Star Trek is not a social(ist) utopia
I only recently watched Star Trek. I had watched the original shows in reruns as a kid and some of the movies, but I had not watched any of the newer series.
Star Trek is not a social(ist) utopia. It is a technological utopia, whose material wealth is unimaginable by today’s standards. And the two things can be easily confused. In fact, the shows themselves frequently do so when discussing the past:1
This scene takes place in what is, for us, the near future and serves as a critique of current society. Unfortunately, it is wrong: we don’t really have any good treatments for individuals with severe mental health issues. It would be great if we did, but the technology just isn’t there. This is actually very typical of real-life discussions, attributing to social progress what is simply the effect of being wealthier and technologically more advanced (see this earlier post on how new tech will change food).
What is the social organization of Star Trek? Basically, an idealized version of the military. In the Star Trek universe, though, many things that are part of the civilian world in our universe have been militarized: in particular, my own field of science (and not just astrophysics) is run by Starfleet.2
Many socialists have indeed looked at the military for inspiration: it is a non-market organization that exists and works. The Star Trek version is a particularly idealized version where war crimes are rare and corruption is almost non-existent (instead of rife), but still, the question remains: would the Star Trek society be worse if scientists were salaried individuals rather than military officers subject to military discipline? In today’s world, it is already possible to join the military and live the sort of socialist life depicted in the shows and so few people choose it. I, for one, would not trade the life of getting grubby money for work for the chain of command!3
There is one element of the show that is a social utopia, namely it depicts a kind of unbridled tech-optimism that is almost jarring to our modern sensibility4. Even throughout the shows, you see tech progress that happens at a rapid pace. And this is real progress (faster starships), not the modern “we used to have Slack, now we switched to discord” progress.
(And before you bring up inequality, note that huge inequalities of access to resources are routinely portrayed in the show: high-ranking officers get access to things like a starship for personal use. It’s a non-market inequality, but having access to a starship vs. not having a starship is a huge form of inequality).
Our lives are wealthier than would have been even imaginable a few generations ago: G. Orwell has a passage where he admits that socialism might make society less wealthy as a whole, but it might be worth it if means that everyone gets to have meat once a week.
The shows also mention a civilian population, but there is rarely any detail of how this economy is organized beyond vague mentions of rations (again, the military is a model) and people who are engaged in prestige careers (Jake Sisko wanting to be a journalist or a writer).
This is not a minor detail. Respect for rank and a sense of loyalty is a huge part of Star Trek and drives a lot of plots.
Although, and this is a topic for another post, Star Trek still retains notions of ritual purity.