Politics Quotes in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

We used to think that politics at its best was a dialogue where everyone was free to speak, but after reading this back-and-forth between Arthur and Prosser we might want to change our ideas: politics is at its best when people speak (check) and listen to each other (no check). Notice how this dialogue lets us see how Prosser will say anything to make his department look like the reasonable member in this disagreement; he does this by redefining the phrase "on display."

This situation might still be going on if Earth hadn't been destroyed by the Vogons. While the bulldozer drivers might selfishly be thinking about turning this situation to their benefit, notice how Prosser's arguments are all presented as not self-centered: it's all about how knocking down Arthur's house will be good for everyone. Yet, as we see in other moments, Prosser is mostly worried about his own situation here, and he also has a selfish interest in doing this job. It probably doesn't look good if you fail to knock down a house, right? Arthur isn't even making any arguments: while his lawyer might be helpful, his other requests—"his mother, or a good book"—are clearly just to pass the time.

Here's a nice comparison between two political systems: Prosser is a bureaucratic man who, we might say, lives and dies by the bureaucratic regulation. But his great, great, great, very great ancestor had a totally different political way of dealing with his problems: the great Genghis Khan would burn down and kill anyone in his way. As much as we laugh at Prosser, we might be glad that he's not a Khan.

The president's role here is curious, since his job has little to do with power a lot to do with distracting people from the real sources of power. We're never told who really has the power in this government. Is it the civil service bureaucracy, which is full of Vogons? Is it corporations, like the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation? We don't know. All we do know is that power is something Zaphod doesn't have. After all, this is one of only two footnotes in the entire book.

What Prosser is to Earth, Jeltz is to the galaxy, which sounds pretty majestic until you realize that he's just a bureaucratic functionary: he's a guy (er, a Vogon) with a job, not some supervillain monster that wants to destroy Earth for some insane but personal reason. It's just a job, but it certainly isn't all that.

According to the Guide, the Vogons are terribly bureaucratic and mean. They're not going to break the rules in order to help you. On the other hand, they're not exactly evil—they're not going to break the rules in order to harm you, either. Still, it may be hard to remember that when you're being chased by the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal while the Vogons are busy going through the appropriate forms.

"Political economy" is either another way to say "economics" or it's a way to refer to the interaction of the political world and the economic world. It's not like people are voting for what form of economy they want. Politics in Hitchhiker's Guide is all about how people organize themselves and live together, so economy certainly falls under that category. As we see here, there are some easy ways for the system to break down. Just as the political president can run away from his job, so can the economic leader bring the economic system to collapse. But here, Magrathea causes a collapse by being so good at their job. That seems absurd: how can a victory for Magrathea cause a defeat for the rest of the galaxy?

As we note in the Shout-Outs, the Guardian is a left-leaning paper, so what Arthur means is that it's not cool for the Magratheans to sleep through a recession that they partly caused. Rather than working to fix the recession, the Magratheans are waiting for a time "when everybody else had rebuilt the economy." That is, the Magratheans have removed themselves from the economy and the politics of the galaxy. Not only is this bad for the galaxy, but it doesn't seem to be good for the Magratheans, who have passed into legend. And frankly, people don't usually line up to buy stuff from a company that they don't believe exists anymore.

Slartibartfast could rant and rave about the huge waste and loss of destroying Earth right before Earth was ready to give an answer. (We should point out, though, that the loss of Earth means that the Magratheans will get more business from the mice. So the destruction of Earth is at least profitable for Magrathea.) Instead, Slarty first emphasizes the loss of "Ten million years of planning and work" and then gives the verbal equivalent of a shrug: "that's bureaucracy for you." That's not a passionate statement—Slarty isn't going to rush out to reform the government after this. Nothing is going to change.

Benjy mouse and Frankie mouse are the mouse equivalents of Enron, preparing to rip off a bunch of people. That is, they have a contract where they'll get lots of money in exchange for explaining the meaning life—but they can't do that since all they have is the answer (42). Here we see a breakdown in the system of living and working together, since these two are about to pull off a massive fraud simply for their own gain.