Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, originally published in 1959, depicts a world that has nothing in common with the one of Boss George Washington Plunkitt and 19th Century New York City. Set in the distance future, when the world has become united under the Terran Federation and humanity has voyaged out into space, it deals with issues and concepts that would never have occurred to Plunkitt and his contemporaries. Obviously they would have had no reason to give any thought to space travel or encountering alien species, such as the hostile Skinnies and Arachnids who are at war with Earth for control of this section of the galaxy. Plunkitt gave little thought to foreign policy at all, although he was of course aware of the various warring empires on earth, including the new American empire that had recently annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He probably never would have imagined the unification of Earth under one government at some point in the future, nor would he have cared for the one depicted in Heinlein’s science fiction classic. Both were democracies, at least in a limited sense, given that only white men were allowed to vote in 19th Century America while in Heinlein’s futuristic society voting and office-holding are limited to veterans of the Federal Service. Given Plunkitt’s distrust and distrust even of the much smaller professional civil service of his era, he no doubt would have disliked the government of the Terran Federation. Old-fashioned wheeler-dealers and political bosses simply would have been out of place there, and their cynical and self-interested values considered highly suspect and undesirable. Even so, both the political machine and the military expected loyalty, discipline and commitment from their members, and punished those who disobeyed their rules—severely so in Starship Troopers. Both also offered upward mobility to those who joined them, although their ultimate purposes and values were very different.
In Plunkitt’s America, the military was still a relatively tiny force while in Starship Troopers it has an absolutely central role in society, politics and government. Only those who have performed at least two years of Federal Service can vote or hold office, which meant that the franchise would have been more limited than under the system in which Plunkitt operated. In 19th Century America, voting rights were extended to all white men, but not to women, blacks, Asians or Native Americans, and the political bosses bought these votes in return for jobs, services and other favors. This would not have been possible in the world that Heinlein created, nor would Plunkitt even have been allowed to run for office since he was not a veteran. At the same time, though, Federal Service and even combat is open to women as well as members of all races, religions and ethnic groups, while in 19th Century America no such egalitarianism existed across color and ethnic lines. Heinlein’s citizens of the future Terran Federation seem to have moved past all the racist slurs that pepper the language of Jim Plunkitt, and he also would have assumed that a woman’s place was in the home rather than in politics, government or military service. Juan Rico, the hero of Starship Troopers, is from the Philippines, which is no longer a U.S. colony but a free and equal member of the world federation, and he does not face even a hint of discrimination or prejudice because of his color or ethnic background.
If Plunkitt’s Tammany Hall machine was based on corruption, patronage and self-interest, the government in Heinlein’s novel places the highest value on military virtues like duty, honor and sacrifice. No positions in government can be bought but only earned by those who have served society and survived the wars against the aliens. Rico’s father opposes his choice to join the Federal Service and disowns him, although he later changes his mind after his wife is killed in an Arachnid attack on Buenos Aires. Unlike Plunkitt’s society, all high school teachers of the History and Moral Philosophy class must also be veterans, and Rico is inspired by his teacher Col. Jean Dubois to become a soldier. Rico goes to basic training and eventually decides that he will make the military his career, eventually being promoted to lieutenant as the invasion of the Bug’s home planet gets underway. Only 10% of those who volunteer for Federal Service complete the initial training, and the conditions in the camp are brutal. This society does believe in public flogging and hanging to maintain public order and military discipline, although Plunkitt would have been very familiar with such punishments as well.
Democracy as Jim Plunkitt understood it was explicitly rejected in Starship Troopers as a very corrupt and unworkable system that had failed sometime in the 20th Century. It could not stand the competition with rival world powers like China, much less the permanent warfare against hostile aliens in outer space. As Col. Dubois explains to young Juan Rico and his classmates, democracy collapsed because “people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted”, while the military veterans who controlled the government now had the discipline and self-sacrifice to think not of themselves and their own interests, but the good of humanity as a whole (Heinlein 93). This society was not based on the Spartan model, which Plato so admired in the Republic, nor was it governed by philosopher kings trained from childhood to be the ruling class. It also rejects socialist and Marxist concepts as utopian and impossible, and like Plunkitt’s America probably has a capitalist economic system. Economics was simply not the major concern for Heinlein as it always was for Boss Plunkitt and his Gilded Age contemporaries. Nor does Heinlein describe the exact structure of the government and economic system at all, although the latter is probably dominated by veterans as much as the state. All the young people are taught about the great battles and military heroes of the past, and these are their role models rather than successful capitalists or politicians. From childhood onward, they are told that “the noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and war’s devastation” (Heinlein 91). Plunkitt almost certainly would have sneered and scoffed at such ideas, but then again his world was not under constant threat and attack from a literally inhuman enemy. Under such circumstances, his talents as a political manipulator would have been of little use, and he would not have been an effective leader of a society whose main purpose was fighting wars.
Plunkitt certainly did understand how to mobilize the masses of voters and meld them into a disciplined and effective organization, but his goals were purely practical and self-seeking. He did not have to be particularly concerned with events outside of his own city and state, nor was his world under any threat of attack or invasion. Therefore he displayed very little of the Spartan or military virtues that were the centerpiece of Heinlein’s system, and he had a strong distrust of all outside authorities in Albany or Washington who might interfere with the city he controlled. None of them were going to be permitted to boss him around and he fought back when they attempted it. Although he denied stealing any public funds, he was proud of the fact that he had become a millionaire and a capitalist in his own right through “honest graft” (Riordan 10). Plunkitt therefore considered himself as much as an entrepreneur and self-made man as his Robber Baron contemporaries like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He was not an idealist at all or motivated by ideas of any kind except advancing himself and other members of the political machine. Tammany rewarded its friends and punished its enemies like any other political machine, and was not above using violence when necessary, but its preferred methods were bribery, rigging elections, patronage and other inducements. Plunkitt did favors for other corporations, bought and sold public offices, and collected money in return. He simply regarded this as a normal way of doing business, and if Tammany received ‘donations’ for its services then “why shouldn't we take it like other missionary societies?” (Riordan 72). In his experience, all the other politicians and political parties around the country acted in exactly the same way whenever they were in power.
Like the military people in the Terran Federation, Plunkitt did consider himself a patriot, although his loyalties were to himself, Tammany and the United States rather than to a world government or humanity as a whole. His 19th Century world was much poorer than the one depicted in Starship Troopers, and simply did not have all the advanced technologies of a spacefaring civilization. Most of the people he dealt with every day were impoverished working class immigrants just struggling to survive in industrial America, and had very limited economic and educational opportunities. They were often hungry and unemployed, especially in the severe depressions of the 1970s and 1890s, so Tammany helped them find housing, employment, food and also assisted them when they had trouble with the police or their landlords. In return, it expected the men to vote early and often for the political machine. One reason that Plunkitt hated the reformers and civil service professionals was that they prevented Tammany from dispensing patronage jobs to working class and immigrant men. He even argued that they would turn to radical socialist or revolutionary ideas if the political machine was not able to assist them and siphon off their discontent. It taught the immigrants about the flag, the Fourth of July and the Constitution, and Plunkitt doubted that the wealthy elites had a greater love of country than the Tammany men (Riordon 68). Although there was no major war in his time, he pointed out that Tammany had encouraged young men to volunteer for the Spanish-American War, and indeed it would also do so in the 20th Century world wars that occurred after he was no longer on the scene. On the whole, though, he was not particularly concerned with warfare, foreign policy or military issues, and complained that “you can't get people excited about the Philippines. They've got too much at home to interest them” (Riordan 83).
Heinlein’s ideas about who merited citizenship and public office were therefore quite different from those of Plunkitt and the Tammany bosses, who were very conscious of having risen from poverty among the immigrant working class. Despite the war with the Bugs, social and economic conditions in the Terran Federation do not seem nearly as gritty and harsh as they were in Gilded Age New York. There are not the same kinds of ethnic, racial and class tensions and resentments that seem so common in Plunkitt’s world. Power depends of having served in the military against alien enemies rather than rising up through the ranks of a political machine and accepting patronage jobs from it. Heinlein would argue that his system is a meritocracy since everyone has a choice to volunteer for Federal Service, even if there is no guarantee that they will survive the training or the wars against the aliens. If they do, though, they will automatically join the governing class (or caste) and have all the real political and economic power in society. Plunkitt’s world was run by wealthy capitalists and corporations rather than the military, although among this group there were always men (usually white, native born men) who had risen from the working class through their own talents and efforts. Of course there were also those who were part of the ruling class simply because they had inherited wealth and status from their families, although Plunkitt had a special resentment for them. His political machine offered the best opportunity for the poor and immigrants to become upwardly mobile through their own efforts, as long as they served Tammany loyally. In that respect at least, it has the same social and political function as the military in Starship Troopers, even if its goals and values are completely different.
WORKS CITED
Heinlein, Robert A. Starship Troopers. Penguin, 1987.
Riordon, William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Digiread.com, 2010.
