Advantages to Totalitarianism?

[telesien]

Well alright but still, what would be the point of having them in?? It's not like factory managers and kolhoz directors made much of an impact on the history of communism. I can't think of a useful event or game effect that has factory managers or kolhoz directors as its scope. :wacko:

Those people managing factory complexes (it's not just one factory) and other important parts of industry or agriculture where also high ranking members of communist parties. They were closer to aristocrats then you may think.

You can see it as shift in power, where aristos and cappies become high ranking party memebers, bureaucrats middle ranking and clerks low ranking.
Maybe it will be possible to mod event changing names of those POPs into something more communist like. Planners for cappies and... I don't know... party secretaries for aristos?

 

[Sid Meier]

Capitalists are better suited to the job as managers then clerks since they actually give bonuses.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Those people managing factory complexes (it's not just one factory) and other important parts of industry or agriculture where also high ranking members of communist parties. They were closer to aristocrats then you may think.

You can see it as shift in power, where aristos and cappies become high ranking party memebers, bureaucrats middle ranking and clerks low ranking.
Maybe it will be possible to mod event changing names of those POPs into something more communist like. Planners for cappies and... I don't know... party secretaries for aristos?

Actually my vision of a communist country in Vi2 is that of a Stalinist inspired workers-and-peasants society. No capitalists, no clergy, no aristocrats, barely any artisans... only workers, farmers, soldiers and craftsmen, with clerks, officers and administrators making up the intelligentsia that runs the country. All of course under a sky that is darkened by the smoke from the innumerable tractor and machine factories that churn out the tools for the glorious new age of man...

 

[Baneslave]

Capitalists are better suited to the job as managers then clerks since they actually give bonuses.

Both actually provide bonuses, just different bonuses:

Let’s start with the workforce in factories. We have rethought how they work. Craftsmen are your workforce and increase both inputs and outputs of a factory. Clerks are your administrators; they use their skills to increase the outputs a factory uses. Capitalists in a state use their skills to decrease inputs. Thus, a balance of POP types is far more important. Having lots of Capitalists is good but only if you have the Craftsmen to take advantage of this.

 

[Orinsul]

Actually my vision of a communist country in Vi2 is that of a Stalinist inspired workers-and-peasants society. No capitalists, no clergy, no aristocrats, barely any artisans... only workers, farmers, soldiers and craftsmen, with clerks, officers and administrators making up the intelligentsia that runs the country. All of course under a sky that is darkened by the smoke from the innumerable tractor and machine factories that churn out the tools for the glorious new age of man...

BUT if you think of the function in terms of game mechanics, and not what imagery the name inspires in your head when you read it, you'll see that wouldnt work.

And the your vision is also an important thing, Because everyone has a different vision of it, it should be generic and as leviation proposed on the other page, an event chain or decision chain ought to decide whether a communist state is totalitarian or social-democratic. Or for that matter, any post revolution state no matter its ideology is.

 

[orimazd]

party secretaries for aristos?

Nomenklatura.

 

[ollobrains]

well youre totalirtatism government can a) quell dissent b) give military pops a boost if they are and remain loyal

 

[unmerged(75409)]

BUT if you think of the function in terms of game mechanics, and not what imagery the name inspires in your head when you read it, you'll see that wouldnt work.

Nothing in the dev diaries says you actually need aristocrats and capitalists. They just said that both types of POPs give you bonuses. However if I am a commie state and I want to increase industrial or agricultural output, I would want to use province focuses, research techs, choose decisions and so on. The last thing I would do is promote frickin' capitalists and aristocrats. Even if they're "intended" to be factory managers and kolhoz directors through some strange logic. This is so wrong on so many levels. :wacko:

Seriously... only on a Paradox forum could such ideas be born... I would love to read what a reviewer has to say when he finds out that to run a proletarian dictatorship, he has to promote capitalists and aristocrats.

 

[Baneslave]

Again, they are "Capitalists" and "Aristocrats", similar to how even atheist states will have government paid "Clergy."

Of course, Paradox could make it so that under specific governments these POPs change their names, but that is just confusing in the end. Also, you don't need them, so feel free to kick them out, but don't start complaining when your RGOs and factories run sub-bar because of lack of management.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Again, they are "Capitalists" and "Aristocrats", similar to how even atheist states will have government paid "Clergy."

Of course, Paradox could make it so that under specific governments these POPs change their names, but that is just confusing in the end. Also, you don't need them, so feel free to kick them out, but don't start complaining when your RGOs and factories run sub-bar because of lack of management.

Changing names would be confusing, but promoting capitalists and aristocrats under a Communist Dictatorship would not be??

I don't get you people...

 

[Baneslave]

Changing names would be confusing, but promoting capitalists and aristocrats under a Communist Dictatorship would not be??

Yes. I think that

"Under Communism my "Capitalists", "Aristocrats" and "Clergy" do same duties as before, expect don't build factories."

is less confusing than:

"Under Communism you have Factory Managers and RGO Managers and Teachers. They do same duties as Capitalists, Aristocrats and Clergy in other governments, except build factories and get huge salary over everybody else."

The name changing would also lead to these fine questions: "What are Factory Managers, RGO Managers and Teachers, and why cannot I promote them? Why isn't there any in my nation? How do I get them?"

Also, the name changing would open the can of worms, which would force many other name changes as well. "Aristocrats in USA? No, they are Land Owners. Farmers in Russia? No, they are Serfs. Etc"

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Yes. I think that

"Under Communism my "Capitalists", "Aristocrats" and "Clergy" do same duties as before, expect don't build factories."

is less confusing than:

"Under Communism you have Factory Managers and RGO Managers and Teachers. They do same duties as Capitalists, Aristocrats and Clergy in other governments, except build factories and get huge salary over everybody else."

The name changing would also lead to these fine questions: "What are Factory Managers, RGO Managers and Teachers, and why cannot I promote them? Why isn't there any in my nation? How do I get them?"

Also, the name changing would open the can of worms, which would force many other name changes as well. "Aristocrats in USA? No, they are Land Owners. Farmers in Russia? No, they are Serfs. Etc"

But they do not do any duties, except give you static state wide bonuses on factories or RGOs. And they earn much more money than anyone else.

Logically both bonuses should be taken away, as soon as you nationalize the industry and do your first land reforms. Replace them with nation-wide bonuses: "Nationalization of Industry" and "Bolshevik Land Reform". If you do away with the bonuses and their salaries, and instead have country-wide modifiers for factories and RGOs in communist countries, then there is no reason to keep them around any more.

In principle, you could choose to not nationalize the industries, and let the aristocrats keep their estates. But seriously, what kind of a communist country would that be??? Failing to do either would render the communist revolution meaningless which put you into power in the first place

 

[hamsterwaffle]

An idea would be for it to be easier to do things as a Dictatorship, but if you mess up these things then the people will be angrier than in a democracy. For example it could be easier for a American Dictatorship to declare a war (get a CB/war goal/whatever it was) on Mexico to complete manifest destiny, but if the American dictatorship lost the war it would be much more likely that the American dictatorship would fall to revolution.

 

[Slavick3000]

An inherent problem with late-game Dictatorships in Vicky1 was that Plurality was a (mostly) one-way street in that game. And you needed a high plurality to get POPs to turn socialist and communist in the first place, so when the revolution actually came, all of those angry communist POPs started getting even more angry because of the plurality bonus to militancy from dictatorships.

From what King and others have mentioned in the Dev. Diaries, it appears that plurality will be somewhat more fluid in Vicky 2 in terms of its effects, which should alleviate the constant militancy problem of Communist and Fascist dictatorships of Vicky1.

That said, Vicky1 had a very clear advantage for late-game dictatorships. The price capitalists paid for factories increased with the amount of factories you have, while the price the state paid for them remained flat. So by the late game, it is much more efficient to tax your capitalists and use the money to build and/or expand the factories on your own. And it is much easier to get a State Capitalist or a Planned Economy party into power if you are Fascist or Communist. Communists also had the very nice Full Citizenship immigrant policy which let you promote all those non-state culture POPs to factory workers.

I believe in Vicky2 the advantages of dictatorships will be similar - you are in control of the government and so can select the most appropriate party for the moment, at the cost of MIL and CON.

 

[unmerged(176705)]

This thread is about Totalitarianism in general, so I would like to ask: What would be the advantages of maintaining an unlimited absolute autocracy such as the one in the Russian Empire? I have tried to do so in Vic Rev for the Russian Empire, but the only thing I get is are endless revolts, no matter how low are taxes, how much goods the pop gets (in general, no matter how "good" the country is).

 

[keynes2.0]

Removing the bonus's for capitalists and aristocrats would actually make a whole lot of sense historically. The economic historians picking over the bones of the soviet union found that there were two most crucial ways that soviet growth differed from liberal democracies:

1) Inputs productivity skyrocketed. I.E. they used a lot more resources to do a lot more work with new tools. Think of those tractor factories they built in Siberia where before there had been nothing but serfs.
2) Output productivity was anemic. I.E. they didn't get more efficient in the way they used the same tools and resources.

According to the dev diaries, capitalists decrease the amount of resources that it takes to do a job. So it wouldn't be a horrible historical abstraction to just remove that bonus when the Soviets take over. The game would be give room to model both of these key behaviors. When the revolution starts, you can start building factories like nothing and reducing the number of people on farms, giving you that Input productivity. But you won't get the capitalist bonus like the free market nations, giving you that stagnant output productivity.

It's outside the timeframe but if POP's get more and more demanding, the game engine could conceivably do quite a good job modeling the Soviet golden era in the 50's and 60's as rapid growth outpaced demands and the economic failure in the 90's as inefficient production didn't meet people's expectations.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

So the capis would just sit on their arses for the duration, or emigrate or what?

 

[vertinox]

In Ricky there was very little incentive I felt to letting Communists win and forming the equivilent of the Soviet Union as I was always plagued by massive uprisings of rebels *everywhere* this made no sense to me and broke immersion, didn't they have the Cheka or NKVD? Where's the all encompasing security operatus that keeps revolts from taking place?

I feel that if your a totalitarian government and your willing to foot the bill for your police state revolt risk should tumble like a rock to the low 1 digits.

Stalinist Russia didn't happen overnight and the post revolution period from 1917 to 1930 included the Russian Civil war, a war with Poland, and some major uprisings in the Ukraine.

I mean, Finland, Poland, and the Baltics did successfully break away from Russia. The Soviets did get the Ukraine under their thumb, but it was quite a bloody ordeal.

State ownership is central to the communist doctrine.

Explain modern day China then.

Actually, there was debate on this during the time when Trotsky and crew still had weight in the Soviet Union. On like how much a farmer gets to keep etc etc.

There are always varying forms of this concept throughout Communism's history.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

So the capis would just sit on their arses for the duration, or emigrate or what?

They would run like the wind, of course.

Massive emigration of capis, massive revolt from those who stay. 2-3 years of radical communist rule should be enough to rid the country of all its capitalists and aristocrats.

Factory and RGO productivity would drop like a rock. To get them back up, the player would then need to rely on country-wide modifiers, maybe triggered through inventions or special events that are only available to communist societies who have researched advanced social, economic and industrial techs. Or through special country focuses which that only commies get. ("Five-Year Plan Focus" for industry, "Machine Station Kolkhozes" for farms, "Stakhanovite Focus" for resource RGOs)

Logically the only situation under which a player would *PROFIT* from a communist revolution, in pure in-game economical terms, would be if he has a huge country full of unproductive minority POPs, no money, and just a few capitalists who spend all their money on cigars and horses. Their bonus to productivity would not be missed much, direct control over factory building would allow the player to crash start industrialization focused on just a few specific sectors, and the totalitarian policies available to commies (I hope) would help him cope with massive MIL increase when he cranks taxes all the way up to 60% and beyond, to finance his crash industrialization.

Playing a developed country with a sophisticated economy and large, wealthy upper classes, a you should fear the red revolution like the plague ...

 

[daemonofdecay]

Playing a developed country with a sophisticated economy and large, wealthy upper classes, a you should fear the red revolution like the plague ...

Which would be both historical from a Role Playing point of view, and would also reflect how Communist revolutions only really succeeded in non-industrialized nations like Russia. More industrialized nations (and their people) had more to loose from communism.