New Life and New Civilizations: Socialism, Progress, & The Final Frontier

Star Trek’s imperialist contradictions highlight the role of “the frontier” in the American mythos.

by E.T. Perry & Will Solomon

In “Day of the Dove,” a 1968 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, the crew of the USS Enterprise fights a group of Klingons for control of their Federation starship. The Klingons, led by Kang (Michael Ansara, in seriously questionable make-up), are locked in battle with Captain Kirk and his men. Both sides have become victims of a mysterious alien entity aboard the ship that induces and draws life from emotions of hate, violence, and bigotry. In an attempt to convince Kang’s wife Mara to persuade her husband to accept an armistice, Captain Kirk argues that she accept the Federation’s doctrine of peaceful co-existence, a philosophy that Mara claims is incompatible with the Klingons’ warlike, imperialist way of life. 

“We must push outward to survive,” says Mara.

“There’s another way to survive,” replies Kirk, “mutual trust and help.”

Unspoken in Kirk’s characteristic response is that the Federation actually endures in pretty much the same way as the Klingon Empire—that is, by expansion. They just do it more humanely. But we should not mistake Kirk’s emphasis on decency with a radically different conception of civilization. Both systems are equally dependent on imperialism, on colonialism, on limitless resource extraction to survive. Both, in other words, find themselves unavoidably dependent upon a single concept: progress. 

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This tension between the espoused ideals of “mutual trust and help” and the imperialist undercurrent of the Federation’s on-screen actions is an essential dimension of Star Trek, and one that is evident in many of the show’s recurring premises: visiting planets devoted to resource extraction, specifically mining (“The Devil in the Dark”); attempting to establish colonies, promote development, or facilitate “diplomatic relations” (“The Trouble with Tribbles,” “Journey to Babel”); and bartering with aliens for dilithium crystals or other raw materials (“Friday’s Child”). Often these plots occur in the context of competition with the Klingons (“Errand of Mercy,” “A Private Little War”) or Romulans (“Balance of Terror”). And even more often, they result in conflict and battle.

This tension between the ideals of “mutual trust and help” and the imperialist undercurrent of the Federation’s actions is an essential dimension of Star Trek. 

In the second-season episode “Friday’s Child,” the crew of the Enterprise arrives on planet Capella IV to “obtain a mining agreement” with the Capellans for a mineral called topeline. The episode frames the Enterprise’s “diplomatic” approach in opposition to that of the Klingons, who also want the planet’s minerals and have already sent down an emissary. And yet, as invariably happens—rather than the landing party forgoing the mining treaty and leaving the planet—violence ensues.

Indeed, for an ostensibly peaceful mission—“to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations”—the Enterprise does an awful lot of warring. (Or “peace-keeping,” to use the UN vernacular upon which Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets may or may not be modeled.) “Don’t be afraid to use your weapons,” Kirk says in the first-season episode “The Alternative Factor”—although he could have said the same in any number of episodes. Apparently, peace-keeping involves a great deal of fighting.

As a series, Star Trek exhibits subtle inconsistencies in its view of social progress, even if we take into account the era in which it was created. The future, as Star Trek projects it, is distinctly enlightened and evolved: it presents a vision of society that is at least nominally egalitarian, color-blind, and oriented toward peace and science. And yet Starfleet itself is organized along rigidly hierarchical, militaristic lines. While the Federation promotes a progressive model of justice and rule, this ostensible philosophy is oddly juxtaposed with the highly racialized depictions of its enemies, and in the accepted perception of other species—Klingon, Romulan, or other—as barbaric or tribal.

Other peoples not up to Federation standards are considered primitive, emotional, distinctly un-scientific, and warlike. If they are scientific, they tend to be cold, calculating, and heartless—consider the episode “By Any Other Name,” in which highly intelligent Kelvans from the Andromeda Galaxy commandeer the Enterprise, turning the vast majority of its crew into little chalk-like balls. However advanced they may appear, such aliens often lack the “empathy” that apparently motivates humans in Star Trek, except when violence is called for.

This framing is both convenient from a storytelling perspective and deeply telling about the way that Star Trek situates humans within the galaxy. By positioning humanity as distinctly moral and empathetic, the series ensures that Kirk and his crew always find themselves exactly where the show’s opening narration promises: on the frontier.

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Greg Grandin elucidates the concept of “the frontier” in his 2018 Pulitzer-winning title, The End of the Myth. In the book, Grandin explores the particular role that the reality and idea of an expanding American frontier have played throughout this country’s history—and by extension, throughout the history of capitalism itself.

According to Grandin, the frontier’s historic boundlessness served as both a safety valve and a repository for society’s inherent and inevitable tensions—economic, racial, and so on—dialectically ensuring both the continuation of these antagonisms and the continued forward “progress” of the nation itself. Conflict is displaced to “peripheral” areas—the expanding frontier—and an ultimate reckoning is deferred. Grandin locates the end of the myth—the closing of the literal and metaphorical frontier—at the election of Trump, and the Border Wall.

Star Trek has a literal final frontier—space—and so in theory it has no such limit to expansion. The dynamic Grandin describes is not inevitably doomed to collapse in on itself in the Star Trek universe; an endless frontier allows progress to continue, ad infinitum, perpetuating itself through access to a limitless store of resources. There will always be more planets, more star systems to mine for raw materials (and they can subdue any unwelcoming aliens along the way, if necessary). When in doubt, there’s always antimatter (“let’s hope it’s as powerful as man will ever get”) to blow stuff up and really get you out of a jam (S2:E13, “Obsession”). 

With an infinite frontier, Star Trek suggests that we can expand forever. The dark underside never has to fully surface. 

“I don’t believe we can stop,” says Kirk—in a partially-abridged scene from the episode “Return To Tomorrow”—elucidating what exactly progress means in Star Trek: “Through all our existence, the frightened and faint-hearted have been warning men not to push any further, not to learn any more, not to hope, grow, and exceed themselves. I don’t believe we can stop. I don’t believe we’re meant to.”

Kirk’s point distills Star Trek’s vision: through expansion, persistence, and optimism, we can overcome our societal antagonisms, subdue the demons in our nature, and continually progress—and with an infinite frontier, lacking material limits, we can do this forever. The dark underside never has to fully surface.

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In the real world, the limits of our collective frontier are now closed like never before. COVID, ecological breakdown: these are the defining and worsening crises of our era. In some respects, they are the inevitable outcome of progress, absent the capacity to expand infinitely. We over-consume, deplete (limited) planetary resources, destroy Earth’s biodiversity, and face severe repercussions.

But as much as the ecological ramifications of our planetary footprint are increasingly unavoidable, there remains an underlying prejudice toward growth and development in both the dominant, capitalist approach and in many of the supposed alternatives. Consider the Green New Deal—broadly an ambitious program, but one that usually puts green growth at the heart of our economic system. Progress remains the name of the game. A GND-focused or similar approach may seek equity, justice, and a better nation—but typically through industrial development and the expansion of the industrial economy (in order to make the U.S. a green technology leader, for example). This view of progress is particularly invoked as a counter-approach to the regressive contraction seemingly promoted by Trumpism and parallel nationalistic movements.

But what if we need to take seriously the idea that progress itself, as we understand it, is flawed? After all, it’s a concept continually undercut by its inherent antagonisms and limits—the ones that have been papered over, or used as fuel, in past (and present) efforts to further progress.

The Enterprise’s ostensibly scientific mission is belied by its militaristic functioning. Although the Federation has egalitarian objectives, it continues to battle and dominate. 

Despite its theoretically boundless final frontier, we can see the inherent limits of progress exhibited in Star Trek: the Enterprise’s ostensibly scientific mission is belied by its militaristic functioning; although the Federation has egalitarian and peaceful objectives, it continues to battle and dominate. Progress always comes with a cost—a few redshirts, at the very least.

Of course, Star Trek’s conceit is that with an infinite frontier, these disharmonies will resolve themselves in time. Such is not the case for us. Since we lack the ability to fuel ourselves on infinite resources—unlimited dilithium crystals, for example—we need to drastically rethink our conception of expanding progress.

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In his 2017 essay “Europe Alone—Only Europe,” French philosopher Bruno Latour attempts to address the alchemical political question of our time: how do we transform reactionary populist grievance into something more progressive?

Latour’s framing is uniquely ecological: “I begin with the simple idea that climate change and its denial have been organizing all of contemporary politics at least for the last three decades. Climate change plays the same role that social questions and the class struggle played over the two preceding centuries.” Latour suggests that the nationalistic, contracting turn inward now taking place was inevitable in a world in which elites insisted on self-enriching globalization while simultaneously recognizing the apocalyptic ecological toll it was taking on the Earth. Ultimately, Latour strives to articulate a framework by which the inward turn might be routed away from reactionary politics: “Can we recognize the legitimacy of this reaction and channel it in the now perfectly realist direction of a return to the ground, the territory, the Earth, that is, an Earth that is no longer national or global?”

This framing is vital, because Latour is willing to jettison an essential civilizational dogma—expansion—and the idea of progress with which it is interwound in favor of a simpler idea of moral, and ecologically sane, progress. 

In effect, Latour makes a point that is obvious, if not generally articulated with sufficient frequency or insistence: we need to reconcile living with limits. We need to view all contemporary political developments in this context. And we need to change our model—of progress, of development—from an outward-oriented, expanding one to one focused on drawdown—working with what we have, to improve and protect what exists. Ultimately, we need a socialism, and a vision of progress, that reckons with resource scarcity, limits, and the degradation of this planet. 

“I don’t believe we can stop. I don’t believe we’re meant to,” says Captain Kirk. But maybe, if we want to have a future, that’s exactly what we must do.