Why the Left needs to watch Star Trek

When I was a kid I thought the future would obviously be more “Star trek” as it had such a compelling interior logic. Sad times. Makes me want to go back and review the Picard years.

> That Star Trek depicts a communist society, without of course calling it that, is crystal clear.

No, it depicts a post-scarcity society.

I'm curious who the author thinks has been watching Star Trek all this time, if not the left, and specifically for its politics.

The "technofetishism" the author claims the show eschews is a core part of what makes its utopian society work (on paper.) Infinite free energy. Warp drive. Machines that can assemble food from raw atoms. Transporters. Medical technology on par with magic. Holodecks. Star Trek is all about technology enabling a better world, or at least technological progress being necessary for societal progress. Because that post-scarcity (if the "c" word is triggering) society simply doesn't exist without it.

I think it's a mistake to read too deeply into Star Trek's supposed "communist" politics. If you look too closely at Trek's utopia, it all falls apart. It isn't realistic or even plausible because positing a realistic socialist post-scarcity utopia and arguing for radical Marxist futurism isn't the franchise's intent. Despite what Gene Roddenberry might have wanted or believed, Star Trek is a capitalist construct written by Americans for Americans whose purpose is to entertain and sell ad time. First and foremost it is drama and as such can never be radical enough to actually threaten the status quo, or reject the American capitalist imperialist paradigm entirely. If anything, it is far more an expression of mainstream progressivism and neoliberalism (along with some implicit homophobia and occasional racism,) but very much still also born of American exceptionalism - as Starfleet, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is essentially American Hegemony In Space.

My left leaning mother claims that I am an improbable hybrid lifeform, based on the Star Treck cast. half Klingon half Vulkan.

I have never owned a television, and didn't watch it in my familys home, so I have to take her word for it.