be seen by the way the ‘experts’ took control during Covid, using their ‘modelling’ as a perfect science that could give an objectively correct answer to a political question, when of course, trained only in their field, they failed to have a holistic view, and ignored the immense damage that lockdowns and mandates caused.
The Least-Worst System of Government
Similar to how democracy is often justified, the Major teaching the officer cadets outlines how different societies have had entirely different conceptions of how leaders should be chosen. Whilst the system of the Terran Federation is flawed, it is justified on a utilitarian basis, and the fact that it has led to greater prosperity and liberty than any other systems.
Democracy in our world is seen as ‘common sense’, but Major Reid gives some very effective critiques of it, and rightfully calls it hypocritical, as prisoners, non-citizens, and children are still not permitted the right to vote in our ‘universal suffrage’ system, for reasons that are not entirely consistent particularly in the latter case.
Major Reid smiled. "Mr. Salomon, I handed you a trick question. The practical reason for continuing our system is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: It works satisfactorily.
"Nevertheless, it is instructive to observe the details. Throughout history men have labored to place the sovereign franchise in hands that would guard it well and use it wisely, for the benefit of all. An early attempt was absolute monarchy, passionately defended as the `divine right of kings.'
"Sometimes attempts were made to select a wise monarch, rather man leave it up to God, as when the Swedes picked a Frenchman, General Bernadotte, to rule them. The objection to this is that the supply of Bernadottes is limited.
"Historic examples range from absolute monarch to utter anarch; mankind has tried thousands of ways and many more have been proposed, some weird in the extreme such as the antlike communism urged by Plato under the misleading title The Republic. But the intent has always been moralistic: to provide stable and benevolent government.
"All systems seek to achieve this by limiting franchise to those who are believed to have the wisdom to use it justly. I repeat `all systems'; even the so-called `unlimited democracies' excluded from franchise not less than one quarter of their populations by age, birth, poll tax, criminal record, or other." (NOTE: book written prior to 24th Amendment banning poll taxes in the US.)
Major Reid smiled cynically. "I have never been able to see how a thirty-year old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius . . . but that was the age of the `divine right of the common man.' Never mind, they paid for their folly.
"The sovereign franchise has been bestowed by all sorts of rules -- place of birth, family of birth, race, sex, property, education, age, religion, et cetera. All these systems worked and none of them well. All were regarded as tyrannical by many, all eventually collapsed or were overthrown.
"Now here are we with still another system . . . and our system works quite well. Many complain but none rebel; personal freedom for all is greatest in history, laws are few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest ebb. Why? Not because our voters are smarter than other people; we've disposed of that argument. Mr. Tammany can you tell us why our system works better than any used by our ancestors?"
I don't know where Clyde Tammany got his name; I'd take him for a Hindu. He answered, "Uh, I'd venture to guess that it's because the electors are a small group who know that the decisions are up to them . . . so they study the issues."
"No guessing, please; this is exact science. And your guess is wrong. The ruling nobles of many another system were a small group fully aware of their grave power. Furthermore, our franchised citizens are not everywhere a small fraction; you know or should know that the percentage of citizens among adults ranges from over eighty per cent on Iskander to less than three per cent in some Terran nations yet government is much the same everywhere. Nor are the voters picked men; they bring no special wisdom, talent, or training to their sovereign tasks. So what difference is there between our voters and wielders of franchise in the past? We have had enough guesses; I'll state the obvious: Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.
"And that is the one practical difference."
"He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history."
In the real world, with democracy having allowed the anarcho-tyranny of the Covid regime and for the mass mutilation of children believed to be ‘trans’, it is clear that democracy has not ‘worked satisfactorily’. The liberal democratic order did nothing to stop Wokeness from infiltrating every aspect of the society, and from abusing the free speech it was given to take power, and then denying it to others.
The Acquiring of Citizenship
So, how does one become a ‘citizen’ in the Terran Federation. Heinlein’s core message is that one must put the value of the group above the collective, and demonstrate grit and resolve.
We know from the recruiting Fleet Sergeant, telling Rico, Johnny, and Carmen, that citizenship is not held by the majority (on Earth, though Major Reid says later on in the book that on some Earth colonies, presumably military colonies, it is up to 80%), nor does the Federation want it to be. Federal Service is not just a basic training of how to fire a weapon and follow basic orders. The emphasis is on ‘civic responsibility’ and ‘sacrifice to the body politic’ rather than strictly defence.
"They are if you can cut it," the Fleet Sergeant said grimly, "and not if you don't have what it takes, both in preparation and ability. Look, boys, have you any idea why they have me out here in front?"
I didn't understand him. Carl said, "Why?"
"Because the government doesn't care one bucket of swill whether you join or not! Because it has become stylish, with some people -- too many people -- to serve a term and earn a franchise and be able to wear a ribbon in your lapel which says that you're a vet'ran . . . whether you've ever seen combat or not. But if you want to serve and I can't talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that's your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, shall have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren't just glorified K. P.
Everybody has a right to try to gain citizenship, and may quit at any time, though once one quits, they are never permitted a second try. As the Fleet Sergeant says:
"You go on forty-eight hours leave now." He grinned coldly. "Do you know what happens if you don't come back?" "Uh . . . court-martial?" "Not a thing. Not a blessed thing. Except that your papers get marked, Term not completed satisfactorily, and you never, never, never get a second chance. This is our cooling-off period, during which we shake out the overgrown babies who didn't really mean it and should never have taken the oath. It saves the government money and it saves a power of grief for such kids and their parents -- the neighbors needn't guess. You don't even have to tell your parents." He shoved his chair away from his desk. "So I'll see you at noon day after tomorrow. If I see you. Fetch your personal effects."
And what is the oath that all doing Federal Service must swear?
Very good." He turned to us, "Repeat after me -- "
"I, being of legal age, of my own free will -- "
" `I,' " we each echoed, " `being of legal age, of my own free will -- ' "
" -- without coercion, promise, or inducement of any sort, after having been duly advised and warned of the meaning and consequences of this oath -- "
" -- do now enroll in the Federal Service of the Terran Federation for a term of not less than two years and as much longer as may be required by the needs of the Service -- "
(I gulped a little over that part. I had always thought of a "term" as two years, even though I knew better, because that's the way people talk about it. Why, we were signing up for life.)
"I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Federation against all its enemies on or off Terra, to protect and defend the Constitutional liberties and privileges of all citizens and lawful residents of the Federation, its associated states and territories, to perform, on or off Terra, such duties of any lawful nature as may be assigned to me by lawful direct or delegated authority -- "
" -- and to obey all lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Terran Service and of all officers or delegated persons placed over me -- "
" -- and to require such obedience from all members of the Service or other persons or non-human beings lawfully placed under my orders -- "
" -- and, on being honorably discharged at the completion of my full term of active service or upon being placed on inactive retired status after having completed such full term, to carry out all duties and obligations and to enjoy all privileges of Federation citizenship including but not limited to the duty, obligation and privilege of exercising sovereign franchise for the rest of my natural life unless stripped of honor by verdict, finally sustained, of court of my sovereign peers."
A major difference between the book and the film is that in the book, all military units are gender segregated, whereas in the film, they are mixed sex, sort of like the Israeli Army. Indeed, the plot of Starship Troopers echoes the Israel/Palestine conflict to a degree, with the Terran Federation representing Israel and the Bugs, with their hivemind and cold-blooded quest for destruction, representing Hamas.
I personally think the military should be gender segregated, as a young woman is inherently more valuable than a young man at replacing a population, and losing young women on the front lines into the meat grinder will mean that there is a permanent, rather than just generational, population decline.
Necessity of Conflict
Finally, Heinlein discusses how a society where conditions are ‘too perfect’, where there is little competition and struggle for survival, leads to stagnation.
He uses the allegory of a perfect planet, the planet of Sanctuary, to describe human societies when they do not have much competition. Sanctuary is actually more habitable than Earth, with less radiation from its star, but because of this, life is nowhere near as complex. Plants from Earth just completely dominate over the native fauna, with crops extremely easy to grow. It is a military colony, and almost a utopia; but Rico, speaking in the first person, expresses his fears that such a utopia would actually harm the humans living there in the long run.
But I can tell you what sort of a planet it is. Like Earth, but retarded.
Literally retarded, like a kid who takes ten years to learn to wave bye-bye and never does manage to master patty-cake. It is a planet as near like Earth as two planets can be, same age according to the planetologists and its star is the same age as the Sun and the same type, so say the astrophysicists. It has plenty of flora and fauna, the same atmosphere as Earth, near enough, and much the same weather; it even has a good-sized moon and Earth's exceptional tides. With all these advantages it barely got away from the starting gate.
You see, it's short on mutations; it does not enjoy Earth's high level of natural radiation. Its typical and most highly developed plant life is a very primitive giant fern; its top animal life is a proto-insect which hasn't even developed colonies. I am not speaking of transplanted Terran flora and fauna -- our stuff moves in and brushes the native stuff aside.
With its evolutionary progress held down almost to zero by lack of radiation and a consequent most unhealthily low mutation rate, native life forms on Sanctuary just haven't had a decent chance to evolve and aren't fit to compete. Their gene patterns remain fixed for a relatively long time; they aren't adaptable -- like being forced to play the same bridge hand over and over again, for eons, with no hope of getting a better one.
As long as they just competed with each other, this didn't matter too much -- morons among morons, so to speak. But when types that had evolved on a planet enjoying high radiation and fierce competition were introduced, the native stuff was outclassed.
Now all the above is perfectly obvious from high school biology . . . but the high forehead from the research station there who was telling me about this brought up a point I would never have thought of.
What about the human beings who have colonized Sanctuary?
Not transients like me, but the colonists who live there, many of whom were born there, and whose descendants will live there, even into the umpteenth generation -- what about those descendants? It doesn't do a person any harm not to be radiated; in fact it's a bit safer -- leukemia and some types of cancer are almost unknown there. Besides that, the economic situation is at present all in their favor; when they plant a field of (Terran) wheat, they don't even have to clear out the weeds. Terran wheat displaces anything native.
But the descendants of those colonists won't evolve. Not much, anyhow. This chap told me that they could improve a little through mutation from other causes, from new blood added by immigration, and from natural selection among the gene patterns they already own -- but that is all very minor compared with the evolutionary rate on Terra and on any usual planet. So what happens? Do they stay frozen at their present level while the rest of the human race moves on past them, until they are living fossils, as out of place as a pithecanthropus in a spaceship? Or will they worry about the fate of their descendants and dose themselves regularly with X-rays or maybe set off lots of dirty-type nuclear explosions each year to build up a fallout reservoir in their atmosphere? (Accepting, of course, the immediate dangers of radiation to themselves in order to provide a proper genetic heritage of mutation for the benefit of their descendants.) This bloke predicted that they would not do anything. He claims that the human race is too individualistic, too self-centered, to worry that much about future generations. He says that the genetic impoverishment of distant generations through lack of radiation is something most people are simply incapable of worrying about. And of course it is a fardistant threat; evolution works so slowly, even on Terra, that the development of a new species is a matter of many, many thousands of years.
Of course, writing in the 1950s, the understanding of evolution and the effects of radiation are flawed.
But it’s an interesting allegory because it’s true. Nations with large amounts of natural resources often are corrupt dictatorships because the elites can just rely on that resource to get fleetingly rich without meaningful economic development. The Iberian peninsula had become the most backwards part of Western Europe by the 19th century because prior to the Napoleonic Wars they had so much access to the resources of the Americas that they did not push themselves to innovate. The Roman Empire fell into decadence in the period of Pax Romana. And Qing China had faced so little competition for so long in the region, so they were powerless to resist the Europeans.
Heinlein makes the point that competition is what drives nations forward. The only developed nation with an above replacement fertility rate is Israel; because they are in a constant struggle for survival in the region and are terrified of being demographically displaced. The reason why Switzerland has had peace for over 200 years is because, armed to the hilt, they have acted prepared for war to break out at any moment, and because they were always prepared for war, it allowed them to avoid it.
The planet of Sanctuary therefore serves as an underlying theme of Starship Troopers; the need for organisms to compete with one another in order to drive them forward. A society without competition will become lazy and decadent.
Ideological Influences
The most notable historical precedent for the society of Starship Troopers is the Roman Republic, where citizenship could be earned through military service, and lost if one refused to fight. However, it is different in being more strictly meritocratic and on an individual basis; with one being unable to inherit citizenship like they could in Rome.
Switzerland, particularly prior to 1971 when only men could vote but yet all men were conscripted into the army, also has some similarities, though the voluntary nature of military service in Starship Troopers is obviously a huge difference that I will discuss more in the comparison.
Other examples of course include Sparta, Ancient Germanic societies where all ‘armed freedmen’ had representation in the ‘Thing’, as well as the Cossack Hetmanate. These are all positive examples, however there are far less successful examples of the military decreeing it has a right to rule; for instance Myanmar.
As Carl Benjamin says in his video essay, whilst the book/film has been accused of being ‘fascist’, the highly ‘Formalist’ and constitutionalist structure of the Terran Federation would elude this definition, even though it has some similarities in its promotion of some Social Darwinist ideas and its rejection of universal human rights. It is a ‘realist liberal’ society, a ‘liberalism with teeth’, that is justified on a much stronger basis, rejecting notions like ‘Natural Rights’ and the ‘Social Contract’.
In this it may be closer to the Classical Republican tradition, with more emphasis on Civic Virtue and collective membership of the body politic, though the fact that citizenship is a voluntary choice rather than an obligation of all citizens would align with the liberal notion of limited government rather than the republican notion of positive liberty and obligation. Switzerland as a country is far closer to the Rousseauean Republican notion, and indeed Rousseau was Swiss.
It is a very well argued philosophy, making some very good critiques of universal suffrage and the utopian ideas of the Declaration of Independence and ‘Natural Rights’, as well as being justified on a much more ‘Formalist’ and ‘realist’ basis. Though, the exclusiveness of the military, the focus on a notion of ‘virtue’ and the ‘common good’, and the non-military federal service watering down the strict formalist principle, I have disagreements with that I will explain.
Starship Troopers ‘Formalism’ vs the ‘Formalism’ of Curtis Yarvin
So in my ‘Factions of the Rightosphere’ article on the Dissident Right I dedicated a lot of time to talking about Yarvin, which I recommend one reads as it is important to the point I’m making. He is almost certainly the most influential figure on the Dissident Right, inventing terms like ‘Cathedral’ and repopularising Elite Theory amongst the right. However, the relevant part of his political ideology I will be discussing is his idea of ‘Formalism’.
Yarvin doesn’t like the elaborate myths that states use to justify their existence, notions like ‘the people are sovereign’ and ‘all men are created equal’. He instead wants a state to accurately reflect the real distribution of power, like a publicly traded corporation, with various elite groups owning ‘shares’, and the CEO having almost unlimited power to run the corporation on a day to day basis, accountable only to a Board of Directors elected by the shareholders.
Now, this is an interesting vision. It’s basically a publicly traded version of the United Arab Emirates, where each Emirate is a privately owned company under the ownership of the Emir, similar to Hans-Hermann-Hoppe’s depiction of Monarchy as ‘Private Government’. Indeed, he frequently praises the Gulf Monarchies and sees them as the closest to his vision; only making minor alterations to include an accountability mechanism: an anonymous vote of no confidence by the Board in the CEO.
But is ‘private ownership’ really the most ‘formal’ (i.e, ‘real’) description of power. Who ultimately is responsible for defending property?
The Mongols invaded, looted, and pillaged their way through Eurasia. The Novgorod Republic, one of the most constitutional and property-oriented states in the medieval era, was raised to the ground by the Mongol-descended Muscovy, that would make Russia a society with a far weaker notion of property rights. And of course, the Bolsheviks seized all private property in Russia, as did all communist regimes.
Whilst Yarvin abandons his libertarian background in many ways, shunning the idea of ‘Natural Rights’, with his notion that private property is something ‘real’ and not context dependent, he reveals he is still attached to the falsehoods of that worldview. It is not private ownership that describes power; it is who ultimately is able to defend said private property.
A better, and more realistic, understanding of Formalism is the Chinese idea of the the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. The Chinese had a very clever way of describing Elite Theory and the natural cycle of power in a quasi-religious terms, formalising the notion that legitimacy is ultimately derived through violence and conquest. It is a far superior and more accurate notion of power compared to either the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ or the ‘Social Contract’, the former merely superstitious self-serving drivel bizarrely still echoed by online TradCaths, and the latter too individual-rights oriented instead of majority (and in realist cases, like China’s, armed majority) oriented.
What Friedrich Nietzsche recognised with ‘Eternal Return’, and Oswald Spengler with Civilizational Cycles, was Ancient Wisdom to the Chinese, which without the corrupting egalitarian and universalist notions of Christianity, understood that power derives from force and all elites inevitably corrupt.
Lee Kuan Yew, the leader and pioneer of Singapore, had a ‘Mandate of Heaven’ view of the state, a famous line of his being: ‘if you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try.’
They Chinese also understood, when the West had abandoned this in favour of Christian Slave Morality, the Nietzschean concept of the Will to Power and that ‘Might Makes Right’. The movie of Starship Troopers articulates this very well in this scene, Sergeant Zim commands respect of the recruits because he is able to dominate them physically, and ensures, through force, that he is respected.
This is a demonstration of the most ‘Formalist’ notion of power. But as Carl Benjamin says (32:54), Zim is never needlessly cruel; and he is not without compassion. He immediately asks if the recruit for whom he has broken his arm if he is okay, and in another scene, when subjecting Rico to a disciplinary public whipping, recommends he bites down to help the pain.
You can also see that he respects those who try to fight him. Of course, a fundamental principle of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ is, ‘if you swing at the King, you better not miss’, with all who fail to topple the leader severely punished to prevent them from doing it again and dissuading others from trying. But in this scene, it is ‘training’ and a simulation of this process, and Zim admires those that ‘have a go’, like Dizzy, who manages to land some punches, and therefore allows her to be transferred. It’s a bit like what Rachel Haywire said about the ‘Convict Code’, it is ultimately more important that you participate in a fight than win a fight. Sergeant Zim also emphasises that every one of these recruits is completely free to leave, something I think is an advantage of a volunteer military, with citizenship ‘earned’ rather than a right.
Of course, I am doing an oppositional reading to the director in the case of the film, who intended it to be a parody of what he deemed ‘fascism’, but I still think the scene symbolises something important.
The Armed Citizen and Sovereignty
There have been numerous different ruling classes throughout history. Brahmins, Priests, Bureaucrats, Kings… but the most ‘Formalist’ has always been those under military rule, as it is those who are able to defend their power through force, and who’s decision ultimately decides who is in power, who is really ‘sovereign’.
In most societies, the military would not ever do this, because they buy into a regime ideology that gives the non-military ruling class legitimacy. The military, through the exercise of brute force, is a ‘high cost’ means of imposing order, as it can only use fear and usually does not have an ideological justification for itself. Whilst it is technically possible for an army to subdue and crush a population, it will have to resort to violence and repression so frequently that it will not lead to a prosperous society.
But private property is dependent on military force. The Magna Carta could only be signed because the Barons had the military might to bring King John to the negotiating table. The supremacy of Parliament in the British constitution is only because they consistently won militarily, both in the 1640s and 1688. The American maxim ‘No Taxation Without Representation’, would have meant nothing had the Loyalists won, and the Founding Fathers all been hanged.
Thomas Hobbes recognised the ‘Right to Self-Defence’ as the only truly ‘Natural Right’ one had. It is a virtue of the American people that they refuse to give up their firearms; they know that popular sovereignty is based on an armed citizenry, and therefore, despite their idealism in other regards being very destructive, have a far more realist conception of freedom and the state than here in Britain, where the people could do nothing to resist a military coup or an oppressive tyranny, because firearm ownership is so restricted.
There have been societies like the Terran Federation. Sparta, the Cossack Hetmanate, and Switzerland (especially prior to 1971, when only men could vote and all men did military service and owned a firearm), had the power of ‘violence’ in the hands of a majority or large minority.
So, as Mr Dubois said, as (even if not the ‘ideal’ means of authority), violence is the ultimate authority, a political system that recognises, in a realist sense, that those who hold the power of force hold the cards, a ‘Stratocracy’ is indeed the most ‘Formalist’ system.
But is it the ideal system?
Is the Starship Trooper’s System a Good Idea?
Different societies have had wildly different conceptions of the role of arms, the soldier, and the citizen.
Starship Troopers’ core philosophy is correct and sound, violence is the supreme authority, and in a ‘realist’ political order, a vote must represent force. Western democracies have their ancient origins in Germanic tribal societies, where the ‘Thing’ was a body of all ‘armed freedmen’ in the community.
But there are some cases where Heinlein contradicts himself. For instance, his insistence that military service be gruelling and difficult to ensure that ‘Civic Virtue’ is instilled in all who gain citizenship, and it isn’t merely a basic training to ensure a competent soldier.
However, this is a departure from the work’s realist principles, detaching the notion of suffrage from violence and force, in favour of a sense of ‘putting one’s self beneath the interests of the group.’
‘Civic Virtue’ is in principle a good thing, but who decides what Civic Virtue is? Is a self-interested voter really the worst thing in the world? Somebody who is open about their material self-interests, the trade unionist, the businessman, the farmer… is far more easy to understand and relate to, than somebody who claims that their worldview is entirely altruistic and built around the ‘common good’, whereas in actual fact, they are motivated by ressentiment and passive-aggressive, Longhouse social signalling.
The Woke believe in Civic Virtue, it is why you have so many straight White men bowing down and apologising for their White privilege, and why the figure of the ‘activist’ is so venerated. But of course, by being so pathetic and weak at defending their own self-interest, there is nothing truly virtuous about this. Self-interest is a virtue that is ultimately the highest form of virtue, detached from moralistic platitudes and slave morality, and protecting against the repugnant self-debasement that possesses the Woke White Man.
If the military population is a minority, such a strong notion of civic virtue can become tyrannical. A case in point is the Tatmadaw, who have always justified their rule on the basis of ‘preserving the interests of Burma’, but have overseen the complete destruction of once was one of the most prosperous countries in Asia to become one of its poorest.
Myanmar is run on a Formalist basis, it is a military dictatorship, one of the most long-running in the world. But because the military is a minoritarian enterprise (or at least it was until the current Civil War), there is little means for the rest of the population to overthrow it; the Junta remains in power despite their tyranny because they successfully repress revolts from the people, who until recently, lacked the weapons.
Belief that one is genuinely committed to the benefit of the community is often far more tyrannical than simple self-interest. As C.S Lewis described, it is better to be run by robber barons than those who consider themselves ‘virtuous men’. The self-interested man is easy to understand, he can be negotiated with. But, as J’Burden says, Wokeism is not built on material patronage; and many of its chief advocates are not well paid compared to large capitalists they deflect as being the elite; it is instead ‘social and emotional’ patronage, the feeling of being ‘morally superior’ to others. It is how Martin Luther King could use ‘non-violence’ and appeals to White’s higher principles they claimed to adhere to, to shame Whites into giving him everything he wanted, and passing laws to discriminate against their own group to benefit the group MLK belonged to; manipulating their weak, Christian instincts that the Christians themselves had engineered.
Heinlein’s vision is therefore stuck between two competing visions. On the one hand, is a Formalist notion of the state, but on the other hand, leaves his system open to be a monopoly of the ‘virtuous minority’ who claim superiority, and who may smugly tell those they deem to beneath them to be on the ‘Right Side of History’.
I think military-service based suffrage is rather a good idea, but because of the threat of minority tyranny and minority imposition of ‘Civic Virtue’, it is vital that the ‘citizen-soldier’ represents a majority of the population, at least 60%. If the majority is trained to use a firearm, each person is more-a-less equal in a Hobbessian sense, as the physical advantages that some people would have in a physical fight is more-a-less negated. Military skill does give one side an organisational advantage, but the strength of numbers will always balance it out.
This is what Switzerland had prior to 1971, with all men doing military service and all men getting the vote. In Switzerland, not doing military service didn’t automatically result in the denial of suffrage; you just went to prison. Switzerland was based on Rousseau’s notion of the ‘republic’, where ‘Civic Virtue’ is an obligation of all citizens. However, as Heinlein says in Starship Troopers, it is impossible to ‘force’ a notion of obligation to the state. A better system than Switzerland would be to let ‘conscientious objectors’ live normal lives; but because they refused to defend the body politic, should be denied the vote. Women should also be able to serve and gain the vote; women getting the vote in 1971 I believe was the right decision, but the way it was implemented disconnected suffrage from service, which was very bad.
A majority (not universal) suffrage is important because no group is infallible. A system like that of the Terran Federation could easily degenerate and corrupt over time, no matter their best efforts.
Yes, most ordinary people aren’t rational or have a comprehensive understanding of politics, but they do have a strong understanding of their own self-interest, i.e., the famous ‘am I better or worse off than four years ago.’ A majority suffrage is therefore a vital component for elite accountability and replacement, though the law should be strictly obeyed between-elections, rather than allowing minorities to engage in civil disobedience in defence of their ‘Natural Rights’ and be indulged and coddled by the courts.
The idea that voting is a ‘right’ leads to destructive conclusions, as it obviously cannot be completely fulfilled. Children cannot vote, but the reasons are incredibly inconsistent; as the book says, there are many clever children and stupid adults. But the rationale for mass suffrage is not abstract knowledge of politics, but lived experience, that children and young adults living off the ‘Bank of Mom and Dad’ do not.
A requirement to pay taxes would make sense, and my ideal system would have a ‘Taxpayers Chamber’, however when determining who has a ‘stake’, it will often become ad-hoc and arbitrary. This is exactly what happened in Rhodesia, which changed its suffrage requirement every election. This was not seen as legitimate, and just a means of maintaining White minority rule through formally colorblind means, which, whilst true and ultimately for the betterment of the Black majority, caused the state to fail.
So the best system for determining the ‘sovereign’ chamber (the lower house which holds the most power) would be based on something real and substantial, aka having completed a period of military service and owning a firearm, possessing the means of exercising force and having demonstrated an obedience and loyalty to the state. It would be the expectation that all do military service, unlike Starship Troopers when it is explicitly ‘opt-in’. One may opt-out, but do not get their (full) political rights if they do so.
Conclusion
A free society is one which can meaningfully exercise the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. A majority of armed citizens can overthrow their rulers if they become tyrannical, with the electoral process simply a reflection of the process of revolution and conflict without the need for physical violence.
Private property is downstream from the ability to defend private property. Yarvin’s Formalism takes for granted western conceptions of property ownership, which are a product of his libertarian and anarcho-capitalist background that sees the right to property as a ‘Natural Right’, even though he has rejected that belief system in other areas. Property rights mean nothing if they are forcibly expropriated by those with weapons.
So what can meaningfully prevent them being expropriated? Those that hold property and pay taxes also holding arms, and having received an adequate military training. A constitution has ‘teeth’ through an armed citizenry, with the constitution explicitly emphasising the use of force in its defence, and the relationship between popular firearm ownership and popular sovereignty.
‘Civic Virtue’ should be lower down the list of priority. Those that claim to represent the interests of society above themselves are likely to be Machiavellian and far more interested in social and emotional patronage. He who is motivated by material interest alone is honest, and therefore can create a social order less dictated by hidden ‘Cryptocracy’ of seemingly selfless ‘Virtue Signallers’ who are actually ‘Virtue Hoarders’. Civic Virtue should exist in the sense of putting oneself on the line to defend the body politic from violent threats, but should not exist in the sense of ‘the virtue of political participation itself’ and ‘thinking about what is in the best moral interests of society, outside of one’s individual material benefit’.
I will do another article explaining in detail what my ‘Positive Vision’ for a political systems should be; a fleshed out alternative to the liberal democratic model, which I originally planned to do in this article but it proved too long and would make the essay unfocused. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this analysis, and please follow and subscribe.
"But is it the ideal system?"
This statement kind of ruined this article for me. For the talk of political realism, I felt that we stepped into structural idealism right near the end, which I feel is kind of self-defeating. This may not have been your intent, but I feel that it ought to be addressed.
One of the particular reasons why Formalism and Starship Troopers is interesting to me is that they oppose childish structural idealism, the belief that there is an ideal structure, in their respective ways. Such structural idealism tends to be the work of reddit "theorycels" and has continuous produced systems that definitively don't work, whereas ones absent of such character have been able to succeed.
Formalism opposes structural idealism in that, as a DIY ideology, it posits no aim until after the system has taken account and formalized it's operations as they exist. Formalism, explicitly, is the demand for the system to prepare itself for refactoring by making it's impersonal inner workings available for some agent-will (likely a king) to deal with. Because of this quality, Formalism is an autistic engineer's wet dream; I would know, because I am one. Whether Formalism works out or not depends mainly on how well a formal-dictator avoids intellectual excesses, especially concerning theoreticals.
Starship Troopers opposes structural idealism in two parts: the holding up of the soldier in spite of his intellectual capacity and the acknowledgement of the competition in creating strong ecosystems. In admitting the sacrificial soldier to be superior than the structured intellect in producing working systems, this suggests that personality and vitality are way more important than some grand calculus, whereas by acknowledging a lack of competition as weakness that leads into decay and atrophy, ideal edifices are demonstrated to be ultimately temporal.
The only structure that could be posited to be ideal is one which can continuously revitalize itself, which is one of deobfuscated competition. I feel that Yarvin's patchwork concept kind of deals with this moreso than starship troopers, which I would describe as unrealistic in it's desire towards universalism. I would imagine that the end of the starship troopers universe would be military fracturing based on citizen-interests. The Mormon colonists plotline, kind of already suggests this.
When people ask what my politics are, I point to "Starship Troopers" and say, "Whatever this is." No other work has influenced my political thinking as much as "Starship Troopers" did.
The most striking part of "Starship Troopers" is that there's nothing controversial about anything he says. At least it shouldn't be. Yet realists are the radicals in civil society, because civil society demands we deny reality to a certain extent. For example, violence truly is the supreme authority, yet we must pretend as though we don't solve our problems through violence so we maintain order. I can't how many people throw a fit when you tell them that every law has behind it an implied threat of death. The response is usually something to the effect of, "Why can't you just follow the law?" Leaving aside the fact some people in society are allowed to flagrantly flout the law, the question implies that refusing to follow the law has deadly consequences.
I think the most salient lesson for the West, the Anglosphere more broadly, is that democracy has no future. Only a Singapore or UAE-style government could keep this all together. I say could, because I don't see their government or even that of Switzerland as something which can be implemented at the size and scale of the U.S. or even UK. There are some people who simply won't go along with it and will need to be brutally suppressed, but I don't think we have the stomach for that. Still, I think mass democracy is very clearly a failure, most of us just don't realize it.
I do want to object to the Terran Federation being described as a stratocracy. From what I can tell, the military doesn't run the government, it's just that the government is comprised predominantly of veterans. The Federation is more like a timocratic republic, given its emphasis on virtues like honor and selflessness. The description of the Federation as a military government is a misconception peddled by those who disagree with Heinlein's ideas, so pains should be taken to underscore the fact that it's not a military government. The fact that voting is a thing kind of gives it away, but people can be dense.