BLINK OF AN EYE
In the place of the usual source texts for these essays -- current political commentary, or classic works in social theory -- I make the unusual choice this time of an episode of the TV series, StarTrek: Voyager, which aired originally on January 19, 2000. The long delay is
due both to S&S' usual extended editorial process, and to the fact that
our special issue on "Color, Culture and Gender in the 1960s" (Spring
2001) intervened. Readers will see, however, that the episode in question, entitled "Blink of an Eye" (1), focuses on the passage of time, in a way that makes S&S' glacial time frame seem somehow especially appropriate.
Science fiction can be a vehicle for critical social theory: by
playing fast and loose with science -- one must not look too carefully
into the scientific foundations of the stories, to avoid a collapse of
the suspension of disbelief on which the entire effect rests -- a spot
light can be thrown onto social reality, after the fashion of David
Ricardo's "imagining strong cases" or Marx's "individuals as pure em
bodiments of class interest." But let the story speak for itself.
We are in the 23rd century. The starship Voyager, stranded in a
sector of the galaxy tens of thousands of light years from Earth, enters the orbit of a strange planet, only to find itself stuck in a
"tachyon field," unable to escape. The crew then discovers that the
presence of Voyager in the planet's upper atmosphere is causing continual seismic activity on the surface; and that the planet is inhabited
by intelligent life, at an early neolithic stage of technological and
social evolution. But the planet's most remarkable feature -- please
hang onto your suspension of disbelief for the duration -- is this:
time passes much more rapidly there than in the rest of the galaxy,
including on Voyager itself: a second of general time corresponds to
almost a day on the planet (2).
One member of the crew with an anthropological bent, First Officer
Chakotay, is delighted at the prospect of studying civilizations as
they rise and fall, watching history unfold before his eyes. His colleagues, however, are more preoccupied with the problem of extricating
the ship from whatever is holding it captive in the planet's orbit.
Efforts to power the ship out of the trap, however, increase the earthquakes on the surface, endangering the people there. True to
Starfleet's "Prime Directive" -- no interference, especially of a harmful kind, in the affairs of alien peoples -- the Voyager crew stops
trying to blast directly out of the trap in which they are held and
looks for other solutions.
Meanwhile, on the surface of the planet, centuries of time are
passing. The ship is visible to the naked eye, and its presence in the
sky has already long been a fixture of popular speculation and culture.
Countless generations of children have played with models of the "sky
ship"; songs have been written about it. Religious belief is organized
around it; shamans and priests pray to it, and propitiate it, and form
beliefs as to why the aliens came, why they are causing the earthquakes
that do so much harm.
Voyager crew members, of course, cannot go to the surface and make
contact with the people there; entering the planet's time frame, even
for a short visit, would mean rapid aging and death. One member of the
crew, however, is different: The Doctor is a holographic projection --
an Emergency Medical Hologram, or EMH. He is ageless, a computer-generated system of visual images and force fields, and passage of time has
no effect on him. So he is beamed to the surface to gather information
("beaming" is a transport technology that will also strain the pitiful
early-21st-century imaginations of the non-Trekkies among S&S readers,
but, again, bear with us). The Doctor returns, unchanged by the passage of years, with fascinating stories to tell, having integrated himself into the local culture (and started a family!), but with no answers to Voyager's predicament.
Time on the planet, however, has been relentlessly marching forward, and the forces of production (my term, not theirs!) are now
comparable to those of Planet Earth in its own 20th century. A primitive manned rocket is launched toward the "sky ship" in an effort to
learn more about it or even make contact with its occupants. The two
space-helmeted crew members of this probe are a scientist, an intense
and thoughtful woman, and the pilot, Katana Res. Upon entering Voyager, the pair initially experiences the crew as still-lifes, frozen in
time while going about their tasks; but the visitors then pass from
planet time into Voyager time, and Voyager's inhabitants become aware
of their presence. The scientist does not survive the transition. The
pilot recovers, however, and is told about Voyager's predicament, and
about the time differential. He is urged to return to the surface and
inform his people, so that they will not blame the Voyager crew for the
earthquakes. When the pilot arrives home, however, he has difficulty
making his people believe his story: he has, after all, been presumed
dead for decades.
The next sequence of events reveals the utter caprice of history.
An explosion occurs near Voyager; the ship's shields hold and deflect
any damage. Military authorities on the planet have developed anti-matter torpedo technology, and are firing at the "sky ship." Seconds
later -- several days later, in planet time
-- another shot is fired, and this one is stronger and closer ("shields
down to 17 per cent!"). The Voyager crew knows that if these attacks
are successful and Voyager is blown to bits, the seismic activity on
the surface will also increase and destroy life there; they therefore
wonder why the people below are acting in this fashion. They also wonder how much longer they can hold out, and anticipate the coup-de-grace, when the explosions suddenly stop! After a moment of silence,
two huge space vehicles rise into view and align themselves on either
side of Voyager. Using a tractor beam, these vehicles gently lift Voyager out of its trap, freeing it to travel out of the planet's orbit
and eliminating the seismic activity on the surface below.
In the denouement, the pilot returns to Voyager for a brief reunion. His people have now developed a "temporal compensator," which
he wears on his wrist and with which he can move back and forth between
the two time frames (the device is new, and can only be used for a few
moments). Voyager's Captain Kathryn Janeway expresses the shared hope
that further technical progress will allow the planet's people to move
into the general time frame, and join in the intercourse of peoples
throughout the galaxy. In the final scene, the pilot, now an old man,
is back on the planet's surface, watching the sky as Voyager disappears
from view.
This delightful fantasy is, I submit, implicitly historical materialist. It depicts the development of intelligent life as an ongoing
struggle to escape from superstition and myth; a long, slow evolution,
both of the power to shape and alter the external world and of the
knowledge that accompanies that power. But the knowledge and the power
may be in conflict, and "Blink of an Eye" is an allegory of the race
between them. Knowledge and enlightenment apparently come to the
planet's people just in time, as a result of the pilot's visit to Voyager, and the survival of both the planet and the "sky ship" hang in
the balance of his success in convincing his people of the truth of his
account of his experience. There is nothing "inevitable" about the
happy ending -- unless one reasons, teleologically, that Voyager cannot
be destroyed if there are to be additional episodes of the TV series!
(3) But the more general message concerns the race between the productive forces -- including both knowledge of and power to shape the external world -- and the social relations within which those forces are deployed. Social relations, and especially class conflict, are under-
theorized on StarTrek, as in the sci-fi genre overall. In "Blink of an
Eye," rival states on the planet engage in occasional wars, and in a
"space race" to get to the "sky ship." Conversing with Voyager crew
member Seven of Nine, Katana Res (the pilot) wonders whether the presence of Voyager is the source of all challenge and progress among the
planet's peoples, and whether its departure will lead to social evolutionary stasis. Seven replies helpfully that Voyager's departure might
actually stimulate efforts to follow, and explore the galaxy.
Social relations are thus present implicitly; they are the silent
player in the drama determining whether the planet's decision-makers
will blast Voyager out of the sky, or seek an intelligent solution.
And, as often argued in these pages (see, i.a., "Conditional Inevitability," Spring 2000), there is no guarantee of survival and progress to a society of democratic equality and human self-fulfillment.
Historical materialism only points the way, by identifying one overriding necessary condition: the elimination of class division and antagonism as organizing principles of social life.
Fans of the original StarTrek series, StarTrek and StarTrek: The
Next Generation, have often remarked on the high moral sensibility
present in their leading characters. The social structures on Earth
and other planets of the Federation are, as noted, mostly left implicit; but it is hard to imagine that the technical capabilities of 23rd-century humans -- and humanoids -- could be consistent with capitalist power, acquisition, domination and greed. In the more recent spinoffs from the original series -- Deep Space Nine, Earth: Final Conflict, and Andromeda -- there is a pronounced ambiguity concerning the
correlation between social evolution and technical capacity, and we are
asked to imagine alien species who combine high-tech interplanetary
technology with slave labor, cultures modeled after ancient praetorian
regimes and empires, etc. But the entire StarTrek enterprise is at its
best when Gene Roddenberry's original vision of morally enlightened
human beings and social relations is present in synergy with the marvels of 23rd-century technology. The "Blink of an Eye" episode of
StarTrek: Voyager stands squarely in that early Roddenberry tradition.
D.L.
NOTES
- Episode #233: teleplay by Joe Menosky, story by Charles Taylor.
- Careful study of the episode (on tape) reveals some inconsistencies in the description of the temporal differential: one second =
"nearly a day," three seconds = "almost two days," and (at one
point), two seconds = "six weeks" (a much larger difference). At
one point it is stated that in planet time, Voyager has been stuck
in orbit for 1,000 years, which, using the 3 secs = 2 days ratio,
is 1.7 years in Voyager time; the ship, however, is apparently
stuck above the planet for hours only. Again, it is perhaps neither wise nor necessary to probe too literally into the math.
- By the time you read this, the final year of StarTrek: Voyager
will have concluded. One can always hope for reruns.
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DIRK STRUIK, 1894-2000
The last surviving founding editor of S&S, Dirk Jan Struik (pronounced "stroyk"), died on October 21, 2000 at his home in Belmont,
Massachusetts, at the age of 106.
This remarkable man -- certainly one of the few to live in three
different centuries and two different millennia -- was a deeply committed Marxist and a creative mathematician; combining these themes, his
articles "Concerning Mathematics," "Marx and Mathematics," and "The
Sociology of Mathematics Revisited: A Personal Note" appeared in SCIENCE
& SOCIETY, Vols. 1, 12 and 50 (the latter as part of our special 50th
Anniversary Issue, Fall 1986). The (relatively!) younger generation of
S&S editors, including the undersigned, met Struik at the occasion of
our 50th anniversary celebration in that year, and we still remember
the powerful impact of his presence and contribution.
Long-time Professor of Mathematics at The Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Struik was known for his work in the social history of
mathematics. His two-volume Concise History of Mathematics appeared in
1948, and he authored the classic Yankee Science in the Making (third
edition, 1962). His specialized work in mathematics centered on differential geometry. Struik also contributed in a major way to the
study of Marx and Marxism; his 1964 edition of Marx's Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 was highly influential, and his 1971
edited and annotated Birth of the Communist Manifesto, with the text of
the Manifesto, prefaces by Marx and Engels, early drafts by Engels and
other supplementary material, all drawn together by Struik's masterful
introduction, remains (it may be argued) still the best overall edition
of the Manifesto, even in comparison with the more recent 150th
anniversary editions.
Struik was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and received his
Ph.D. from the University of Leiden. He was a long-time member of the
Dutch Communist Party, and maintained his contacts with the left in his
home country throughout his life. He came to the United States in 1926
to begin his career at MIT, where he remained until his retirement in
1960, except for the five-year period during the McCarthy era when he
was suspended (with full pay and benefits) after being charged with
conspiring to overthrow the governments of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America by force and violence. The
charges, needless to say, were eventually dropped. Nevertheless, an
MIT panel subsequently rebuked him for "unbecoming" behavior -- essentially, his refusal to testify before the House Unamerican Activities
Committee.
Struik had in fact been vehemently opposed to the force and violence of Dutch imperial rule in Indonesia. He also incurred the wrath
of the establishment in the United States by participating in the work
of the Samuel Adams School for Social Studies in Boston, where he was a
much-loved teacher. In the first term, in 1944, he offered a course at
the school's Providence Street location, on "How Scientific Thought Has
Changed the World."
On September 30, 1994 -- the exact date of Struik's centennial --
a celebration of his 100 years of life was held at Brown University. A
report of that occasion, by Joe Auslander, appeared in "Editorial Perspectives," S&S, Fall 1995, and we refer readers to that text for further details of Dirk Struik's life and work. We are proud to honor
this courageous and gentle man, scholar and revolutionary, who helped
set SCIENCE & SOCIETY on the path that we continue to explore.
M.E.G. and D.L.
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The current issue begins with a provocative study by economist
David M. Kotz: "Is Russia Becoming Capitalist?" The question is striking, mainly because of the enormous weight of the "transition" ideology
in studies of post-Soviet Russia, which proceed as though there were
nothing to discuss in this regard ("transition" from what? to what?).
There is even an emerging field of "transition economics," whose
unanalyzed premise is the teleological principle that all roads lead to
"capitalism," defined as synonymous with the "free market."
Kotz questions all of this, by carefully defining the capitalist
mode of production and marshaling evidence from Russia after 1991 showing that various non-capitalist relations are the major source of revenue for the new elite. In place of a genuine primitive accumulation of
capital, which requires (indeed, is defined by) the proletarianization
of the working population, the polarization that has occurred in Russia
has been based on non-capitalist "predatory/extractive" mechanisms,
which rely on a process of cannibalizing resources built up during the
time of the former state socialist system. This basis for an exploitative order is, needless to say, highly unstable and incapable of long-run self-reproduction; in the meantime, it promises only more of what
has in fact happened since the breakup of the Soviet Union: technological regress, plummeting living standards, demographic decline, increasing authoritarianism, and "possible disintegration of the Russian
state."
Kotz's article is followed by a major new study by Ervand
Abrahamian, on "The 1953 Coup in Iran." Far from old news,
Abrahamian's analysis draws originally on a recently leaked CIA report,
and on other sources, especially the archives of the British Foreign
Office. The result is a graphic portrait of the engineering of the
coup and the undermining of a nationalist regime whose objectives came
into conflict with those of the advanced-capitalist imperialist powers.
The overall weight of the evidence supports an interpretation that
goes beyond the narrow clash between the British and other western oil
interests and the Iranian government over the extraction and pricing of
oil; that is part of the story -- indeed, an important part -- but the
events cannot be grasped in their full complexity unless seen in the
context of the global Cold War. The new sources shed light on previously hidden aspects of the coup, including the role of the U.S. Ambas
sador and military advisers, the recruiting of local Nazis and Muslim
terrorists, and the use of assassinations to destabilize and undermine
the Mossadegh government. A picture emerges that also sets a pattern
for many later interventions by the U.S. and other imperialist governments in the Third World, from Guatemala to Ghana to Chile.
"Communications" in this issue include a new statement from Alan
Shandro, "Reading Lenin: Dialectics and Eclecticism," which continues a
discussion begun in our special issue on Lenin (Fall 1995). At issue
here is the nature of Lenin's dialectics: whether they can be grasped
from his philosophical writings alone, or are to be deduced from his
political writings as well. But as against those who deduce Lenin's
theoretical stance from a pragmatic or practical reading of his political interventions -- and therefore develop an interpretation of the
concrete that ties it very closely to immediate revolutionary aims --
Shandro insists on seeing Lenin's dialectic as involving a theoretically reconstructed concrete. "The truth is concrete" does not, for
him, mean that the truth is immediately perceptible to the senses; it
is, rather, mediated by experience and consciousness. This enables a
rich interpretation of some classic texts, including the much-examined
What Is to Be Done?, and undermines the common view of Lenin's politics
as ruthless and, well, "Machiavellian" (although we have also been
learning to read Machiavelli differently from the de-contextualized
study of The Prince usually served up in Political Science courses).
Oscar Berland's short note on "Nasanov and the Comintern's American Negro Program" is a coda to his two-part article, "The Emergence
of the Communist Perspective on the 'Negro Question' in America: 1919-1931" (Winter 1999-2000; Summer 2000). New evidence is presented on
the connection between the anti-colonial movements and the development
of Communist ideas on the African-American condition and struggle, and
on the intriguing youthfulness of major Cominterm figures ("twenty-somethings").
We conclude with two review essays. The first, by Vivian Walsh,
concerns a recent edited volume, The Economics of Joan Robinson. Walsh
uses his appraisal of this major survey of the work of the noted 20th
century Cambridge economist to summarize, for the layperson, Robinson's
contributions to economic theory, especially to heterodox positions
that draw upon the Marxist tradition. Walsh's tour of Robinsoniana is
an excellent introduction to the subject (although certainly not a substitute for study of the original).
Finally, Jeffry Kaplow's critical appraisal of Francois Furet's
Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century
("The Illusion of a Passing") concludes, importantly, that both the
passing and the illusory nature of that which has presumably passed
are, to resort to understatement, open to doubt. Furet's book has been
quite influential in the French original as well as in translation, and
Kaplow's spirited engagement with it is most timely.
D.L.
