"Communism" gameplay system literally doesnt work

[grommile]

but what catastrophe forced our ancestors into the miserable existence of serfs.

My oversimplified answer (I am not any kind of expert, so take it with a whole cellar of salt) would be:

Caloric surplus, specialization of labour, and the conflict between sedentary agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists.

 

[Promethium555]

If there's no authority capable of infringing on someone's ability to simply ignore your claims of ownership, such claims are kinda meaningless, now aren't they? Property rights are, at their core, about selectively restricting people's abilities regarding some entity, about access control. They are an entirely artificial construct.

What? Property Rights just means that you have rights over your property, thats it. If you've ever yelled at your little brother for entering your room without asking, or if you have ever told a kid at class that you dont like "no" when he asks for your candy at lunch, then you subconsciously understand how private property works without realizing it. The people in this thread are forcing a very specific, 19th century, collectivist, industrial understanding of how a centralized society should work on pre-industrial tribal structures that I have a feeling they don't understand as much as they claim to.

 

[Sparticulous]

Communism is a revolutionary ideology, meaning it requires the removal of the current ruling class. It being established using democratic means is not possible, as that would require the ruling class to sit idly by as all their wealth and power is removed (as currently happens when you enact council republic) which is absurd. You can certainly reform to make the state more socialist, but going full commie using democratic means is innately unrealistic.

But is it possible to go fascist dictatorship through democratic means

 

[Haltin]

What? Property Rights just means that you have rights over your property, thats it.

No. Property rights mean I'm stopping everyone else from touching the thing I've declared my property. In your examples below:

If you've ever yelled at your little brother for entering your room without asking,

This yelling is my attempt to stop him from doing something he is capable of doing, namely walking into a room. I'm trying to restrict his right to go where he wants. In practice, unless I get our parents to enforce this, I'm just making a fool out of myself.

or if you have ever told a kid at class that you dont like "no" when he asks for your candy at lunch,

The kid is just as capable of simply reaching out and taking the candy as I am. What makes it my candy is me restricting his right to simply grab an object, a capability he would otherwise have. Again, this likely requires adult intervention to enforce.

then you subconsciously understand how private property works without realizing it.

Yes, I do: I'm (trying to) stopping you from doing things you'd be able to do if not for my claim of ownership. Such claims are entirely dependent on my ability to enforce my will vs. your ability to ignore me, and in practice this requires an outside authority to back me up since I'm not inherently more powerful than you.

The people in this thread are forcing a very specific, 19th century, collectivist, industrial understanding of how a centralized society should work on pre-industrial tribal structures that I have a feeling they don't understand as much as they claim to.

Unowned apple tree: anyone can eat the apples.
My apple tree: only I and the people I permit to can eat the apples.
State: the entity which actually stops you from picking from my apple tree by force if need be, since me saying it's mine doesn't magically stop you from doing so.

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what's controversial about saying property rights means exclusivity, which in turn requires enforcement. What, exactly speaking, do you disagree with?

 

[Cry_Havok]

A village in which people voluntarily agree to share belongings communally for practicality /= a soviet style command eocnomy. "Personal property" simply means that individuals have agency over their own property, not that only corporations own their property, it's a very vague concept that can be applied in a myriad of different systems.

Of course it doesn't, and no one said it did. The mass privatization of land however was a in the grand scheme of things a recent invention, and most land was held in common (or directly owned by a feudal lord). Also personal property != private property

 

[icedt729]

What? Property Rights just means that you have rights over your property, thats it. If you've ever yelled at your little brother for entering your room without asking, or if you have ever told a kid at class that you dont like "no" when he asks for your candy at lunch, then you subconsciously understand how private property works without realizing it. The people in this thread are forcing a very specific, 19th century, collectivist, industrial understanding of how a centralized society should work on pre-industrial tribal structures that I have a feeling they don't understand as much as they claim to.

That's... not at all what "property rights" are, unless your parents sublet your family home and gave you title to one room and your brother title to another. That's actually more like usufruct ("I'm currently making use of this room by being the one to sleep in it and keep my stuff in it, but it'll be up for grabs once I move out and get another place"). You only "own" your childhood bedroom to the extent that you're actively using and occupying it, and the broader community (the other people living in your house) conditionally recognize your claim to it.

Private property rights over the room would allow you to hold it in perpetuity, to rent it out or sell it regardless of what the people in the other rooms said, even to pass it along to your descendants (or just trash it and let it rot, if you so chose). These aren't things you could typically do under the usufruct-based ideas of property you typically see in societies with no or weak states.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

That's... not at all what "property rights" are, unless your parents sublet your family home and gave you title to one room and your brother title to another. That's actually more like usufruct ("I'm currently making use of this room by being the one to sleep in it and keep my stuff in it, but it'll be up for grabs once I move out and get another place"). You only "own" your childhood bedroom to the extent that you're actively using and occupying it, and the broader community (the other people living in your house) conditionally recognize your claim to it.

Private property rights over the room would allow you to hold it in perpetuity, to rent it out or sell it regardless of what the people in the other rooms said, even to pass it along to your descendants (or just trash it and let it rot, if you so chose). These aren't things you could typically do under the usufruct-based ideas of property you typically see in societies with no or weak states.

Spot on. Private property is also a LEGAL relation, which "this is MY room" is not. you can't sue your brother for entering your room or get him arrested for trespass! You might get mommy and pappy to get cross with him but that's about it.

 

[bugglesley]

Anthropology is not a substitute for History. Anything we learn about more recent groups of primitive tribes is basically worthless unless logically it can be inferred to have applied to the particular ancestors of ourselves as well.

However we have to remember that two things apply to those groups that don't apply to our ancestors.

1. Unlike our ancestors, these primitives 'got stuck' at a certain 'level of development' for some reason while our ancesters progressed further.
2. These primitives have now been around for a lot longer than our ancestors were at the time they were similarly primitive.

Their lack of or deviance of certain institutions in the present, can, rather than being seen as typical of primitive societies in general, instead be seen as either the cause of their remaining continual primitive state or the result of political change over time.

It is quite possible that our distant ancestors were more like ourselves than primitive society in the present. It is possible that political change derailed other societies ancestors from the universal path of expansion and development but since our ancestors resisted said changes, they continued to advance.

I strenuously disagree with this sentiment (and it really does demonstrate that you "haven't cracked an anthropology book") for 3 main reasons-

First, as has been mentioned, "History" only covers recorded past, which right off the hop excludes 95% of the human beings who have ever lived. "Anthropology," in stark contrast to the implications of your post, studies human societies and cultures more broadly, both of the present and the past. As someone who has spent a lot of time interacting with professionals in both fields, Historians could stand to learn a lot from anthropologists, and anthropologists have started to basically believe they're better historians. If the humanities and non-econ social sciences weren't being horrifically underfunded it'd be a really interesting time in both fields to see how those conflicts synthesize. At the very least, it is not a "substitute" but it is an indispensable supplement.

Second, a reason it's an indispensable supplement is because there are still people running around in the year of 2023 CE using terms like "primitive" and "more or less progressed" without any hint of irony or introspection. Human societies have progressed in all kinds of ways in all kinds of different directions, the concept that every human who has ever existed did so identifiably at some point on a linear, sliding scale that goes from "caveman" to "me" is a laughable assumption that nobody but the most dedicated knuckle-dragger has taken seriously in the academy since the 1950s. When anthropologists interact with indigenous peoples today, they are well aware that they are not peering into the past or seeing ourselves in a "previous state," but, as you say, every single one of the people being studies has pretty much the same number of humans in their lineage as anybody else; and in 2023, it is nearly impossible to find someone who truly has not interacted in any meaningful way with the "modern world." Once again, literally nobody since the 1950s is out here going "now I will visit the xyz tribe and watch how our distant ancestors lived," anyone proposing a grant with that sentiment would be laughed out of any department in the world.

Finally, so yes, your keen insight that perhaps, "our" ancestors might have lived differently from modern "primitives," is not some kind of sick own of anthropology but taken as an article of faith by modern anthropologists. However, shockingly, modern anthropologists have looked into how our ancestors lived as well. Archeology, best friend of both anthropology and history, has really grown in the last 20 years, with more and more access to technological tools to target archeological digs and glean more information from the same. And relentlessly, that information has demonstrated that our own ancestors lived even less like us than we thought, with cities that lack a palace district (who ran the place..?) or evidence that people moved back and forth for generations between settled agriculture and hunting/gathering (I thought once you went sedentary you never went back..?). A lot of it is uncertain and unsettled, but early returns are not supporting your suppositions.

In conclusion, you should crack an anthropology book. Strongly recommend "The Dawn of Everything."

 

[maxirage]

But is it possible to go fascist dictatorship through democratic means

Fascism did not replace the ruling class. That is why it was so much more successful than communism in those countries, as it let the business owners keep their businesses. It didn't even replace the king in Italy.

 

[JesterInYellow]

Fascism did not replace the ruling class. That is why it was so much more successful than communism in those countries, as it let the business owners keep their businesses. It didn't even replace the king in Italy.

This is a very bad misunderstanding of what fascism is and what it did. It's even a bad understanding of democracy, since you apparently believe that business owners are "the ruling class" of it. I mean goodness, Mussolini's exact words at the fascist congress were even that they were going to "take by the throat our miserable ruling class."

Fascism replaced every cog in the machine of society. That was its stated goal and it was pursued with the fervor of actual madmen. For the few (and it was definitely few) business owners who actually got to keep their business, said business was generally transformed to a state of unrecognizability through state intervention to ensure its place in a new corporatist economy--not empowering capitalists, but occasionally allowing capitalists to exist if it benefited the state. Even if we ignore all the non-"pure" business owners who lost everything, and the business owners who lost everything due to fascist policies causing rapid economic collapse, many business owners who even fit the fascist state in question's definition of "pure" were still removed from their position as and when needed for whatever pet project the dictator or his closest lackies had at any time. This was not an aspect of corruption or hidden secret intentions; this was the stated goal of both the Italian and German fascist movement. Preserving capitalism was not a stated goal, in fact it was directly contradictory to one of their stated goals, which was indeed abolishing the idea of "free market capitalism" conceived of by liberals.

As for the king in Italy, he and Mussolini were famously at each other's throats often and near rabid in their hatred for each other at times. Mussolini's goal was very obviously to get rid of the king at some point or another, but he never had the support or stability to do so, and both of them knew it; Victor was a cautious-bordering-on-paranoid man who probably felt he didn't have the power base or stability to get rid of Mussolini either, which is why he didn't, even though a lot of historians conjecture in retrospect that he could have. But just because fascism failed to completely gut both the monarchy and the papacy in Italy doesn't mean that it wasn't the goal they were acting on. Fascism did not retain the clergy and monarchy in positions of privilege, it was actively attacking them.

 

[8ballsam]

Corruption is a problem due to its effects, which are the same whether it happens in the public or private sphere, so it seems pretty pointless to try to distinguish them.

Appeal to consequences fallacy.

Yes, what fool makes decisions without consulting a fortune teller first?

Them's the rub in the private sphere. Should've bought insurance!

And using that prerogative will lead to a lower efficiency compared to making hiring or promoting decisions based on competence. It also motivates competent people to move elsewhere, and promotes general cynicism towards the system, thus eventually leading to instability.

Again, boss do what boss wanna do.
If you don't like it, change the laws!

Head office in London say you're supposed to hire people based primarily on their ability to do the job.

In an act of nepotism/cronyism, the branch office manager in Nether Upton hires his cousin/brother/old school chum in preference to several people who would actually be better at the job.

Ah ok I get it now.

If an employee stole company funds - the company shouldn't have hired him to begin with

head office was bad at hiring in your example.

 

[Haltin]

Appeal to consequences fallacy.

I'm not asserting a believe to be true or false based on the desirability of its consequences, I'm asserting that the terminology used for a phenomenom should not be changed just because of your personal (and frankly weird) philosophical views.

Them's the rub in the private sphere. Should've bought insurance!

That's not a view shared by our current society, nor Victorian era one.

Again, boss do what boss wanna do.
If you don't like it, change the laws!

Currently, I have no reason to either like or dislike it since it isn't modeled in the game. If it ever is, the correct and recognizable term to use for this effect is corruption.

 

[DominusNovus]

I do think that something people (and also V3 game designers, sometimes, to bring this careening thread back to some vague semblance of relevancy) forget is that people did genuinely believe in the fundamental ethics of "primitive" (that is, conservative) government well into the late 19th century. Frederick Rolfe, a fantastically interesting/strange bloke, has a section in his A History of the Borgias (1901) defending rule-by-bishops (that could more less equally be applied to rule-by-aristocracy) as fundamentally noble in nature, incorruptible from base desires and shaped by generations of experience in a way no slovenly "professional" politician ever could be.

Ahem…

True Theocracy has never been tried!

 

[Lys91]

I still don't understand what real-world society "council republics" are modeled after.

I think stuff like the Paris Commune. (they lasted a bit more than 2 months IRL, but for reasons unrelated to their political model)

EDIT: to be clear I don't know if it would have ever worked, but we can never know

 

[8ballsam]

I'm not asserting a believe to be true or false based on the desirability of its consequences, I'm asserting that the terminology used for a phenomenom should not be changed just because of your personal (and frankly weird) philosophical views.

Using incorrect terminology seems counter-productive.

That's not a view shared by our current society, nor Victorian era one.

Without data this statement doesn't mean much (who is "our"? which Victorian era society r u referring to?).

Currently, I have no reason to either like or dislike it since it isn't modeled in the game. If it ever is, the correct and recognizable term to use for this effect is corruption.

So again I ask - how can actions made in a sphere which is completely private be affected by corruption? Capitalists might reject your usage of the term corruption and instead use "evolution" (companies who have poor practices will eventually be out-competed by better companies).
Perhaps a better term would be "Amorality", since for example most people would associate "unreasonable" working conditions not as a failure of the economic system but rather a failure of all the participants (from field worker to customer to cigar-in-the-mouth-and-legs-on-the-table owner) who were involved in the sum of economic actions to act more in line with societal norms (see why some people choose to boycott Amazon/Nestle/Chocolate manufactures).

 

[grommile]

So again I ask - how can actions made in a sphere which is completely private be affected by corruption?

Here's a dictionary definition for you, with relevant emphasis added:

"Unethical administrative or executive practices (in government or business), including bribery (offering or receiving bribes), conflicts of interest, nepotism, and so on."

 

[Haltin]

Capitalists might reject your usage of the term corruption and instead use "evolution" (companies who have poor practices will eventually be out-competed by better companies).

Companies can have any practices they want on paper, but ultimately those practices are implemented by humans. If those humans can't be trusted to do so, for example because of pervasive corruption making defection a socially acceptable and low-risk activity, then company policies are a dead letter.

Every actor in an economy, be they public or private, is ultimately made of humans, and thus affected by the culture those humans have. If that culture is highly corrupt, this will have huge malus on almost any economic activity, since try as you might you can't get anything done as funds and resources go mysteriously missing and contracts are simply ignored with the courts simply not caring - heck, maybe the police will just plain extort - excuse me, make an offer you can't refuse least your company "evolves" - you. And the easiest way to model that in the current state of Victoria 3 is as a "tax" from building cashflow to employees to simulate everyone stealing what they can.

Anyway, maybe you can pay someone to translate Vic3 into a version of English (Ballsish?) which is consistent with your philosophical views? But I'm done debating this.

 

[DominusNovus]

I still don't understand what real-world society "council republics" are modeled after.

soviet | Etymology, origin and meaning of soviet by etymonline

SOVIET Meaning: "type of elective council forming a unit in a socialist government," from Russian sovet "governing… See origin and meaning of soviet.

www.etymonline.com

 

[GrounchoVilla]

I think stuff like the Paris Commune. (they lasted a bit more than 2 months IRL, but for reasons unrelated to their political model)

EDIT: to be clear I don't know if it would have ever worked, but we can never know

If we were to use the game's categories, we'd also say the USSR was a council republic + single party state. thats why they added single party state

 

[OllyOllyOxenFree]

According to this definition, the capitalist society cant exist.

Capitalism need state for (at least) defense of the personal property. Which means that state needs to provide functioning justice system. And in order to provide that, the state needs to intervene to economy (collect taxes to pay the policemen, own court and police building...). So no, you actually need state intervention to economy to ensure capitalism, because capitalism only exist because of state intervention (private property) in the first place.

Except Capitalism (precisely Free Market Capitalism) in the US during this time period completely discounts the notion of intervention in the economy (from 1850s until 1910s) and leaves it to the society and intellectual class to bring about industrialisation and prosperity.

Hell, the whole reason why Robber Barons existed in the US for so long in the middle period of Vic3 (or lack thereof) is because, of a lack of intervention by the governement until after 1910