Half-Earth Socialism? More like Half-Earth Enviromentalism

[Lolec407cz]

Nothing you do in the game has anything to do with socialism. It's a pure enviromentalist propaganda. It's a typical product of westerners who confuse socialism with eviromentalism. Fot the last time: No socialism is not about saving polar bears and stopping climate change. Socialism is about worker rights. Nothing less, nothing more.

[Lolec407cz]

Basil Fawlty님이 먼저 게시:

In National Socialism the enviroment is very important. It was a major part of the NSDAP as it created better living conditions for the workers.
Socialism is about control over the people, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Guevara, Pinochete etc all had the same target, how they made use of the control is not really important since it all ended the same way, as socialism always does.
Our western leaders today uses enviromentalism as an excuse to implement socialistic totalitarian ideas, so sure socialism and enviromentalism can go hand in hand.

That's a typical redneck understanding of socialism. Go read some books and then come back.

[Lolec407cz]

The basic idea of socialism is pretty simple though. You have the class of factory owners (so called bourgeois) who own the "means of productions" (basically the machines and stuff) and then you have the class of workers (so called proletariat) who use these machines to do work and produce stuff. What Marx realized is that this creates an unavoidable class struggle, because:
A) There is a conflict of interests. It is in the interest of the owners for the workers to do as much work as possible for as little wage as possible. While it's in the interest of the workers to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible. This creates conflict.
B) The owners use their status to extract surplus value (value added to the final product by the workers labor) from the proletariat. What Marx realized was that the workers don't have to tolerate this. Why? Simply because workers are necessary for the manufacture process, but owners are not. If you remove the workers, the factory won't be able to run anymore. When you remove the owners, nothing happens. The factory can run just fine without them.

[Lolec407cz]

Xero님이 먼저 게시:

Fascism is highly capitalist and has nothing to do with socialism

That is simply wrong. Both Fascism and National Socialism were at least originally just forms of socialism. "Fascism" is literally just an Italian word for syndicalism / trade unionism. Both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were socialists in their youth. Mussolini was a chief editor of socialist newspaper and Hitler was an elected representative of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Yes, they "somehow" forgot about their socialist ideals when they got to power, but just because they were opportunistic sellouts and didn't mind to truckle to the bourgeois, doesn't mean that their original ideas were not part of the wider socialist umbrella. If nothing less, they got heavily inspired by marxism and it's "politics of masses". Hitler admits as much himself in his book.

[schnappkatze]

Mr. Total War님이 먼저 게시:

I'm not saying that environmental issues are not important, I'm just saying that they are not part of the socialist school of thought, but its very own thing instead. I'm not saying that being an environmentalist is bad, I'm just saying that you should not call it socialism.

Also human kind is not a race, it's a species. Saying "the human race" is like saying "the dog race".

That's fair, it sounded to me like a disguised rant against environemtal issues.

Thanks for the note about the human race - English is not my mother tongue and I thought that "the human race" is just another way to say "humanity". For the biological part you are ofc correct that human is a species, not a race.

[Unlucky]

Mr. Total War님이 먼저 게시:

Unlucky님이 먼저 게시:

And the ideology of Socialism/Communism has grown much since Marx as well. We've had tons of enlightening thought on the subject since him. We shouldn't ignore it or throw it all away.

Yeah, Westerners added a ton of environmentalist ideas to it the last decades, ideas that have nothing to do with Marx's views where the process of historical development of the society is seen through the lens of class struggle, meaning the struggle of workers to stop their mistreatment and exploitation by the bourgeois. These new ideas of fighting corporations, not for the sake of the employees, but for the sake of saving the nature have nothing to do with orthodox Marxism. That's exactly what I meant when I said that Westerners confuse Socialism with Environmentalism.

What does anything you just said have anything to do with what I said, the game, or the discussion at hand?
Seems more like you're trying to interject your own agenda about Western ideologies in here in order to argue about them for some reason. I don't see the relevance.

I think it's pretty clear that the game is not based on 'Orthodox Marxism'. It is using the term 'Socialism' very loosely. That much should be pretty obvious to anyone who is already familiar with Marxism, Socialism, and Communism. And for those not familiar, I'm sure the hope is to open their minds up to the ideology so that they go and read more and learn about it for themselves. Not so that they can use an indie video game as a basis for all of their ideological beliefs.

[[FILASTEEN] TROOP_OF_ALAQSA]

Mr. Total War님이 먼저 게시:

You won't find a single example of Marx's writitng where he talks about stopping climate change or saving polar bears. Socialism was about saving the working class from the capitalist oppresion, it was never about environmental issues.

Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.

- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

[...] all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology…only by sapping the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.

- Karl Marx, Capital vol 1

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centers and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, making possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy season… Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

- Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State



You are very confident for someone who is very wrong

[Nuas]

????
You think you can achieve a well executed central plan by just ignoring the environment? Maybe you just want to say that socialism is just purely work place democracy and not an international government that combines different forms of socialism such as central planning, coops and unionization. In which case you're just too short sighted.

[LEMAN_RUSS]

OBJECTION the whole game is Socialism you plan out how to fix it thats the point and this game is based on a book so it may have left stuff out.

[MvdS]

Mr. Total War, the title of the game refers to environmentalism with the "Half-Earth" part, "Half-Earth Environmentalism" would be redundant. As for the socialism, would you say that a post-socialist-revolution world by definition has nothing to do with socialism?? Having bourgeois in this game wouldn't make much sense in this game..., because it is post-revolution.
Other than that, the game has many marx-related game mechanics, such as stakhanovism, fanonism, and malthusianism (which Marx himself criticized in Das Kapital). On top of that, the entire point of the game is basically to take a look at environmentalism with a marxist dialectic (dialectical materialism). Given that the first part of the title refers to environmentalism, and that the second part of the title refers to socialism, I don't think the title could have been much more appropriately chosen.

[Democratic Republican]

Fixing the environment is simply the goal set by the Central Committee after the world revolution. It does assume a level of global cohesion and decapitalization that would have to take place on a national if not regional level first, thus it lacks a certain depth that the various sect of socialists would like to see (me included.) That's not really the point of the game/exercise though, merely to put one in charge of solving the environmental problem.

Though as a disgusting militarist, I'd love to play a game that would put me in charge of commanding revolutionary police actions against the terrorist depicted in the game. Navigating the political landscape, investigating links to cells, finding ways to negotiate deals between those left angered by the central committee with feeling that there is no way out without violence and the government, and/or fighting those who will not see reason; is a game I would be interested in as well.

An exploration of simply one aspect of the socialist revolution isn't a refutation of others nor a limit on the needs of that revolution. Treat this as such and you'll learn more.

[JustMonika]

Mr. Total War님이 먼저 게시:

That was just an example. Marx didn't write about pollinating insects either. He didn't write about any of this environmentalist stuff.

He didn't write about Wifi, either, or mobile phones, or nuclear weapons.

[Larsegutt]

Like several people have pointed out before me, you're simply wrong about this. The attempt to decouple socialism from environmentalism by both socialists, environmentalists and liberalists have been detrimental to socialism because it alienated socialists from environmentalists and vice versa and created harmful tunnel vision policies in the planned economies of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Additionally, it cannot be defended neither logically, morally, practically or philosophically. As such the view is simply undialectic.

[Lolec407cz]

Larsegutt님이 먼저 게시:

Additionally, it cannot be defended neither logically, morally, practically or philosophically. As such the view is simply undialectic.

Elaborate please.

[Basil Fawlty]

Mr. Total War님이 먼저 게시:

Basil Fawlty님이 먼저 게시:

In National Socialism the enviroment is very important. It was a major part of the NSDAP as it created better living conditions for the workers.
Socialism is about control over the people, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Guevara, Pinochete etc all had the same target, how they made use of the control is not really important since it all ended the same way, as socialism always does.
Our western leaders today uses enviromentalism as an excuse to implement socialistic totalitarian ideas, so sure socialism and enviromentalism can go hand in hand.

That's a typical redneck understanding of socialism. Go read some books and then come back.

Is it now? So the fact that ALL experiments with socialism ends the same way is neglectable? Read some history, socialism is all about control over the people and will always end up like feudalism. Environmentalism is just another word for state-control.

[Lolec407cz]

Basil Fawlty님이 먼저 게시:

Is it now? So the fact that ALL experiments with socialism ends the same way is neglectable?

That's not true though. That's an anti-socialist lie that the right-wingers keep promoting in order to obscure the truth and make this falsehood the new perceived "truth" by the general public (unfortunately they are quite successful in that). There are many successful socialist societies around the world, like for example The Zapatista in Mexico, but unfortunately they are usually quite small, so uneducated Americans have usually never heard of them, which is exactly what right-wingers rely on when spreading their lies. Remember: Anti-socialist arguments all always based on ignorance.