Heinlein: Libertarian Counterrevolutionary?
Heinlein's libertarianism, such as it was, oftens turns off traditionally-minded readers to his writings. The fact that his writings are imbued throughout with the concept of the inevitability of human progress (though less so than in most science-fiction authors) and a marked distaste for belief unconfirmed by scientific observation does not help to endear those of us who abhor the revolution to his work. A thorough perusal of some of his chief works, however, most notably some of the articles in Expanded Universe, Podkayne of Mars, and, of course, Starship Troopers, yields some very fruitful counterrevolutionary, if accidentally so, conclusions. The reasoning that leads to these conclusions often contradicts the very libertarian principles which (rightly) elicit the distaste of traditional thinkers. Heinlein, therefore, deserves more careful consideration in regard to the counterrevolutionary nature of some of his opinions.
Heinlein's counterrevolutionary conclusions come most obviously in his oft-attacked opinions on women and the family. The ending in Podkayne of Mars exhibits these conclusions most obviously.[1] In the editor's postlude, of course, the character of Uncle Tom does a very thorough job excoriating the working-woman family. Podkayne, in the editor's ending, survives the great explosion, and when Uncle Tom calls her parents to explain the situation, he gives them a sound thrashing, saying that
I have a message for you, sir, one that you should pass on to your wife. Just this: people who will not take the trouble to raise children should not have them. You with your nose always in a book, your wife gallivanting off God knows where. . . . building bridges and space stations and such gadgets is all very well. . . but. . . a woman has more important work to do.[2]
That last, flagrantly controversial line (and this, remember, was in the edited version) sums up the entire point of the story: that parents' first responsibility is not to their careers, but to their children. Indeed, Heinlein himself said that "the true tragedy in this story lies in the character of the mother, the highly successful career woman who wouldn't take time to raise her own kids---and thereby let her son grow up an infantile monster, no real part of the human race and indifferent to the wellbeing of others."[3] In the same letter Heinlein becomes even more explicit about his intention for Podkayne, declaring he meant it to say that "the only basic standard for an adult is the welfare of the young."[4] As if ensuring to his future readers that there would be no doubt, at the end of his letter Heinlein provided a lengthy justification for his choice of ending by saying that the book lost its meaning without Podkayne's death--and that the meaning it lost was precisely this critique of the modern family. He declared that
I could state that the theme of the story is that death is the only destination for all of us and that the only long-range hope for any adult lies in the young--and that this double realization constitutes growing up, ceasing to be a child and putting away childish things. But I can't say it that baldly, not in fiction, and it seemed to me that I needed Poddy's death to say it at all. If Poddy gets to have her cake and eat it too (both marriage and star-roving), if that little monster, her brother, gets off unscathed to continue his clever but asocial career, if their mother gets away with neglecting her children's rearing without having it backfire on her--then the story is just a series of mildly adventurous incidents, strung together.[5]
Now, it will be granted by any traditional thinker that this view of adulthood is severely limited, lacking as it does any reference to virtue or love of the common good, and rightly so (though we will find this same view, greatly enriched by both these qualities, in his masterpiece Starship Troopers). However, the fact that this view constitutes an attack on the modern, nuclear family model is beyond dispute, and this attack is something which Heinlein definitely shares with traditional thought.
Indeed, Heinlein and traditionalists find themselves closest on the matters of family life and, though we do not see this in Podkayne, in matters of the common good. The fullest evidence of his views on the common good must wait until we treat his monumental Starship Troopers, but further evidence of his counterrevolutionary views can be found quite blatantly in several articles of his, most especially "The Pragmatics of Patriotism," a speech given to the Naval Academy class of 1973. In it he embraces many views that counterrevolutionaries consider repugnant, such as the equation of "moral" with "tending toward survival"; however, he also embraces several notions which are akin to a sense of the common good.
Heinlein's big example in this article is somewhat anticlimactic; he spends a good deal of time building up to an analogy about baboons. The analogy, however, is no less valid for its somewhat undignified subject; perhaps, in fact, the subject gains some dignity by it. "As one drives through the bushveldt of East Africa it is easy to spot herds of baboons grazing on the ground."[6] This seems an inauspicious beginning, but in typically Heinleinesque style he turns the narrative around; "but not," he says, "by looking at the ground."[7] He explains that the alpha male of the herd sends one of the young males up a tree to keep lookout; baboons, you see, are not very fast, and a cheetah can easily catch and eat one on the ground. However, if the baboons can reach the trees, they can escape. This young male in the tree keeps lookout; when he sees a cheetah, he sends a warning to the other baboons to run for safety. This, Heinlein contends, is moral behavior because it is an individual sacrificing his time and effort for the sake of the whole. He explains all of this in terms of evolutionary survival, which is rather silly. However, the core beliefs are very similar to the Thomistic concept of the common good.
Essentially, Heinlein is saying that the individual man is a part of a greater whole, by himself destined only for extinction but as a whole, as a group pursuing a common good, worth immeasurably more than can be known. St. Thomas would say that the individual is certainly destined for more than extinction; he is destined for communion with God, no less. But Heinlein was an agnostic about such things. In any case, he saw the word "patriotism" as summing up all relationships of man as part to group as whole, and seemed to consider it the highest moral behavior. He then proceeds to apply this notion of patriotism to familial, specifically sexual, relations, and in the process reveals his thoughts about modern feminism.
Heinlein does this by giving a very stirring example about a woman whose foot is caught in the railroad tracks. Her husband helps her, of course, and is unable to free her; the remarkable part of the example is the hobo who comes walking down the tracks and starts to help her, as well. A train is coming; neither man stirs. Both continue trying to free her until all three are killed; neither so much as flinched to turn away. The husband we can all understand; it is "his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman."[8] But what about this drifter? What can we say for him? He did it because she was a woman and therefore more important than he; she deserved to live more than he did. Heinlein put it best:
But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him. This is how a man dies. This is how a man. . . lives![9]
Modern notions of femininism don't stand a chance. It is not that Heinlein (or traditionalists) see women as incapable; almost all of Heinlein's heroines are remarkably capable, most notably Wyoh in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Mary in The Puppet Masters (though let's not forget Carmencita in the omnipresent Starship Troopers), both of whom are capable of killing the average male without difficulty. In fact, Heinlein's own wife was a remarkably capable woman, both a chemist and an aeronautical engineer.[10] Heinlein merely saw them as different; he wanted to "suggest that the current pattern [of relations between the sexes] is contrasurvival" and "is merely one symptom of the kaleidoscopic and possibly catastrophic rapid change our culture is passing through (or dying from?)."[11] Men and women are different; that is the summit of Heinlein's ideas. That difference comes with different roles and varying degrees of importance (with women being more important, in this analysis), but the core is that they are different. And who can deny that?
Of course, the most complete statement of Heinlein's social philosophy, though since its writing it appears that Heinlein's view on the role of women had changed slightly (he would no longer advocate their being combat pilots, it seems to me), is the epic Starship Troopers, which Heinlein wrote in 1959. He considered it mainly a political book, but its social significance is also massive. Starship Troopers is, like "The Pragmatics of Patriotism," built upon the fundamentally flawed thesis that evolutionary advantage is the sole determinant of morals; however, although he assigns the social instinct entirely to biology, Heinlein clearly recognizes that man by his very nature lives in society, and by his very nature owes certain things to society. He also acknowledges that rule in society ought to be due to something more than simply being a part of it. In a commentary on the book, Heinlein opined that "it is the dismaying idea that a voice in governing the state should be earned instead of being handed to anyone who is 18 years old and has a body temperature near 37oC."[12] While most of Heinlein's ideas turned on Darwinian evolution, his conclusions and beliefs in this area often correspond to those of traditionalists, as (perversely) do many (not all!) libertarian views. This aspect of government is one such area.
The traditional view of society was that a voice in government is best assigned to the wise, and the wise will be those with the most leisure to become so; those who are working all day lack the time necessary to devote to the pursuit of wisdom. Great tasks, then, are best assigned to the leisure class, the aristocracy and monarchy, whereas the lower tasks can be entrusted to those whom they most concern, the people. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, opines that "talis enim est optima politia, bene commixta ex regno, inquantum unus praeest; et aristocratia, inquantum multi principantur secundum virtutem; et ex democratia, idest potestate populi, inquantum ex popularibus possunt eligi principes, et ad populum pertinet electio principum."[13] Note that the many ruling in an aristocracy are "secundum virtutem," according to virtue; they rule because they are virtuous, not because they are aristocracy. Heinlein's theory is exactly the same. He does not hold that virtue comes from the proper exercise of leisure because he does not have a concept of contemplation as leading to virtue; however, he does realize that virtue is necessary for the proper exercise of rule, particularly the virtue of recognizing that one is a part in a greater whole. This recognition of being a part is precisely the recognition required in a Thomistic understanding of the common good. Heinlein himself explains that "every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage."[14] That single sentence is fraught with meaning.
It can be summed up by saying that one must value the good of the state before one's own. Heinlein offers no explanation why this value is any different from that found in communistic and fascistic countries, though St. Thomas does; he merely asserts that it is necessary. It is necessary because only those who consider the group before themselves can properly rule; they concern themselves with the common good, and are able to do so because of the virtue they acquired through their "voluntary and difficult service." That is Heinlein's greatest contribution to the modern world: he asserts the value of the common good, flying in the face of all the radical individualism that plagues the libertarian and other camps in the world. Man is not an atom; he is a part of a whole, and that whole is more important than any single individual. In this way, as St. Thomas says, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. And Heinlein recognizes that.
This brief discussion of Heinlein's work does not allow even a scratching of his counterrevolutionary surface. Certainly, Heinlein was a libertarian; like all moderns, he believed many things with which a traditionalist must take issue. But he also made some very valid deductions from inadequate data, deductions which are amazing for their insight. Heinlein should not be adopted as a mentor; but he can be used as a tool for the people, to help show them that traditionalist ideas are not entirely alien to the modern Western world. That is his service, a service that perhaps will preserve his name forever.
1. While it is true that this attack on the modern working-woman family is not nearly as explicit in the ending Heinlein originally wrote, it is clear even in this original ending that he intended a critique of contemporary family and parenting.
2. Robert A. Heinlein, Podkayne of Mars (New York, New York: Baen Publishing Enterprises, 1995), p. 215-216.
3. Ibid., p. 222.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 223.
6. Robert A. Heinlein, "The Pragmatics of Patriotism" in Expanded Universe (New York, New York: Ace Books, 1980), p. 462.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 470.
9. Ibid.
10. Robert A. Heinlein, "Larger than Life: A Memoir in Tribute to Dr. Edward E. Smith" in Expanded Universe (New York, New York: Ace Books, 1980), p. 495.
11. Ibid., p. 498.
12. Robert A. Heinlein, "Afterword: Who are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?" in Expanded Universe (New York, New York: Ace Books, 1980), p. 399.
13. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 105, 1. "For it is the best sort of politic, which is a kingdom, in which one rules; and an aritocracy, in which many according to virtue rule; and a democracy, that is, the power of the people, in which princes are able to be chosen from the people, and the choosing of princes pertains to the people." (Author's [loose] translation)
14. Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (New York, New York: Ace Books, 1987), p. 182.