Just reread StarshipTroopersTheBook for the first time since the age of 14, or thereabouts, and I think it might be useful to summarize it without getting into its interpretation. At least I'm going to try.
The indisputable facts of the text are these:
- It's written from the viewpoint of a recruit in the MI. They're called "Mobile Infantry", but plainly they're paratroopers, which is to say they're soldiers that ride around in spaceships and deploy from ships very similar to how paratroopers deploy from aircraft today to conduct military operations person-to-person. The story is thus almost entirely concerned with military operations which, even today, are internally bloodthirsty and autocratic.
- This does not imply that the "Federation" within which the military operates is itself bloodthirsty or autocratic. The narrative commences at the beginning of an interspecies war with "The Skinnies", who are almost certainly the aliens depicted in Heinlein's 1941 "Methuselah's Children". It is explicitly stated, however, that prior to this war the Federation had enjoyed more than a century of peace and harmony. Furthermore, during the course of the book, peace is made with the Skinnies, who then join the Federation to participate in a war of annihilation against "The Bugs". The book ends at the end of this war, but nothing suggests that peace is not about to ensue.
- How internally harmonious is this Federation? Well, "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." Of course this is only what is depicted, but if we take other quotes from the book seriously then we must take that too. Also conscription and other forms of non-consensuality are forbidden by law, and the only censorship permitted is that of communications from soldiers in active service.
- The society depicted is certainly not anti-democratic. It is at worst meritocratic - a "limited democracy". In order to obtain suffrage it is necessary for a citizen to volunteer to become a "federal service veteran".
- The nature of federal service is invariably dangerous and arduous, but far from exclusively military. Examples of non-military service given include performing as subjects in medical experiments, in radioactive environments, and driving trucks in Antarctica. It is made very clear that military service requires such a rare combination of brains, education, bravery, and self-discipline that less than 10% of the Marine candidates volunteering actually make it into active service, and that most volunteers don't even qualify as candidates. Washouts from federal service are cashiered without penalty, except for not successfully gaining the right to vote. Note however that washouts may perform other service that is less glamorous than the infantry. In one instance one of the washouts from infantry training is later seen as a navy cook. Service is a civil right, just not necessarally easy.
- Neither do soldiers in active service gain the right to vote. The only citizens who can vote in SST are retired Federal Service veterans. These are also the only citizens eligible for positions of political power; active military aren't eligible for political office either.
- Still, enough splitting hairs, Heinlein's Federation is 100% certainly ruled only by the veterans of dangerous public service, which might as well be military in terms of mindset. What justification can there be for this? There's much speculation in the discussions on StarshipTroopers, but in SST Chapter 12 Heinlein speaks his mind without ambiguity:
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- "authority and responsibility must be equal - or else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority [...] No attempt was made to determine if a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted for the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead [...] Since sovereign authority is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility - we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life [...] The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated with the ultimate authority a human can exert. Yin and yang, perfect and equal."
That's all there is to it. Now, as to whether or not this is fascism, go check the discussion on the original
StarshipTroopers page.
I recently ran across this:
- �Starship Troopers is loaded with unanswered questions, too. Many people rejected that book with a cliche -- "fascist," or "militaristic." They can't read or won't read; it is neither. It is a dead serious (but incomplete) inquiry in why men fight. Since men do fight, it is a question well worth the asking.� -- Robert A. Heinlein to a Reader in a letter dated 20 January 1972, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 284
- �The "Patrick Henry" ad shocked 'em. STARSHIP TROOPERS outraged 'em. I still can't see how that book got a Hugo. It continues to get lots of nasty "fan" mail and not much favorable fan mail . . . but it sells and sells and sells and sells, in eleven languages. It doesn't slow down -- four new contracts just this year [1979]. And yet I almost never hear of it save when someone wants to chew me out over it. I don't understand it.� -- Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 396
- �I think I know what offends most of my critics the most about STARSHIP TROOPERS: It is the dismaying idea that a voice in governing the state should be earned instead of being handed to anyone who is 18 years old and has body temperature near 37C. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.� -- Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe (story Afterword), pg 399
Just in case RAH's own thoughts are of interest.
CategoryScienceFiction
Starship Troopers The Book