Starship Troopers, Fascism, and the Organization Man
RAH was certainly no fascist, but the society he descirbes in
Starship Troopers is fascistic.
Consider:
1. The Federation originated with bands of loosely-organized war veterans who, disgusted with the disorder and corruption they found in a postwar world, decided to take matters into their own hands.
Heinlein has taken the "Freikorps Phenomenon" and placed it in a future history setting. The Freikorps in post-WWI Germany, and the Blackshirts of post-WWI Italy, were bands of war veterans who "restored order" in those impoverished, divided societies.
2. Note that in Terran society, business and commerce are not given a high social value. Rico's father, who is a successful entrepreneur, nevertheless feels that his commercial was unmanly. Moreover, businesspeople are depicted as easily replaceable: Morales takes over from Rico Sr. with no evident problems.
Commerce is not the only social activity relegated to inferior status: workers, even workers in important or hazardous trades, are not valued much either, as we can see from the story of the merchant sailors in Seattle.
In fact, at one point in the novel, Rico refers to civilians as "like beans," which can be purchased or discarded, as required.
Even the sciences are disparaged, seen as frivolous "professor types," unless like Carl, they enlist to serve the State.
3. Only the warrior is truly worthy--this is a major theme in all Fascist movements. The warrior strives to expand the living space of the race. As Rico is taught, everything is always about "real estate."
The rest of society has value only insofar as it supports the warrior. Even motherhood has value only for the purpose of nurturing the soldier. Rico's mother is depicted as a failure and a cause of problems, because she does not validate Rico's role as a warrior. And when she dies, only then is Rico's father free once again to become a real man--a warrior.
4. The Federation's meritocracy is based strictly on the "Leadership Principle." Natural leaders will come to the fore, selected from the fury of the struggle for survival !
So there it all is: Living Space, Blood and Soil, Leadership Principle, the Storm of Steel, German Motherhood.
Many of the central ideals of the Terran Federation could be cribbed straight from a Nazi poster of the 1930's.
Heinlein has done two things, however:
1. He has stripped away the top charismatic leader. Instead, it appears that the Federation has a more or less nonpartisan collective leadership.
But this is like the Ernst Röhm faction of Nazism, which downplayed the role of a Führur. Röhm's faction was purged by Hitler in 1934.
2. Heinlein has given us a genial, naif, "aw shucks" kind of narrator.
As a result, it takes a careful reading to recognize that the Terran Federation is an idealized picture of a fascistic society.
As I said in an earlier post, Heinlein likes to press people's buttons, to test them, to experiment with their ideas. Heinlein knew damn well that Fascism was not just something that happens somewhere else--it is the product of a certain set of historical conditions. Heinlein also knew that Fascism didn't emerge without widespread public approval. So in
Starship Troopers, Heinlein portrays the sort of Fascism that he thinks would appeal to his fellow Americans, who at the time he was writing in 1959, were busy building up what Eisenhower would soon call the "military-industrial complex."
As for Rico, he is the very quintessence of the "Organization Man." Shortly before Heinlein wrote
Troopers, sociologist William H. Whyte wrote a bestseller which was widely discussed at the time, the 1956 book
The Organization Man. I'll give two quotes from Whyte,
source:
William Whyte's The Organization Man
William H. Whyte said:
These people only work for The Organization. The ones I am talking about belong to it as well. They are the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions. Only a few are top managers or ever will be.
and for the Organization people, as depicted in fiction,
Society itself becomes the deus ex machine. In such cases one of the characters is a sort of accredited spokesman for the system in which the protagonists operate. The system, with an assist from its spokesman, resolves the hero's apparent dilemma.
Consider the protagonist's (Rico) relationship with several "spokesmen," such as Colonel Dubois, in getting over his "hump," after which he fits in nicely with the system.
What Heinlein did was take a set of future-historical circumstances and place within them the sort of post-WWII American "organization man." Result: a fascism with American characteristics.
It's so convincing, that many people get angry at Heinlein when they read the book, while many others wish society was more like that!
