Flaw?

Describing a multi-generational interstellar spaceship, Sandra Miesel writes:

"...whatever hopes the crew may have cherished of escaping social turmoil faded en route."

-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume " (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), p. 90.

And why was that? Miesel continues:

"Being human, they still carried the trait for conflict within them like an uncorrectable genetic flaw." (ibid.)

No, they did not. Or, to speak more scientifically, that was not put the test. I write now from memories of having read "The Troublemakers" more than once before. About to reread it, I will be able to look out for any details previously missed or not remembered although tomorrow rereading will be interrupted by my monthly visit to Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop when we watch superhero films and discuss the world.

For now, from memory: the planners of the interstellar voyage applied psychodynamics. They deliberately divided the crew into social groups and classes with different powers, privileges, inequalities, deprivations etc. The idea was that this situation would generate resentments, conflicts and power grabs but that these would be manageable, thus preventing the kind of all-destructive Mutiny that had happened in Robert Heinlein's earlier generation ship.

Maybe so. But, since conflict was deliberately built into the social structure of the Pioneer, it makes no sense to suggest that a "trait for conflict" was present in any case. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. No one tried to find out. A crew could have been selected, their activities could have been planned and much more harmonious relationships could have been established from the outset. If, then, conflict nevertheless broke out, a team of psychodynamicists within the crew would have been able to learn something about what went wrong and why. Any "traits" could have been identified, not just assumed.

To cause conflict and then to say that that conflict was inevitable in any case would be one massive ideological preconception, non sequitur and example of circular reasoning.