This 1958 science fiction novel is constantly described as “controversial,” but it is not. It only refuses to adhere to progressive morality, by design.
A rich kid, Juan “Johnny” Rico, defies his parents and joins the Mobile Infantry, partly to follow his best friend’s example and partly out of listlessness. In the world of the book, the line between civilians and citizens is sharply demarcated by Federal Service—in the military in this story, though it is hinted there are other forms of government service. Those who serve gain the right to vote and have a say in how society is run; those who do not serve cannot vote but otherwise enjoy a high standard of living provided by a politically healthy, well-run society.
How did humanity, united in the Terran Federation, develop this government? The story is described by the narrator and in flashbacks to high school classes in “History and Moral Philosophy,” a sort of turbo-charged social studies, taught by Mr. Dubois, a veteran with citizenship:
In the late 20th Century, a war was fought between the U.S., Europe and Russia on one side and a Chinese-led Asia Hegemony on the other. The West lost and their governments collapsed. In the chaos the returning veterans imposed order and instilled their new society with the principle of duty, as opposed to rights. In a discussion about juvenile delinquency (almost unheard of in this future society) Mr. Dubois explains (italics are original):
“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.”
Mr. Dubois’ dismissal of the progressive culture of rights versus a culture of duty and obligation is one of the biggest variations from our world.
Another is the prevalence, even welcoming, of corporal punishment. Not only does the military use corporal punishment, so does the civilian authorities. This not Saudi-style brutality but more like Singapore’s formal, legalistic practice of punishment. Again, Mr. Dubois:
“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?”
Compare this to the 1994 case of Michael Fay, an American visitor to Singapore who was caned for vandalism. Despite the howls of Western commentators and politicians, Fay underwent his sentence. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, responded to Western outrage: “Can we govern if we let him off and not cane him? We’ll have to close shop. That’s my view. I am an old-style Singaporean who believes that to govern you must have a certain moral authority. If we do not cane him because he is an American, I believe we’ll lose our moral authority and our right to govern.”
How would universal government service work? One of the Leftist criticisms of the book is that citizenship is only available to those who complete military service. Implied is that this would only be for the able-bodied and therefore unavailable to anyone else, regardless the strength of their desire to serve. Anticipating this criticism, Heinlein wisely and fairly makes accommodations.
In the book, during initial recruiting and processing the recruiter mentions that there is a constitutional right to serve that cannot be denied to anyone. Later, while talking to a doctor during his physical, Rico asks the doctor what would happen if he didn’t pass medically. The answer that no one fails the medical review perplexes Rico.
The doctor explains, “...(b)ut if you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find something silly enough to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe. The only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrists decide that you are not able to understand the oath.” So, if you want to serve and become a citizen you can, but only if you can complete the challenges of your term of service, challenges matching your ability.
In the world of the book, not all agree with the separation between citizen and civilian. On leave in Seattle, Rico and two fellow MIs get into a fight with a group of longshoremen. Through the narrator Rico, Heinlein mentions that the longshoremen resent the soldiers, with their union believing that the critical labor of their members should lead to citizenship just as military and government service does.
It is possible here that Heinlein was thinking of a long-simmering resentment of the U.S. Merchant Marine towards the post-WW2 benefit scheme for the armed services. Despite being critical to the war effort, and, with a casualty rate higher than the armed forces (10,000 out of 250,000 who served), it took decades for the Merchant Marine to be recognized as veterans and earn benefits the same as their brothers in the other services. Heinlein, a naval officer during the war, would have been aware of this political conflict.
Late in the novel our protagonist Rico mentions Tagalog, the Filipino national language, being spoken at home. This is significant. During World War Two many Filipinos served in the U.S. military and were naturalized as citizens for their service. Unfortunately, after the war many of the new citizens were stripped of their naturalization and veteran status in the Rescission Act of 1946. In the following decades there was much back and forth politically resulting in the restoration of veteran status and naturalization status of the Filipino World War Two veterans but not until 1990, shortly after Heinlein’s death in 1988. But I think it is possible that Heinlein was following this question about citizenship through service and pondering the significance.
So the future Terran Federation is not a utopia but it is a successful answer to a difficult question posed to humanity in a fraught moment—how can a broken society be made whole again, and made to last? Their model, a responsibility and duty society instead of a rights society, presents an interesting alternative to our own and gives possible solutions to the issues we face in the West.
Heinlein was not a political scientist, so he doesn’t provide extensive details as to the day-to-day functioning of the Terran Federation. Do they have a legislature? States? Political parties? He adds none of those boring but necessary details to make a functional government. If we want to live in the future Terran Federation, that would be up to politicians and their staff and think tanks to figure how to build this world here and now; or lay the foundation at least.
Who, in our day and age, would want to live in the Terran Federation? To our minds, the idea of being publicly caned for, say, too many speeding tickets is unfathomable. Can’t we just pay our fines? I promise I’ll do better next time. No really, I will. But we all know we won’t, because there is no shame in looking out for number one, for asserting “rights” over personal responsibility. As Mr. Dubois points out, where has that gotten us? The results within 21st Century Western culture are plain to see.
As for myself, being a care and duty person out of natural habit, I find the Terran Federation increasingly appealing. The idea of being rewarded for contributing to a functional society for all, that sacrifice leads to respect and acknowledgement of virtue instead of just losing to those who are more selfish and know how to work their “rights,” sounds pretty good. I think that, deep down, most people want to live in this world, because it provides for an equality of opportunity, a real one. The Terran Federation puts that ancient Enlightenment principle into practice.
And that’s the part that scares the progressives the most: the Terran Federation just works. It is able to respond to an alien threat because a society that emphasizes duty, sacrifice and protection was built long before the crisis appeared. The Terran Federation can respond constructively. Certainly, with difficulty—a story needs conflict and drama—but not only is Starship Troopers about Rico’s journey to adulthood and life as a warrior, it is a story about a society that was prepared for such a day and how it wins.
Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle is a common narrative model for story-telling. It’s not artificial but a distilling of the way humans have lived since we learned to speak. Because of these deep roots, stories written to this structure resonate with readers and often become classics. Even contemporary mythologies such as Lord of the Rings and The Narnia Chronicles follow the cycle of discovery-crisis-resolution, with wisdom gained. Sometimes the restoration is painful and often something is lost, but the result is a better, wiser world.
Compare this to the Leftist dystopian novels such as 1984, Brave New World and even post-modern dark absurd comedies like Catch-22. In these stories, the restorative cycle is broken. There is discovery and crisis but no learning and no journey to improved wholeness. Every story ends with madness, despair, death or, at best, the characters flee society and reality as best they can. They don’t fight and can’t fight. Even the act of fighting is portrayed as futile and childish. Instead, they are dropped into the abyss never to return. The lack of progress in Progressive art forms is ironic.
Starship Troopers contains two hero cycles. Most obvious is Juan Rico’s, his growth from youth to manhood via service to the Mobile Infantry, the Terran Federation and to humanity itself. In classic Hero’s Journey fashion, he gains abilities and powers through personal hardship that allows him to serve the great good.
The larger cycle in the background is the Hero’s Journey of the entire socio-political structure of humanity. But the crisis has already happened and been overcome in a complete cycle. After the restoration of human society, a better nation that is capable of facing crises reacts to the existential threat from aliens. Because of the resilience gained by growth and rebuilding a whole, healthy society, the crisis is faced.
And Rico could not take his own journey unless that society was complete and able to show him the way. Small personal hero cycles can best be taken within a societal structure that understands and values such journeys. It plants seeds for societal restoration by a hero or group of heroes for when the total crisis hits. Hero cycles are societal immune systems.
This is where 1984 and the other dystopia tales fail. They break but do not restore. The post-modern intellectual cleverness leaves us all at the end of the road in a desert with no way home. This is called “progress.”
References:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2014-pt5/html/CRECB-2014-pt5-Pg6226-2.htm
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-to-build-a-society/
https://dutytocountry.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/explainer-14-selected-laws-affecting-filipino-immigration.pdf
Brave New World was not leftist. It's a critique of capitalism but it critiques capitalism as well as sexual liberation *from the right*. It's also debatable whether 1984 could fairly be described as leftist since George Orwell was disillusioned with the left and much of 1984 criticizes it.
mm... okay, nope, can't help myself. starship troopers is a caricature of mobilized military fascism. it is a satire of a state which engages in perpetual war to ensure a perpetually outraged, nationalistic, and highly obedient population. it "works" because the novel is about blowing up space bugs with big guns, not because of the functional structural integrity of its setting's government.
the "leftist criticism" of the terran federation isn't that they somehow refuse to adequately accommodate people with disabilities. it is this: that if a person is affected by a system of power—if their life, family, and means of survival are subject to the laws of a government—then they should have a say in how that government works and how power is organized and distributed. if you're affected by the laws, then you get a little influence over what the laws are, period.
the terran federation opens the "right to serve" to all who desire it, not out of a sense of charity or benevolence, but out of a belief that the only people who should be citizens are those who will work and fight for the government's wars. to refuse service, to abstain—that would be to surrender one's right to vote, would it not?
obedience to orders and belief in the cause, the subjugation of oneself to one's hierarchical superiors, is the purpose of military training. it doesn't matter what you "believe," it matters what you do. and the thing they need you to do is go shoot the space bugs, and if you die, well... you're a martyr for freedom and liberty.
i'm glad that you're a "care and duty person." i'm also glad that you notice a lack of successful conflict in many traditional critiques of fascism. there's a reason for that, the lack of heroes as a literary choice. but i don't think comparing the endings of catch-22 vs. narnia allows one to illustrate hero cycles as "societal immune systems."