Federation on the Political Compass

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Do you agree, or think it falls somewhere else?

[Feil]

The closer you look at the Federation from TNG and onward, the more it looks like an enormous episode of Twilight Zone depicting something horrible under a cheery facade, that just ends before the big reveal.

But then again, the closer you look at the space ships, the more they looks like they were engineered by a particularly lucky band of excited six-year-olds. The closer you look at each Captain, the more he or she looks like a hopelessly incompetent madman. You don't have to look closely at all to see that all the aliens obviously share a recent common ancestor with humans. And the closer you look at the crews, the more it looks like Senior Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien is the only enlisted person in all of Starfleet.

With Trek I just have to take things on face value and assume the characters are telling the truth. The 24th/25th century Federation is a peaceful democratic utopia with universal affluence, no oppressed minorities, and no need for internal currency. People work because they like to, even if that work is something miserable shelling clams and busing tables at your uncle's restaurant. And for some totally benign reason nobody covets inherently scarce material goods like land, dock, or air rights, nor material goods like personal space ships that are scarce despite the abundance.

And the Enterprise is a triumph of science and engineering. The captains are competent. The aliens are aliens. And Starfleet has enlisted people.

[The Romulan Republic]

The most straightforward interpretation of the available evidence is that the Federation is some variety of democratic socialism, backed up by technology such as replicators which makes them, if not post-scarcity, at least something approaching it as far as most ordinary people in the core are concerned.

Its not perfect, by any means (Section 31 and the ongoing issues with AI rights/personhood being the most obvious issues), but that's the basics, I think.

[K. A. Pital]

Federation is classic communism. At least, Starfleet.

[The Romulan Republic]

Federation is classic communism. At least, Starfleet.

Please explain. Because if you're disputing my classification of the Federation as democratic socialist, I would point out that there are none of the institutions or tactics of a dictatorship on display in the canon Federation (no matter how much some people claim otherwise).

[Formless]

First of all, the guy does not know anything about Communism, or even just Marxism. Just because the Federation did not become communist by revolution does not make it not-communist. Marx's theories don't even actually require revolution-- he merely thought revolution was inevitable and something to be desired because Capitalism is inherently unstable (and unjust) both as an economic system and more importantly as a social system, and also because like many 19'th century philosophers he believed in historicism and thought history would follow certain patterns; thus the French Revolution would likely repeat itself over economic divisions. But neither the prediction nor the advocacy of revolution is essential to his philosophy-- the instability and "contradictions" of Capitalism is. If Capitalism falls but the replacement comes through some alternative process to revolution, it doesn't matter. If the end result is a communist system, its still a communist system.

Also, I've said this many times, but the "political compass" is inherently flawed. Its only meant to describe the political environment of the United States, and it arguably doesn't work even for that purpose because of the Overton Window process, and the tendency of the system to exclude alternative ideologies and theories that do not easily lend themselves to being described in terms of a dichotomy. For one thing, if you look at the Democrats and Republicans from an economic standpoint, it becomes apparent that their differences are outweighed by their similarities. But the "Political compass" does not describe economic leanings at all.

[Lord Revan]

Another problem with trying to define federation political ideology/leaning is that our point of view into the United Federation of Planets is very limited. Our point of view into the Federation is either thru Starfleet officers (or their families) or thru aliens, Starfleet being 100% volunteer organization (as far as we know) would attract more idealistic members of the federation and with aliens there's always the chance they'll overlook or misinterpit something.

In essense when it comes to the political leaning of the Federation only honest answer in my opinion is "not enough information to say for sure", there's hints sure but nothing we could use to make definitive judgements.

Also while they don't like to admit it Starfleet is in the end for all intents and purposes a military organization so it being authoritive with a (semi-)rigid chain of command doesn't really say anything about the Federation as a whole.

[Elheru Aran]

The way I've interpreted the Federation for awhile is that... we can't, really, because our information about it is extremely limited. Revan is right-- we mostly only see Starfleet, which isn't the Federation, though it is part of it.

There *are* some inferences we can make, though. Not much is said about it in TOS other than vague idealistic waffle. Things get a little more concrete in TNG; they are probably attempting some form of socialism at that point. By DS9 things have slid a little more, but honestly we don't really see enough to know for sure. Politically, the TOS movies suggest that they have some kind of Council at the top of the government, and some form of parliamentary system (perhaps synonymous with said Council). There's a President; is he elected? appointed? a Prime Minister from whatever faction is leading the government? we don't know. What are the President's powers? We don't know (though he filmed a message telling ships to avoid Earth space in ST:IV, but who knows if that was just a distress call or a Starfleet alert or whatever).

[Simon_Jester]

The closer you look at the Federation from TNG and onward, the more it looks like an enormous episode of Twilight Zone depicting something horrible under a cheery facade, that just ends before the big reveal.

It certainly looks that way if you pre-commit to decide that it looks that way, then creatively reinterpret all future evidence through the lens of that pre-existing bias. As you are doing here...

But then again, the closer you look at the space ships, the more they looks like they were engineered by a particularly lucky band of excited six-year-olds. The closer you look at each Captain, the more he or she looks like a hopelessly incompetent madman. You don't have to look closely at all to see that all the aliens obviously share a recent common ancestor with humans. And the closer you look at the crews, the more it looks like Senior Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien is the only enlisted person in all of Starfleet.

Your point the first is an obvious example of bias, your point the second is a flat lie for at least two of the three prominent TNG-era captain. Your point the third is believable but irrelevant.

Your point the fourth is at least interesting in that there is a discrepancy here that merits attention. The obvious explanation is that nearly all Star Trek episodes focus on politically charged decision-making, command decisions, scientific investigation, and other tasks normally left to officers. The day to day routine operations of the ship would be the province of enlisted personnel, but by that same token are rarely focused on. This is no more surprising than in any other genre of fiction. You would hardly complain that a police procedural seemed to pretend that the police building doesn't have a janitor, just because the janitor is seldom if ever seen on screen!

With Trek I just have to take things on face value and assume the characters are telling the truth. The 24th/25th century Federation is a peaceful democratic utopia with universal affluence, no oppressed minorities, and no need for internal currency.

Evidence for "peaceful democratic utopia" is fairly strong, "universal affluence" strong at least among most of the Federation world, "no oppressed minorities" is ambiguous, and "no need for currency" is doubtful but ultimately not the most important.

People work because they like to, even if that work is something miserable shelling clams and busing tables at your uncle's restaurant.

Perhaps this is precisely the sort of work that only family members do for each other in the Star Trek future, Note that Sisko's father is able to keep the restaurant open whether anyone is working for him or not; this strongly suggests that he didn't need the help that badly and that anyone working for him in the restaurant is, say, putting in limited hours during times of peak demand.

And for some totally benign reason nobody covets inherently scarce material goods like land, dock, or air rights, nor material goods like personal space ships that are scarce despite the abundance.

Some of these are easy enough to supply that there would be no reason to covet them strongly (land? With all those nearly uninhabited M-class planets around?)

Others are presumably hard to supply because they are hard to build, but that same difficulty of production translates into being difficult to maintain and operate. A personal spaceship may simply not be worthwhile for anyone who isn't specifically planning to use the spaceship as the cornerstone of their livelihood, because of the costs of maintaining such an exotic-tech craft.

[Elheru Aran]

To be fair, there HAS to be *some* scarcity *somewhere*. Otherwise, for example, you wouldn't have private freighters like Sisko's girlfriend drove. There don't seem to be very many starships under private ownership in the Federation itself (that we've seen), which suggests that either there's a Merchant Marine arm of Starfleet, or, any large cargo/deliveries/bulk freight is being moved either under a government flag or private/public corporate ownership. IIRC, classically the Kobayashi Maru was supposed to be a mercantile craft.

Have we ever seen Federation examples of a 'Cruise Ship' or 'Airliner', carrying a large number of passengers between systems?

[The Romulan Republic]

To be fair, there HAS to be *some* scarcity *somewhere*.

IIRC, there are some materials which can't be readily replicated (this probably also explains why the Federation has hologram-operated mines). Also, there will be areas where the tech. level is less advanced, or where the infrastructure has been crippled by war or natural disaster.

Otherwise, for example, you wouldn't have private freighters like Sisko's girlfriend drove. There don't seem to be very many starships under private ownership in the Federation itself (that we've seen), which suggests that either there's a Merchant Marine arm of Starfleet, or, any large cargo/deliveries/bulk freight is being moved either under a government flag or private/public corporate ownership. IIRC, classically the Kobayashi Maru was supposed to be a mercantile craft.

Probably a mix of essential stuff being carried on Starfleet ships, and some private freighters (some more legit than others) operating on the side. The presence of Romulan Ale, for one, also proves the existence of an active black market in the TNG era (for TOS, see Mudd, Harry).

Also, most Federation worlds being mostly self-sufficient, at least for essentials, due to replicators and cheap energy.

Have we ever seen Federation examples of a 'Cruise Ship' or 'Airliner', carrying a large number of passengers between systems?

Not to my knowledge. We've seen colonization missions, and we've seen Starfleet ships used for evacuations or VIP transport, and we've seen the odd civilian freighter operating in Starfleet territory. But no cruise liners or routine ferries. Which suggests either a high degree of regulation over space travel, or costs that make it prohibitive for most private citizens (but the aforementioned civilian freighters seem to weigh against that, as does the entire existence of the Ferengi, who operate a capitalist system on a similar tech. base as the Federation's).

Question: was Sisko's girlfriend a Federation citizen, and did she typically operate in Federation space? I can't recall.

[Lord Revan]

Question: was Sisko's girlfriend a Federation citizen, and did she typically operate in Federation space? I can't recall.

She was human as far as I know so we can assume she was federation citizen, unless stated otherwise.

Again our view point is rather limited so something akin to cruise liner (which are a luxury even in 21st century earth) just never entered that viewpoint after all Bajor is more or less a backwater planet that for most of the time we saw it was either near or in a warzone/hostile territory.

As for routine passanger ferriers with Star Trek tech they don't have to look that different from a cargo ship outside as they can have holographic "windows" on the interior that have no external openings.

So again it might not be a case of "there's no passanger carriers or at most very little" and more of a case "most routine passanger ship don't look signifigantly different from cargo ships and since our PoV isn't on them we are thus given a false picture of things".

It is dangerous to make too overreaching judgements on imcomplete data as you might end up making conclutions more based on your bias then the facts and when it comes to the civilian sector in the Federation our data is practically non-existant. All we can make is some very broad generalizations and those are vague "it seems to be this" estimates rather then anything definitive.

[Elheru Aran]

Well for me it's mostly a matter of educated guesses. We can guess that travel in the Federation isn't restricted on a political level, that is, Federation citizens in good standing (no crimes or whatever on their record) can probably travel freely between most Federation planets. Thus, it makes sense that there has to be some way for them to get from say, Vulcan to Earth. Starfleet is a possibility (certainly we have frequently seen Starfleet craft carrying civilians), but as a day-to-day thing, it would make sense that there is a separate, civilian method for long distance travel as to not tie up Starfleet assets. What that constitutes, we cannot say. What that costs, we cannot say.

Beyond people travelling, there also has to be cargo freight, probably in vast quantities. One consideration might be ecological impact; a planet may have a lot of iron ore for steel, but they might not care for heavy-duty mining on their world, and as such are willing to pay for iron mined out of asteroids or whatever to fuel their industrial base. Then there's simply food. Replicators are one thing, but they aren't making food from completely nothing IIRC, they do use 'replicator stock' or whatever. And of course there might be low-tech planets with a large population that need external assistance; we haven't seen a Coruscant type ecumenopolis in ST yet... but they could be out there.

Again, though, yeah, this is all guesswork, supposition, assumptions, and extrapolation. We can form a pretty decent idea of what a society like the Federation would need on a regular basis in terms of commerce, but with the minimal data we've been given about the truly civilian sphere (as opposed to diplomats, scientists, and the wishy-washier elements of Starfleet), we don't have very much concrete information to go on.

[FaxModem1]

This has been discussed before, but there are personnel transports in Star Trek. The reasons why they aren't as ubiquitous as cars are in American society doesn't seem to be related to the type of government one has.

Consider that Quark doesn't even thinkg of obtaining a ship, until his cousin(arms trader rich enough to own a moon) gifted him one, gives a hint that buying a starship in Trek is expensive. Kasidy Yates, with her own company, seemed to have her ship, the Xhosa which she privately owned, or if it was supplied by others, such as the Petarians. Not sure if this means she had to take an old rust bucket and make trade deals to get it retrofitted over the years via business deal suppliers, or she had a contract that eventually let her have private ownership of the Xhosa, or whatever, but it does seem to point that unless you have a major company or government behind you, obtaining a ship is tricky. Probably in the same way that most people today don't think of buying an ocean freighter, cruise ship, or yacht unless they have the money to do so. And even then, they only seem to do so when they're going to be using it(or have the money to burn).

This is probably due to being an Age of Sail type setting in space. This is probably also why we do see Starfleet ships running into freighters and transports in distress all the time, but we don't see the Enterprise, Defiant, or other Starfleet vessels running into yokels in their equivalent of a fishing boat all the time.

As others have pointed out, this just further points out what we're not seeing about the civilian side of Trek.

All that said, Sisko, in his off time, made a solarsail spaceship in his off-time with Jake, so at least one form of pleasure vehicle is possible if you have the time and resources.

[K. A. Pital]

Federation is classic communism. At least, Starfleet.

Please explain. Because if you're disputing my classification of the Federation as democratic socialist, I would point out that there are none of the institutions or tactics of a dictatorship on display in the canon Federation (no matter how much some people claim otherwise).

The explanation is simple, classic communism means the Federation is a classless society (there are no capitalists), state mechanisms are withering away (TOS and TNG have barely a hint that there is some sort of bureaucracy outside the Starfleet one), interstellar transport is done by a centralized merchant fleet or even a civilian Starfleet arm, and commerce is practically nonexistent.

You can refer to it as democratic socialist, but I think that it does not seem to fit. Democratic decision-making is not heavily referenced and a lot of Starfleet politics have nothing to do with democracy; the Federation “Council” is decidedly an afterthought for the series and is a rump organ anyway with only one or very few representatives per planet. Socialism is a society where monetary transactions still exist and remain a reality, as well as vestiges of private ownership and commerce, but state control and redistribution is the primary method for organizing large-scale production...

I am not disputing your description, I just think the shown society is more advanced.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The only thing I can recall that might be classed as a passenger ship is one mentioned in TOS's "The Conscience of the King," where the actors are travelling to another world on a ship called the Astral Queen. There is also mention of drone ships/robotic freighters in "The Ultimate Computer" where one gets blown up, and in TWOK the Kobyashi Maru was called a "Class Three Neutronic Ore Carrier" IIRC (whatever the hell that is), and was stated to have a crew of 85 and 300 passengers.

[Elheru Aran]

300 passengers on an "ore carrier"? Must have been carrying miners or something.

Reviewing this: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Civi ... _starships
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Freighter
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Transport

(yeah, yeah, I know, it's a wiki, but it's nice because it tends to keep to what's actually portrayed onscreen, so canonicity is pretty OK)

Particularly if you click on the 'Transport' link, there are quite a few diverse types. Not all are civilian, of course, but many civilian ships are using the same models as Starfleet. Kasidy Yates was using an Antares class transport (strangely enough there's another Antares class depicted in TAS that doesn't resemble her ship much), built on Luna. A distinction is made between them and freighters specifically.

Wiki-walking a bit, there are a number of freight transport services. ECS (Earth Cargo Services) existed in the Enterprise era, though arguably that's not relevant to this discussion as that's pre-Federation. In TOS, there's a Merchant Marine: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Merchant_Marine

And then there's other organizations like the Bajoran Ministry of Commerce and the Rigellan Trade Commission. Those two names suggest that at least some freight transport is state-organized.

[The Romulan Republic]

Federation is classic communism. At least, Starfleet.

Please explain. Because if you're disputing my classification of the Federation as democratic socialist, I would point out that there are none of the institutions or tactics of a dictatorship on display in the canon Federation (no matter how much some people claim otherwise).

The explanation is simple, classic communism means the Federation is a classless society (there are no capitalists), state mechanisms are withering away (TOS and TNG have barely a hint that there is some sort of bureaucracy outside the Starfleet one), interstellar transport is done by a centralized merchant fleet or even a civilian Starfleet arm, and commerce is practically nonexistent.

I have to partially contest this description.

1. Classless. Yeah, mostly, I'll give you that one.

2. State mechanisms withering away. I'm skeptical of this one. Becoming more centralized under Starfleet, maybe, but that would just mean that they have a (pseudo) military government. Except that isn't really the case, because we know there's a Federation Council, and IIRC there are brief glimpses of other things, like the Vulcan Science Council or whatever, or the presence of an apparently civilian attorney and a civil court system in Voyager (when the Doctor sues over his holonovel being published without his permission). We probably just don't see that stuff more often because the show is focused on Starfleet ships, often out on the frontier.

3. Transport being done by a centralized merchant fleet or Starfleet. As Lord Revan said, probably too little evidence to say for sure, but there are several canon examples of non-Starfleet human/Federation merchants.

4. Commerce being practically non-existent. See above. In the core worlds, capitalist commerce as we know it is probably rare to non-existent, but trade of some sort clearly still takes place. But also, its probably a case of lack of evidence, due to the show focusing on frontier Starfleet ships.

You can refer to it as democratic socialist, but I think that it does not seem to fit. Democratic decision-making is not heavily referenced and a lot of Starfleet politics have nothing to do with democracy; the Federation “Council” is decidedly an afterthought for the series and is a rump organ anyway with only one or very few representatives per planet.

Not sure this is right. Again, we mostly see things from a Starfleet perspective, but we do know that there is a Council representing the member worlds (though I believe at least some of its membership is appointed by the planetary governments, like the UN, not directly elected) and President, that at least in the TOS film era the Council can exercise real disciplinary oversight on Starfleet officers. The Federation also has other institutions typically associated with democracy, particularly a free press.

IIRC, there's also a scene in DS9 when one of the Klingon characters comments that Worf has been living too long in the "democratic" Federation, when Worf criticizes Martok being held back as a young man on account of not having noble blood.

Socialism is a society where monetary transactions still exist and remain a reality, as well as vestiges of private ownership and commerce, but state control and redistribution is the primary method for organizing large-scale production...

I am not disputing your description, I just think the shown society is more advanced.

There's money in TOS, but I think that's withered away by the TNG era, except on the border.

Private ownership is pretty clearly confirmed to exist in the Federation, even to the scale of owning large tracts of property (the Picard vineyard, the Sisko family restaurant). Unless we assume that they're just operating those facilities on behalf of the state or something, but we don't see any evidence of that that I'm aware of.

Edit: It may be that there simply isn't a good real-world parallel for the Federation.

[SpottedKitty]

and in TWOK the Kobyashi Maru was called a "Class Three Neutronic Ore Carrier" IIRC (whatever the hell that is), and was stated to have a crew of 85 and 300 passengers.

That sounds like the sort of merchant ship (used to be common, but not seen much these days) that was mainly a cargo carrier but also had passenger cabins. IIRC it was an intermediate step between an outright passenger liner and "working your passage" — cheaper, slower and not as comfortable as a liner, but at least you weren't expected to get up at oh-god-o'clock and help run the ship.

[NecronLord]

You can refer to it as democratic socialist, but I think that it does not seem to fit. Democratic decision-making is not heavily referenced and a lot of Starfleet politics have nothing to do with democracy; the Federation “Council” is decidedly an afterthought for the series and is a rump organ anyway with only one or very few representatives per planet.

Not sure this is right. Again, we mostly see things from a Starfleet perspective, but we do know that there is a Council representing the member worlds (though I believe at least some of its membership is appointed by the planetary governments, like the UN, not directly elected) and President, that at least in the TOS film era the Council can exercise real disciplinary oversight on Starfleet officers. The Federation also has other institutions typically associated with democracy, particularly a free press.

At best you can say it's the four people on the dias, the president and the three seated folk, in which case only one admiral, and the rest are guest benches. There's definite guests there after all, Dr Taylor and an enlisted crew lady.

Either way it's at least 25% admirals.

That's pretty much Egypt in maroon.

[The Romulan Republic]

You can refer to it as democratic socialist, but I think that it does not seem to fit. Democratic decision-making is not heavily referenced and a lot of Starfleet politics have nothing to do with democracy; the Federation “Council” is decidedly an afterthought for the series and is a rump organ anyway with only one or very few representatives per planet.

Not sure this is right. Again, we mostly see things from a Starfleet perspective, but we do know that there is a Council representing the member worlds (though I believe at least some of its membership is appointed by the planetary governments, like the UN, not directly elected) and President, that at least in the TOS film era the Council can exercise real disciplinary oversight on Starfleet officers. The Federation also has other institutions typically associated with democracy, particularly a free press.

[Don't quote pics ~ NL]
At best you can say it's the four people on the dias, the president and the three seated folk, in which case only one admiral, and the rest are guest benches. There's definite guests there after all, Dr Taylor and an enlisted crew lady.

Either way it's at least 25% admirals.

That's pretty much Egypt in maroon.

So we're just assuming everyone in the benches was a guest, and that court martials are held in front of the entire council, not just a judicial sub-committee or something?

[Lord Revan]

I guess it needs to be repeated again, there's way too little info on what's the standard operating MO of the Federation Council to say anything (as with pretty much everything involving the civilian side in UFP).

Pretty much everytime we saw it, there was special circumstances. It's not like Senate of the Galactic Republic which we saw several times in what as more or less "business as usual" as far as workings of the senate go.

[NecronLord]

So we're just assuming everyone in the benches was a guest, and that court martials are held in front of the entire council, not just a judicial sub-committee or something?

Production documents show the intent was a high table which was the council, and guests and ambassadors in the gallery.

15 INT. FEDERATION COUNCIL CHAMBER - FULL 15

A doomed room in which the FEDERATION COUNCIL and its
PRESIDENT sit at a long table before the Federation
Seal. There is a gallery of representatives from vari-
ous planets. The screen on which Kirk's image is
frozen is centrally located. And at a spot lit glass
podium, stands the KLINGON AMBASSADOR, pointing.

264 INT. FEDERATION COUNCIL CHAMBER 264

Somber, hushed by contrast. Galleries filled largely
by STARFLEET PERSONNEL. Some coughs. No talk. Then:

But they still put an admiral in one of the big chairs there.




Small governing bodies seem to be the order of the day in all regional powers. The Xindi Council and Detapa Council were tiny too.

[Prometheus Unbound]

The only thing I can recall that might be classed as a passenger ship is one mentioned in TOS's "The Conscience of the King," where the actors are travelling to another world on a ship called the Astral Queen. There is also mention of drone ships/robotic freighters in "The Ultimate Computer" where one gets blown up, and in TWOK the Kobyashi Maru was called a "Class Three Neutronic Ore Carrier" IIRC (whatever the hell that is), and was stated to have a crew of 85 and 300 passengers.

USS Jenolen

[Simon_Jester]

Private ownership is pretty clearly confirmed to exist in the Federation, even to the scale of owning large tracts of property (the Picard vineyard, the Sisko family restaurant). Unless we assume that they're just operating those facilities on behalf of the state or something, but we don't see any evidence of that that I'm aware of.

I think the idea is that private ownership of small farms and restaurants is allowed under the same "meh, whatever, this isn't the kind of means of production that actually matters" rules under which the USSR had no problem with saying that you owned your pants or your pet cat. The Federation economy is clearly so far beyond worrying about how to produce and distribute food that there is no meaningful economic power to be had by controlling such small-scale food production and distribution assets. Besides, random pieces of land are not hard to come by in Star Trek, what with all those empty M-class planets lying around. At which point the Picard vineyard is classified as "hobbyist supplies" and the government doesn't really care what is done with it.