Emmett Cashman

Professor Matthew Schultz

Media Studies 184

12 December 2019

For the People or For Power? A Marxist Approach to Star Wars

     Star Wars provides a thrilling story of political conflict and drama, the tale of a democracy’s death to its fledgling rebirth and subsequent devolution. Its immense popularity has risen Star Wars to one of the great works of the contemporary cultural canon, and thus, an analysis of the politics presented in-universe can provide us with insights into our own political moment.  The political struggles of Star Wars are presented in a cyclical nature, with constant themes of good vs evil, light against dark, freedom vs tyranny being repeated throughout the lore. Starting in the prequel trilogy, we see the fall of the Republic and the descent of the galaxy into tyranny. In Episode IV, the galactic hegemony is an empire that exerts tyrannical control over the galaxy, opposing all forms of dissent and plundering resources from far-reaching planets. Opposing them are a small group of rebels with few clear values other than anti-authoritarianism. Although they do succeed in defeating the Empire and establishing a new republic, the system is weak and ineffective, replicating the model of the doomed Republic. Ultimately, the new government is wholly destroyed by the First Order, an almost one-to-one recreation of the Empire. When observed through the lens of Marxism, the cyclical nature of Star Wars’ political conflicts demonstrates the limits of bourgeois revolution and of a system dominated by two competing but similar ideologies. 

     Marxist Theory covers wide ranging works that span multiple fields of thought.   However, they are all influenced by the fundamental observations of Karl Marx, who interpreted history in a dialectical manner, as something that advanced through the interplay of action and reaction. He was also a materialist, believing ultimately that the material world surrounding us is the basis for reality. In this way, Marxism posits that our perceptions about the world are shaped by the material world and how we interact with it. The material world that shaped Marx’s understanding was rife with revolution and systemic change that no doubt impacted his perception of the world (Holmes, 2). 

     According to Marx’s analysis, class conflict is the driving force of history, as it is antagonism between classes that produces revolutionary change in the system of production. In a Marxist analysis, labor is incredibly important, as it allows humans to increase the value of the materials to which we have access. It was labor that built the society around us, and it is labor that will continue to alter the material world around us in ways that consequently alter our lived experiences. In order to labor, one needs not only workers but also a workplace — the means of production. One’s class can be determined, according to Marx, by their relationship to the means of production: In modern capitalism, the two major classes are the bourgeoisie, who own property that is used as an enterprise or public asset, and the proletariat, consisting of workers who produce goods and services for the property owners but do not have full access to the results of their own labor (Holmes, 4). Under capitalism, the surplus profits generated by the proletariat are not awarded to them but are instead acquired by the bourgeoisie, being the owners of the means of production. 

     The systemic denial of the full fruits of one’s labor, as well as the consequences of living in capitalism’s stratified social hierarchy, leads to alienation. Defined by the Marxist Internet Archive Encyclopedia as, “the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in (Marxists Internet Archive),” alienation can be described as both a political state of living but also a psychological state of unfulfillment. Labor is important according to Marx because it is the reification of human planning and conscious thought. Marx observed a trend in humanity, the desire to labor cooperatively throughout history, and labelled it our “species-essence.” Under capitalism, Marx believed that our “species-essence” is turned against us through the process of alienation. Alienation exists in many forms: Alienation from the product, whereby workers are unable to afford the items they produce; Alienation from the act of laboring, such as workers not being able to determine their wages and hours; Alienation from other laborers due to the competitive nature of capitalist exchange, which often distracts individuals from pursuing larger social change in exchange for survival under the system; And alienation from the “species-essence,” whereby work is not done according to human desire but according to the rules of private ownership (Cox). 

     The cyclical nature of political and class conflict as analyzed by Marx is present in Star Wars with both the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Republic. The Rebels are a sizeable military movement committed to the restoration of an older model of governing, a model based on the Galactic Republic. The Republic oversaw a system of economic control that favored the rich core worlds and pressured outer worlds into unfair trade contracts and taxes. For centuries, the Republic expanded through imperialist economic coercion rather than brute force. While this practice created a vast new amount of wealth for the Republic, it was steadily concentrated into the hands of a select few banking enterprises, large corporations, and business conglomerates. Groups such as the Techno Union, Trade Federation, Corporate Alliance, Banking Clan, and Commerce Guild had a strong hand in the affairs of the galaxy, and would often exert political pressure when deals did not go in their favor. In the film, The Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation is seen blockading the planet of Naboo as a retaliatory measure for newly-imposed Republic taxes (Lucas, 00:01:21). Prior to the Republic’s taxation of the Trade Federation, the group had been able to conduct trade in an unregulated market, free from taxation. When faced with a cut to their profits, the Trade Federation instead attempted to use both force and negotiating power to resolve the matter in their favor. Actions like these led to a stark class divide between the subjects of the various planets, who had limited hope for upward mobility, and the economically privileged, who were overwhelmingly represented in the senate and could thus make deals to the benefit of themselves. The small but extremely powerful group of big corporations exerted massive influence on politicians, with many citizens feeling like their senators were not in place to serve those who elected them. This model of governing was so corrupt and exploitative that thousands of planetary systems revolted and joined the Separatist Crisis, feeling alienated from the governing body that was supposedly democratic yet serving the interests of corporations and business elites instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQBV9pXleF0 

     In the wake of this crisis, with a significant economic loss on the horizon for the Republic, the system turned to war in order to fuel profits and keep itself alive. The extremely powerful corporations of the galaxy became heavily involved in the Separatist Crisis themselves, funding large-scale weapons of war alongside the Republic. The character Skelly echoes these thoughts in the story, A New Dawn as he reminisces, “War sold more ships, more weapons, and more medical devices… The Republic and the Confederacy had been partners in the same corrupt game… To corporate oligarchs, political allegiances were just another change of clothes. The beast had to be fed, with lives and limbs on the battlefield and with the sweat and blood of the workers (Jackson Miller, 50).” Skelly reflects a Marxist sentiment of alienation from the system he lives under — although he works and produces under the system, he does not have a say in how the system is run, and feels that those in power serve business interests over common good and equality. 

     While both the Republic and the Separatists shrouded their actions in the cloak of ideological pretense, they were actually merely different forms of the same thing: Political movements backed by capital, serving the business interests of corporations over the interests of the galaxy’s citizens. The galactic powers fought a war that spanned years, yet very few people in the galaxy could give a definitive reason as to the merits of the war. Both sides were extremely polarized, unwilling to compromise or even negotiate. In season 3, episode 10 of The Clone Wars, entitled “Heroes on Both Sides,” Senator Padme Amidala made her case in front of the Senate for a halt to the production of more Clone Troopers. The response from her fellow senators was largely negative, including chants to, “Keep the war going,” and baseless claims that Padme could be colluding with the Separatists to undermine the Republic (Finloni, 1:42). Later, fear of the Separatists and a Separatist attack led the Senate to vote in favor of deregulation of the banks, a move that was backed heavily by the leaders of galactic corporations (Filoni, 20:44). This demonstrated an indifference for the masses that is reflected in subsequent political movements across the galaxy and speaks to a different form of alienation — Alienation of the powerful from the masses. Politics in the Republic operated on an elevated plane, where only the elite had a say in the way the galaxy was run, despite not creating the galaxy’s infrastructure or ensuring that it functioned on a day-to-day basis. Those jobs were delineated to the less economically privileged, the workers who produced material wealth for society yet had no say in how resources were distributed. Workers in the Star Wars universe are overwhelmingly alienated from the political process. Despite this, the Separatists were no better. They used a message of greater economic equality and democratic accountability to gain influence among the people (Filoni 13:42), despite Count Dooku and Darth Sidious never intending to follow through on that message. Capitalist institutions and Sith influence dominated the Separatist Crisis from very early on in its inception, co-opting the rhetoric of a movement that was revolutionary for the purposes of increasing bourgeois domination. Economic populism became not an ideology, but rather a tool to entrench the galaxy further under capitalism. 

     Similarly to the Separatists, the Rebellion was hardly ideological. Rather, they were a movement seeking a return to the Republic’s bourgeois-dominated politics, not one looking to change the system all that significantly. This can be seen in not just their name, “The Alliance to Restore the Republic,” but also in who supported them. Many key figures of the Rebel Alliance were elites of the former system and of the contemporary Imperial one, such as Mon Mothma and Bail & Leia Organa. They were part of a bourgeois political class able to use the resources and relative political flexibility of their positions to aid the Rebellion. Their privileged status among the former political elite within the Republican system provided them with an incentive to aid a movement seeking to restore said system, free from the authoritarianism but also the close inspection of the Empire. 

     Moreover, the Rebellion was rarely ever seen building an actual movement with the masses of oppressed imperial subjects. Instead, they stockpiled military-grade weaponry in remote parts of the galaxy. The one time the Rebels were seen interacting with subjects was on the moon of Endor with the Ewoks, a species who they did not even know about before infiltrating their land and using them to fight in their war. In the film The Return of the Jedi, The Ewoks are viewed by the Rebels as primitive and inferior. They influenced the Ewoks through C-3PO, whom the Ewoks deem to be a God, who described to them the Rebel conflict and why they should take up arms against the Empire. The Rebels gained support from the Ewoks that was critical to defeating the Empire, yet they did not offer any message of a better material world, only freedom from the already mostly hands-off Empire. The Rebellion was a movement that is indifferent toward the people of the galaxy — While they were more than willing to capitalize on anti-imperial support that they generated in their fight against the Empire, they did little to actively build a better life for the very people they claimed to be serving. They were alienated from the very people they were looking to represent, and it was this alienation that clouded them from any attempt to change the capitalist relations of the galaxy in a fundamental way. The Rebel’s neglect of the people only worked to reinforce this alienation, isolating the people from the movement and further distancing the movement from being grounded in the material reality of the galaxy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHmsRBeiSTw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJzNh_pCaD8

     The Rebellion was almost entirely focused on the military fight and aftermath, so much so that once they had defeated the Empire, they struggled to set up an alternative system of governance. The New Republic was weak and ineffective, continuing the mistakes of its predecessor but without much of the expansive power that supported the Old Republic for so long. The New Republic heavily demilitarized the galaxy with the fall of the Empire, which allowed a strong force like the First Order to expand rapidly almost unchallenged, similar to how the Separatist Army threatened the legitimacy of the Old Republic. They reestablished a liberal Senate similar to the Old Republic which, although more democratic than the imperial predecessor, failed to adequately represent the people and led to extreme political deadlock. According to Leia in the book Bloodline, the New Republic was institutionally struggling: “At the time, Leia had been grateful for Mon Mothma’s leadership, but now she realized that one individual’s ability had disguised the fundamental flaws in the New Republic’s system. If Mon Mothma had stepped aside earlier, might they have realized their errors? Amended the constitution in time? At this late date, it was impossible to know. ‘The conflict between the parties gets worse every day. Most Centrists and Populists are still polite to each other, but barely. Every debate on the Senate floor turns into an endless argument over ‘tone’ or ‘form’ and never about issues of substance— (Gray, 19).’” The lack of a military and lack of policy progress led to deterioration and an inability for the New Republic to effectively police its own territory. By failing to move beyond the limits of liberal rebellion and repeating the mistakes of the past, the movement to create a new republic was self-defeating — Just as the Old Republic’s flaws devolved into the tyrannical Empire, so too did the New Republic’s replication of those flaws devolve into a neo-Imperial military dictatorship. While this dynamic may not appear blatantly obvious at first, when Marxist theory is applied to Star Wars, the nature of cyclical conflict within the universe becomes clear. 

     The indifference shown toward the masses by bourgeois rebellions such as the Separatists and the Rebellion is a symptom of Marx’s concept of alienation. In The Last Jedi, Rose and Finn, prominent members of the Resistance, are led to Canto Bight, a lavishly wealthy planet full of the galaxy’s upper-class. Here, war-profiteers who make their vast hordes of wealth selling weapons to both sides of the conflict spend their money gambling away their riches on casino games and animal races. Rose makes it clear that she has disdain for the elites who occupy the planet on the backs of destruction and exploited labor, claiming, “My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system. The First Order stripped our ore to finance its military…. then shelled us to test their weapons. They took everything we had. And who do you think these people are? There’s only one business in the galaxy that’ll get you this rich. War (The Last Jedi, 56:30).” Despite this, her ideological position is not reflected in her subsequent actions: Rose and Finn escape jail and evade capture by convincing child-workers to let the race-animals lose. While it is admirable that Rose and Finn would free the animals being raced against their will for the pleasure of those who profit off of killing, they do not liberate the child-workers who tend to the animals at the threat of an electro-whip. Instead, the Resistance uses what little anti-imperial sentiment they garner in the minds of the people as a means to an end, only further hegemonizing exploitation of the masses by the political class. 

     In this way, Marx’s theory of alienation is present with the Resistance’s dealings on Canto Bight. Rose identifies the child-workers as allies in the fight against the tyranny of the system, however she does nothing to materially support them because of her more privileged position within the system. Although they both share the common goals of freedom from oppression, she is preoccupied with the Resistance, a movement that is limited in its effectiveness by bourgeois influence. The Resistance is focused on fighting a symptom of the galactic capitalist system that produces tyranny, the First Order, rather than fight to change the system directly. Ultimately, this is because the Resistance is not a movement of the people but a movement of political opportunists hoping to reestablish the democratic system to regain political control. Her relatively-powerful position as a Resistance operative prevents her from uniting with the oppressed, only further legitimizing capitalism’s role in dividing those it oppresses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1THtiVUqG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI1ujQa4SA4&t=132s 

     The application of Marxist theory to the Star Wars universe is useful because it helps explain the politics of a late-capitalist system dominated by two parties. Liberal factions such as the Rebellion and Resistance battle for control of the galaxy against conservative factions such as the Empire and the First Order. Just as history is presented as a cyclical pattern of class conflict, the conflict in Star Wars is cyclical and reflects the influence of capitalism on the galaxy. While the liberal faction often put up a good challenge and the hegemony of the conservative faction wanes from time to time, they are destined to fail based on the nature of conflict that came before it. The authoritarian power structures of the imperial system can be destroyed, but if the capitalist relationships that support the galaxy remain in place, the fight for democracy will always be an uphill one. While the republicans are fighting for greater equality and should not be equated with supporters of the imperial system, ultimately both sides do participate in a system that is detrimental to basic human and species equality. The nature of rebellion in Star Wars is that of the limits of bourgeois resistance – It will always devolve into tyranny, especially when the capitalist structures are allowed to plunder the galaxy of resources unchecked. 

     The politics of Star Wars are often reflected in our own lives — In contemporary American politics, much criticism is leveled at both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party for being too entrenched in the pockets of special interest groups. Both parties represent different sides of a rather small spectrum, one that cannot exist without corporate domination of political life. When we view Star Wars through the lens of Marxism, it demonstrates in a cyclical manner the flaws of liberal rebellion, as well as the need for an expansion of our political horizons. Star Wars shows how systems built on a singular power extracting profit under the guise of two opposing parties do not reflect a true sense of democracy and freedom, inviting us to critically think about the way in which we engage in politics, and how the capitalist system shapes societal political perceptions.

Works Cited

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999.

 

Marquand, Richard, director. Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi. Twentieth Century Fox, 1983.

 

Johnson, Rian, director. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Walt Disney Studios, 2017. 

 

Finloni, Dave, director. Star Wars, The Clone Wars: Season 3, Episode 10: Heroes on Both Sides. Lucasfilm LTD, 2010.

 

Jackson Miller, John. Star Wars: A New Dawn. Del Rey Books, 2014. 

American science-fiction writer and commentator, the story of Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla during the events between Episodes III and IV. Jackson Miller provides insight into the history of the Old Republic throughout the book, with commentary on the characteristics of the political system from characters within the story. The book was published in 2014 as part of Disney’s rebranding of Star Wars lore, with A New Dawn being the first of four canon novels filling in backstory to the movies. 

 

Gray, Claudia. Star Wars: Bloodline. Del Rey Books, 2016. 

Pseudonym of Amy Vincent, author of numerous fiction novels, the tale of Leia as she deals with the struggling New Republic Senate. Gray details the political situation in the wake of the destruction of the Empire and the rise of the political deadlock within the New Republic, as well as provide analysis of why the New Republic’s system is flawed from the perspective of Leia’s character. The novel was published as part of Disney’s line of books to reestablish canon lore following their takeover of Lucasfilms.

 

Rucka, Greg. Star Wars: Before the Awakening. Disney-Lucasfilm Press, 2015. 

Author of various fiction novels, the stories of the lives of Rey, Finn, and Poe prior to the events of Episode VII. Rucka details key events in the lives of each character, dedicated portions of the book to each. In Poe’s tale, the characters convey important context about the political situation of the New Republic and the rise of the First Order that is useful from the perspective of a Marxist reading. The novel’s publication coincided with the release of Episode VII, intending to serve as background context for the new characters seen on screen.

 

Holmes, Leslie. Communism: A Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2009. 

Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne, details the rise of communism as both a concept and a political application, as well as the subsequent fall of communism and what is at stake for the future of the ideology. Provides important theoretical understanding of Marxism and some of its key concepts. This resource was published as part of a line of book dedicated to providing readers with an introduction to a given topic.

 

Cox, Judy. “An Introduction to Marx’s Theory of Alienation.” International Socialism, July 1998, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1998/isj2-079/cox.htm

Author of many topics on Marxist Theory including alienation, the work of Luxemburg, and more, an article detailing Marx’s theory of alienation. Describes Marx’s thinking regarding human nature and the nature of humans under capitalism, as well as the four kinds of alienation associated with capitalism. Provides important understanding of alienation and how it can be applied to the world around us. Published as an article in the International Socialist Journal in 1998.

 

Marxists Internet Archive. “Alienation.” Glossary of Terms, https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm 

Internet Archive dedicated to collecting and interpreting the works of Marx and Marxist Theorists, Glossary of common terms mentioned in Marx’s writings.