The Case for Compulsory National Service

Imagine a world in which after secondary education, whether able to graduate or otherwise, every young adult enters a program of national public service. By factoring in aptitude tests, individual preferences and limitations, and the desirability of having ethnically, racially, and regionally mixed groups, they are assigned to a training program and a specialization in a part of the country other than their own, to learn and labor in specific disciplines with other people of all manner of background, ethnic heritage, cultural tradition, intelligence, class position, political leanings, sexual orientations, gender identities, disabilities, religious commitments, and any other identity marker one could theorize, all unified by a common mission. Reader, I tell you, this fantastic and utopian organization already exists; it is called the United States military, and it is the most socialist institution in the United States, as noted by Fredric Jameson in his essay advocating mandatory military conscription.[1] The deficiencies in such a modest proposal, however relevant it may have once been, are that the common mission of the Army and its complements are so counterproductive to the goal of worker liberation, and the nature of warfare and its relationship to media so warped since written, that there could hardly be any justification for the contemporary Left to advocate such a position. Instead, we could direct that unity of mission towards the construction of this country, rather than the destruction of another. This is made all the more true when one considers the scale of the problems faced by our country and the vast reservoirs of untapped, underutilized, and unmotivated workers who would jump at an opportunity to realize in themselves the value they create in the world. For anyone who mourns the death of the country’s public-spiritedness and of the belief, however wrongheaded at times, that the progress of this nation marks the progress of mankind, the solution presents itself: a program of compulsory national public service, complemented by a broad extension of our social rights.

What this would mean, practically speaking, is that upon graduation, America’s youth would be obligated, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, to spend eighteen to thirty-six months helping to collectively build the society in which we all someday hope to live. In exchange for honorable completion of their service, participants would qualify for a free public education at the preferred institution to which they’ve gained acceptance, complete with the free, high-quality healthcare extended to all federal employees, and a guaranteed position in the Department of Public Development. In a previous essay, I proposed that the Trump administration has given an ascendant Left the political opening to take decisive action should they ever hold the executive branch, and that they could use this power to stand up a Department of Public Development, created with a mandate to expand the basic objectives of the Green New Deal into a federal jobs guarantee, with all the benefits afforded by federal jobs. Not only would this provide fair pay for work to those willing to take it, make much-needed investments in the country’s infrastructure, and restore the state’s capacity for large-scale projects, it would also dramatically increase the bargaining power of workers in the private sector. Nestled within the center of this department would be its most idealistic and, by extension, most important project: the rewriting of the social contract, rooted in the universal participation of citizens in the National Public Service Corps

Naturally, the program would have to be tailored in some respects to the capacities of the individual, but there are scarcely any cases I can imagine in which someone could not provide value to society where it is yet unfulfilled. Those interested in the trades would be able to learn their specialty through a federal training program contracted with local trade schools and apprenticing with journeyman tradespeople in the Department of Public Development, going on to help construct affordable housing, green energy installations, public transportation, and climate resiliency projects. Those with the aptitude and interest for engineering, architecture, law, medicine, or other highly competitive professions could apprentice in the offices and clinics of those professionals employed or contracted with the Department of Public Development, learning their careers from the ground up and giving them useful perspective on those who do the most thankless work. Those whose hearts lie with the arts and letters could work in literacy and art education programs, the beautification of our cities and parks, or any task that could broaden their perspective as so many famous artists have done. For anyone with a penchant for emotional labor or an inability to do physical work, millions of lonely and isolated people—whether the elderly, prisoners, or others—need social provisions or care, a service French postal carriers have already begun providing. Should someone not yet know what they hope to accomplish in this life, it is likewise the mission of the National Public Service Corps to help them figure it out for themselves.

During and after a person’s term of service, the Department of Public Development would set up and maintain in its purview permanent staffing and facilities to help subsidize the reproductive labor of American workers by providing free high-quality healthcare and childcare. Similar programs could be offered to other employees of DPD not in the National Public Service Corps, and could serve as a model for those whose employment has been made illegal to extract additional surplus value from their labor. Following the same logic, immigrants to the country could be quickly directed to places with high demand for their labor and be provided temporary living quarters, language education, and public resources while they work on DPD projects, thereby quickly assimilating them into the civic body of the country. Herein lies the true value of the NPSC; it will be the model for a new social contract that will gradually be implemented across the whole of society. As healthcare is made universal and the size and scope of this program expands, workers across the economy will have less and less to fear from the loss of a job, and more leverage to make demands for worker ownership of the means of production. This is why these programs must be compulsory in nature; they represent a commitment to the larger social body—one that positively reinforces a solidaristic disposition. For that reason, refusal to join would mean refusal of these services, and would result in a mark on one’s permanent record similar to those who are dishonorably discharged today, along with the attached social stigma.

There will always be some small portion of the population that defies the obligations of social living to the bitter end. However, my own experience as a West Point cadet and officer in the Army showed me that most people want to feel, more than anything, that they are worthy of a place in whatever community they find themselves in. Despite the deep disdain I developed for these institutions, they undeniably shaped me in ways that compare favorably to my peers who had a more traditional college experience (among the many more ways that compare unfavorably). I learned to find meaning in struggle, and even suffering. I was compelled to interact, as subordinate, superior, and peer, with nearly every flavor of person this country can offer, and to share in the responsibility for each other. Most of all, I was forced to live outside the narcotic middle-class comfort zone in which it had seemed so difficult to figure out what it was exactly that I wanted out of life. These offerings—in addition to sports cars purchased with enlistment bonuses at predatory interest rates—have been the backbone of military recruitment for decades. Though Uncle Sam’s demand for service is the most famous, the US Army’s commercial slogans since 1980 are as follows: Be All That You Can Be, Army of ONE, Army Strong, Warriors Wanted, and finally, a slightly revised return to Be All You Can Be. Each of these emphasizes, to some degree or another, what the Army can do for you, rather than an abstract appeal to a duty higher than oneself, which is largely inculcated through the process of service itself. It is desirable for any state to do so, alongside the development of greater self-knowledge and self-confidence in its people, but it should not be limited only to those willing to risk their lives and moral centers in the name of imperialism and jingoism.

As an adjunct professor for undergraduate students, it is clear that most, if not all, of my students could benefit from a national public service program like the one described above. One hardly needs to look at studies that show increasingly poor outcomes in literacy, mental health, and personal development to know that our younger cohorts are increasingly deficient in these categories. The rise in mass shootings performed by adolescents and young adults may make the case for a youth mental health crisis most spectacularly, but it can be observed in the basic antisocial tendencies exhibited in public venues like concerts, movie theaters, public transportation, or the classroom, where I most often interact with college-aged people. Antisocial tendencies of all types—flippant disregard for norms surrounding surveillance and personal privacy, an increasing disinterest in romance and friendship, and inability to be away from personal devices, even in inappropriate situations—are becoming more the norm than an aberration. This should by no means be taken as a condemnation of young people, and this is not intended to be an “old man yells at clouds”-style diatribe. There are a great many good reasons for this population to feel cynical, alienated, or without purpose in the contemporary United States, or the whole of developed society for that matter. It is only meant to establish that there is a serious problem among a large enough portion of them to compel action, and to acknowledge that the traditional methods of acculturating young people into adulthood are showing serious structural flaws. Many solutions have been proffered for repair or replacement, but few take seriously the role a state so weakened and threadbare as ours could play in leading this transformation.

Though there is plenty of blame to be handed out, be it to social technology companies, educational reformers, university administrators, or the many other responsible parties, this is at its root a problem of political economy. The methods once used to graduate children into adults, to make them feel useful, productive members of society, are in large part no longer capable of meeting that mission. As Artificial Intelligence metastasizes throughout the whole of the academic body and beyond, fewer and fewer of this body will be capable of training the types of not only thinkers and leaders but—just as critically—everyday working-class citizens upon whose shoulders the collective future of our society rests. In real time, students are training in disciplines whose entry-level jobs will either be obsolete or highly competitive and degraded in pay and status by the time they begin their career, as recent graduates of computer engineering programs and coding bootcamps are discovering. Should a civically-minded student rise to the top of their respective field, they will find there are few public service jobs that pay salaries commensurate with their talents and contributions, but plenty available for those willing to go into finance, weapons manufacturing, petrochemical manufacturing, and artificial intelligence. If we take all the money spent in this country to be an investment in something, then it is fair to say we shall reap what we sow: increased demand for profit, war, and energy, less demand for human creativity and intelligence. Astonishingly, this seems to be the future some people desire, so this argument is not posed towards them, but rather those who still yet believe in a human project.

Such a project would undoubtedly be met with loud criticism, reasonable and otherwise, from all corners of the political landscape. The Right, despite its wailing and gnashing of teeth at the decline of traditional values, would undoubtedly attack this policy agenda as a communist takeover of the state. This course would be a bad mistake on their part, as socialists could then claim, by the admission of their most implacable enemies, the positive outcomes of these policies. The financiers and the economists would fight national service out of instinct because it would do exactly what it is intended to do, which is to tighten the labor market, giving workers in the private sector the country over unparalleled, unified leverage. Complaints from private firms could be offset by the deluge of government contracts under the oversight of the DPD, and its economic consequences would be a much bigger problem for the holders of debt than for private workers. Those on the broad left-liberal side would be rightly worried about the authority the state would have over the rights of our country’s young adults; especially considering the character of the state in the here and now, this concern is perfectly understandable, and hard guardrails would have to be established to prevent conscription for military service.

As explained in greater detail in my previous essay, if done in concert with unabashed pursuit of legal accountability for criminal actors in the highest levels of society (what we might vulgarize as “The Epstein Class”), this type of program could result in dominant and relatively stable political majorities. The New Deal remained the prevailing superpolitical structure for three decades, and though the DNA of New Deal policies can be seen throughout the ambitions of this project, the National Public Service Corps and its parent department would go much further than the basic work relief and social welfare programs advanced during those decades. Should this project fail, any future right-wing administration would simply dismantle it, for much the same reason that it refrains from instituting a national military draft—it could only lead to their own destruction. Opponents of a political program that offers the country’s young people a chance to learn about themselves, their fellow citizens, and their country, while contributing to improving the lives of all three, can hardly call themselves patriotic in any sense of the word. I do not think it idealistic to say that bringing people together brings people together, and though it will not easily repair all the fractures that so many perceived differences have cleaved into this country, it can hardly make the problem worse. If the political Left truly has horizons beyond meekly mending the tattered social safety net, and instead desires to put into the hands of workers not only power, but the self-confidence to use it, then I have yet to hear a more potent strategy.  

Whatever the criticisms, we can ill afford to do nothing. I will briefly add my voice to the chorus of teachers saying that the job of educating students is getting more and more difficult, because as the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I can scarcely blame them, because as it stands the ratio of obligation to reward in our system of higher education leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of even the most engaged and most enthusiastic students, the most qualified of whom see little point in pursuing a career in what would be considered public service, already made cynical by their circumstances. That there is almost no place in our society that can use the talents of an uncompromising, capable, and public-spirited individual without demanding from them serious personal sacrifice is an enormous failure of policy, and this failure has produced an incentive structure that now teeters over the precipice. This is to say nothing of those young people, in college or otherwise, who have little chance to compete seriously for jobs with even modest prestige and salary. What will happen if we do not make a place for them in the economy? We hardly have to make it a priority on account of bleeding hearts, if our rational self-interest is rightly understood. Cliché as it may be, the children are, quite literally, our future, and rather than allow unscrupulous dealers to lead them down blind alleys, we can give them a hand in paving their own road.

Compare the current trajectory of the average young adult graduating from their adolescence into a world of low-wage work or collegiate arrested development to those who would enter into this program. Like many of the students I grew up with, this individual is bright, but leaving high school with more interest in practical work than school and a responsibility to help support their family. In a world with a National Public Service Corps, they would be under no obligation to weigh the costs of getting certified in a trade against earning wages immediately, and their immediate welfare would be provided for by the federal government, relieving any financial burden on the family. If this public servant comes from, say, Boise, perhaps they apprentice under electricians in Philadelphia, and if they come from Orlando, they apprentice at a wind farm in Minnesota, all the while meeting, working with, and socializing among people their own age from all across the country. Despite an offer to remain with the DPD after successful completion of the program, this newly minted full citizen opts instead to use his or her education benefits to go back to college to understand the engineering behind the projects they were working on, thereafter entering the workforce with practical machine engineering experience and a deeper theoretical knowledge of their craft. After going on to work in the private sector, making a handsome living that furnishes a respectable life free of scarcity for their family, he or she returns to public service, taking a position at the DPD overseeing the kinds of large capital investments necessary for securing construction material supply chain sovereignty. Finally, our old friend retires at 60 with retirement and healthcare secured, spending their remaining decades enjoying an active family life and the pursuit of the individual interests he or she had cultivated in their working life.

Aside from the obvious reward of creating a world in which people are not obstructed from leading such a fulfilling life, this type of person and the story they tell about the country that can produce them would be an enormous asset to even the most cynical national projects, especially if they can be produced in bulk. Instead, we see different ends to the stories playing out before us. Those stories are about housing insecurity, healthcare debt, and diseases of despair. They are set amidst crumbling sidewalks and derelict apartment complexes, and populated by anxious, lonely people who are balanced on a knife’s edge over the gaping maw of a permanent, growing underclass. Avoiding such a future will require a bold alternative vision, sure, but it also depends on the kind of massive social transformation that could make such a vision possible in the first place. A socialist America is a place with different kinds of people and institutions than the kind we have now. It's time to take seriously ideas about how to create them.

[1] Fredric Jameson, "An American Utopia," in An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, ed. Slavoj Žižek (London: Verso, 2016).