Voting is Violence

Starship Troopers and Liberal Political Philosophy, Part I

Starship Troopers (1997)

It has been without a doubt one of my more outspoken takes over the years that Starship Troopers at its core espouses a (slightly idiosyncratic) liberal political philosophy. I realize I sort of play into this bit from time to time, but I do also think it’s worth briefly going over what the actual political philosophy espoused by the characters of the world is, and where they fit in an ideological sense.

The continual question that Heinlein asks is what the true role of violence is in a political community, and what duties are incumbent upon the members of a political body. I’m going to approach this by talking in turn about some of the more famous—and contentious—quotes from Starship Troopers that I think will serve to demonstrate what I think Heinlein is getting at.

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 their freedoms.

I think this quote probably gets maligned more than almost any other in the entire book. It is also the one most leaned upon in terms of the charges that Heinlein is espousing a form of fascism or autocracy, but I think it’s almost entirely due to leaving out the second sentence. It’s often presented as something like a celebration of violence for the sake of violence—something that certainly does fall within the fascist ideological tradition.

However, in the full context, I think it’s more clear to be intended as a rather banal warning. It’s sort of a variation on Trotsky’s famous quote that you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. It simply really doesn’t matter if you want peace if the other party wants war. If you think otherwise you’re just being delusional about it, and no manner of diplomacy, or high ideals is going to help.

Predation by States and peoples throughout history has been the norm, and in contemporary history, it has only been curbed when the international community has seen fit to employ the violence necessary to stop it.

It all reminds me of the crowd of people who for the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine have been crowing about how many various deals could be made with Putin. It’s never been true, and the only result of that line of thought is to trade the lives and freedom of Ukrainians who will fall victim to the predation of Russia. Wishing away the efficacy of violence doesn’t make it so.

It is also worth noting that this quote is very obviously within the context of the immediate post-WW2 era, in which the inaction and malaise of liberal states in appeasing Axis powers saw horrors unleashed upon Europe.

Munich is what’s explicitly implied in Heinlein’s criticism (although it could also be the Korean War) that those who forget violence in political affairs will succumb to those who do not. The Allies in turn very obviously did not defeat Hitler with strongly worded speeches (which is implied in the book when the teacher who relays this quote sarcastically asks the student to summon the ghost of Hitler to have him referee if violence ever solved anything).

The same thing can be said of the VDV at Hostomel, one only has to consult their ghosts to find out if violence solved the question of who was the rightful government in Kyiv.

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

On it’s face, this one probably seems more controversial, but I think also ends up being a fairly banal observation that only stands out in that it makes us feel uncomfortable. But is there anything wrong with what’s being said? It’s just Weber’s famous formulation of the State being a monopoly on legitimate violence said slightly more brusquely.

All we’re doing when we vote is providing our (small) portion of political will for a set of policies to be carried out by the broader political community. When we elect political leaders, we’re doing it with the expectation that they implement their proposed agenda. When I vote for Joe Biden, I’m not really voting for the person so much as I’m voting for the Democratic Party Plank, or the set of policies they intend to implement.

To bring about these sets of policies the State has to create laws. It feels trivial to say this, but those laws are backed by the violence of the State. Otherwise, how would they be carried out? It is an abstract form of violence, but it’s violence nonetheless. When we’re voting we’re saying we want the political community to do something, and for the political community to do something it requires force.

Even something as mundane as a speeding law is backed by violence. A person has to be pulled over, and the reason that people pull over is that if they don’t do so, they’ll be forced to do so. It’s more abstract for something like corporate regulations, or contracts, but courts can compel a regulatory outcome. This is really what I think Heinlein was getting at, which is that for the most part, we don’t realize this is what we’re doing when we vote.

I again don’t think this is Heinlein being particularly celebratory about the fact that violence is how the State enforces things, but merely thinks we ought to be cognizant of what we’re doing when we vote. When we want a law to be passed, no matter the scale, at the end of the day there’s someone with a gun who will be there to make sure that law is followed.

“Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we ensure 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—and lose it, if need be—to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert.”

This is by far Heinlein’s most controversial political philosophy espoused in the book, the theory of limiting the franchise to those who provide service on behalf of the political body. Now I should be clear here, I fundamentally disagree with this vehemently. It runs directly contrary to my own ethical belief in an uninhibited universal franchise, and I doubt fairly highly it would be all that successful (being in the military certainly doesn’t make you an urban development expert). However, I don’t think it’s that out there in terms of historical forms of republicanism.

The best comparison I can give would be to classical Athens and the duty for citizens to serve as hoplites in the military as a part of their civic duty. In the Athenian democratic set of virtues, there was no distinction drawn between the duty for citizens to vote in the Agora and for citizens to participate in the affairs of the State. It was seen as one continuous act of service as part of a more holistic view of the citizen in a political body. Really, up until the middle of the 20th century, there was a general expectation in democratic states that part of the duties of citizenship was military service when deemed necessary.

It makes a certain logical sense that if someone is trusted with the responsibility of wielding the power to vote—and by consequence being able to vote to go to war—they bear the equal responsibility that they share some part in the risk taken on by the broader political community.

It is a sort of idealistic notion that at its core citizenship is not seen as a distinctly different thing from the political community itself. Since we derive our rights and freedoms from the protection of the political community, we ought to bear the risk when we act to put the political community in danger. If we can vote for a war that may lead to our State’s ruin, who are we to avoid service?

I think this is really what Heinlein wants to get at with this whole thing. There is in some sense a deep problem that in almost every contemporary democratic State, the vast majority of a population may vote for violence, or conversely vote to stay out of a necessary conflict, through narrow self-interest, and lead the whole civic body to ruin.

He wants to find some way to retain a democratic civic structure but create a system of voting that doesn’t incentivize voters to look towards narrow self-interest. I don’t think it would work, and at least historically speaking, the liberal States in the Second World War eventually did do the right thing. However, to Heinlein’s credit, I suppose, one only has to ask Ukrainians waiting for American aid right now how they feel about this same question.

It turns out I have more to say on this topic than I can fit comfortably into one of these. So, for the second part, I plan on taking all of this and contextualizing it in terms of liberal politics. I realize I first said I would write this 6 months ago, but I intend to have the next part in a reasonable timespan. Or not. Who knows.