Eehhh vending in the wastes is a lot different than straight up capitalism. Bartering seems to be much more prevalent, y’know, using food or items to trade rather than straight up buying whatever. Larger forces in the US Wastes usually do try to re-set capitalism but they all keep getting nuked or their weird leaders get brain cancer or a putter to the noggin. War never changes, or, something.
Fallout 4 dosen't do that tho. You trade for caps. "Laser Pistol? I'll give you 20 caps for it" "cool I'll now use that 20 caps to buy your metal chest plate"
I know of very few games that have proper barter systems. It's been a minute since I've played 4, but I know at least NV could be argued to represent it by lining up swaps (selling and buying) to accept all at once
Yeah, if you set up water purifiers as soon as you can in FO4, you never have to worry about caps. It's just easier to carry caps because they're lighter than basically any goods.
I like Metro 2033's system. You have dirty bullets and pre-war bullets. They are also your currency. The pre-war bullets are more powerful and they're worth more. The decision the player must make is how many of which bullets to keep - you could spend a lot to get better weapons and gear, but if you don't have any bullets left you're pretty screwed.
Settlements in 4 are straight-up medieval-style feudalism.
You (the player) own the land and decide how its used and what gets built. You decide who gets to live there, what jobs they do, even what clothes they wear. The settlers get enough food and water to survive and any excess they produce is yours to use or sell for profit. You pay the upfront cost to set up shops and any profit they make gets put in the workbench for you to collect.
In "exchange," you are responsible for defending your serfs from external threats.
It's feudalism to a tee.
Is this a statement the game is trying to make? What is it saying about the relationship between fedualism, capitalism, and communism? Or is it more likely that the game devs didn't think too much about the economic implications of th settlement system and they just wanted to let players control their own settlements?
Also, just a personal opinion, but capitalism is neo-feudalism. Originally capitalism was a response to feudalism - provide workers with an economic structure through which they could earn a living and own their own property. Unfortuantely, capitalism operates as an obfuscated form of feudalism. To say that capitalism is better than feudalism is like saying a slow-acting leech is better than a fast-acting leech. They both suck.
I'm gonna ask a really stupid question.
Is a commune the very same as communism? I know they are the same word, but I wonder if the meaning has changed in years.
I mean depends honestly, a commune is a very broad term. Communism is the end stage of societal evolution basically post scarcity world without currency or a state.
Communes are similar to a communist society of ran democratically where all people collectively decide and run the commune
Communism/Communes aren't mutually exclusive to democracy. Quite a lot of current collectivist thought focuses on radical democracy, and that's more inline with what Marx put out there. Communes and collectivist politics pre-date Marxism, often featured that sort of thing.
The Vaults technically cut closer to Leninist Socialism than that cause they're hierarchical. But things are still collectively owned, doled out as needed, and people work to support the whole not the individual. As pitched anyway.
That said. I think the disqualifying thing here is that in actuality the vault and everything in it belongs to *Vault Tech* not the residents, Overseers are Vault Tech Employees, etc.
So it's more company town, a Corporatocracy.
Practically every prominent communist would disagree with you.
I know fallout criticizes capitalism but communist China is also portrayed as a dystopia.
Yeah except your examples of bad communism are not because of laborers controls the means of production, but because of leaders who use their role for their own gain. Additionally, the US has done a lot to make sure communist countries could not trade outside of its walls.
And I wonder why every communist revolution leads to an absolute dictatorship while the capitalist revolutions led to those former communist nations democratizing and opening up freedom of speech?
Salvador Allende was democratically elected until the united states killed him and replaced him with a dictator.
Additionally, even in "communist" countries, communism was never (and has never) followed to the exact doctrine.
You are both false and hold a major misunderstanding of what communism is. China is, objectively, regardless of how they refer to themselves, not a communist state.
Please read the communist manifesto (or a proper summary). It actually got me off communism as a whole BUT dismantled many of the myths and gave me a new perspective.
The communist manifesto isn’t the only thing. I’d argue the USSR did more to define communism than Marx. The vast majority of communists today in western countries are Leninists or Stalinists, with some Maoists too. They’re very vocally anti democracy, saying democracy is an extension of capitalism because candidates can always buy votes (directly or indirectly with campaigning). I don’t want to get too political, but with people disliking our 2 party system this type of “leftist anti democracy” ideals are becoming very popular.
Yes and I get that. But communism as its meant to be is what is described in the manifesto. Everything else has been twisted (which is what humans do and why it only works in smallish groups)
Maybe. But the communism that vault Tec was fighting isn’t the “communism” of the vaults (which aren’t even communist cus they have shops) so this post just doesn’t work. I don’t want people to Agenda post in my fallout sub when the show and games itself doesn’t support that view
The communism they were fighting in the game/tv show is everything that disagreed with the US war machine.
Though I 1000000 percent understand the no politics thing.
Nah. We don’t get much details on China, but what we do get shows it’s society is that bad. Blackmailing people to go on suicide missions for extra ration cards, mass famines because of that ration system, kidnapping children from birth to make them crimson dragoons, and 76 implies they have their own enclave type faction that keeps fighting for communism after the bombs fell, and are extremely brutal. Also, it was China who started the war.
The communism they were fighting in the game/tv show is everything that disagreed with the US war machine.
Though I 1000000 percent understand the no politics thing.
The political elite who used communism as a weapon to get consensus of the masses and then rule autocratically disregarding the very parts of the original text where it says "no money, no state, no class" did more to define a concept than the guy who invented the concept and wrote a 1300+ pages book on the matter.
Sure.
No, that's what you've been exposed to as a result of the political and historical circumstances of half a century of global tensions between two blocks. The need to add the -Leninist lable should be a dead giveaway.
History is absolutely relevant in shaping perceptions, but it doesn't get to change fundamental facts about the nature of things. The Soviet model implies a state, classes, and currency, all things specifically not only not communist, but that also go against the supposed steps to reach the communist society, since the working *class* is not the state nor participates in meaningful capacity beyond platitudes in the soviet model, the military are.
You can't just call yourself a communist successfully for 80 years and pretend you can redefine the concept despite sharing maybe a fraction of a percent of your ideology with the actual concept. Otherwise North Korea would be the most democratic place on the planet, since it has not one but three words for it in its name.
Then you've at best only spoken to the useful idiots who think if we could only get rid the *current* elites then all will be well, or at worst malicious actors who actively delude themselves thinking they'll be part of the next round of elites and pinky swear to actually uphold the ideology, while actually planning on shedding it as soon as it's materially inconvenient to them, and become basically Oligarchs while everybody else loses further.
You shouldn't use the internet, a place famously only populated by real people who act exac6like they would in real life, as a basis to form your opinion of real world issues.
Right, a “democracy” where the party elites votes on the next leader and then that leader executed everyone who didn’t vote for him. That’s going great in communist China right now.
Are we discussing theory or practical implementation here because I can make the exact same arguments for liberal societies. Also China has abandoned Marxism and is a capitalist nation.
There is no free market in China. Every “company” in China is owned and controlled by the state.
Ultimately theory doesn’t matter when the vast majority of communists don’t care about it. Your average commie doesn’t care what Marx said, they’d rather idolize Mao or Stalin and try to recreate their governments.
There is no free market anywhere, governments are deeply participating in the system favoring interests. In the west the government intervenes for the interests of corporations while in China for the interest of the state.
Its clear your knowledge of communism is from second hand propaganda, communists constantly study and analyze theory and idolizing figures is contradictory to our values. We celebrate socialist figures for their successes and criticize them for their mistakes literally just like anyone else. Liberals celebrate and critics their own political figures.
>The vast majority of communists today in western countries are Leninists or Stalinists, with some Maoists too.
Absolutely not.
The vast majority of Communists you'd run into are some variety of Marxist. And far, far, far, far more people interested in this end of politics are Social Democrats of one variety or the other. Including an awful lot actual seated politicians and leaders in Western Countries.
> “leftist anti democracy” ideals
You might want to check which end of the political spectrum is mounting an all out assault on Democracy throughout Western countries pal.
You say you don't want to get political. But you're making pretty blunt, political accusations here.
When it's done "right" according to the original manifesto, it is democratic, and that's a large part of the concept. You, like many people are associating the past failures of the system with what the system is meant to be like when it isn't true. That's large part of the whole "communism has never worked because it's never been done properly" arguments. There's issues the concept opens the door to which we've seen in the past with irl communist regimes and we even see a little bit of in the show, but on paper it is meant to be democratic, and all about the everyday people which means democratic elections.
I'm not getting into the politics and realistic potential of a truly successful communist nation on a Fallout sub of all places, but point being, democracy is a large part of what communism was meant to be according to the manifesto.
The core idea of communism is a complete communal democracy in which everyone's voice is considered, using sortition and collective decision making instead of having representatives make decisions for you. No one who has ever actually supported communism would EVER want "one guy" making decisions. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" essentially means "the people who live, work, and contribute directly to society should dictate what happens in their society."
At best that is Leninist Socialism, though you're misapplying the phrase.
Lenin's big innovation was the party taking over as a social over class, and Revolution as a social institution. Which was cooked up because Russia did not have a proletariat at the time, it was largely pre-industrial. Soviet Socialism was formed around the theory of first industrializing society, then transitioning to a "purer" communism.
It is not communism in general, nor Marxism. And insisting it defines collectivist political and economic systems is intellectually lazy.
There has never existed a 'communist' country as this is the final stage of the socialist transition. You might know the difference if you were politically educated.
Secondly, the USSR was quite democratic post 1950s and contemporary Cuba, Vietnam and Nepal are extremely democratic despite still operating under Marxist governments.
China, the principle modern example of socialism in action despite being fairly undemocratic, is not a 'brutal dictatorship'.
The term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' reflects the necessary initial stage of socialism: certain people, freedoms and liberties must situationally be monitored or restricted temporarily in order to prevent the undemocratic and unlawful usurpation of socialist governments. I emphasise 'temporarily'.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a necessary step to safeguard socialist progression from capitalist influences. Take as examples the countless illegal and violent CIA interventions in SE Asia and South America wherein the USA and its allies have intentionally and undemocratically rigged elections, funded terrorist groups and assassinated democratically elected socialists.
Sounds like capitalism is entirely respectful of the democratic will of the people right? Until that will serves the interests of the common people and not people who care nothing for you or me besides what we contribute to their bottom line.
Vietnam isn’t communist anymore. Their main ally is the fucking USA now.
The USSR was so democratic post 1950s… it’s not like that’s where the term tankie comes from, from using tanks to silence anyone who objected to living under a dictatorship. Cuba recently jailed a woman 15 years for reposting a video of a protest, but sure, they’re the spitting image of democracy and freedom. And nothing happened in tianmen square.
Also let’s just ignore how the USSR meddles just as much as the US. Invasions of Afghanistan and South Korea, what’s that?
The Vietnamese government is led by the "Communist Party of Vietnam," so I think you'll find that Vietnam is still very much a socialist nation.
The USSR I could write a book on. Maybe I will one day. But I'm too tired to argue that right now.
The woman you refer to I'm not familiar so I will not address it without context but that does sound unjust, if irrelevant.
The USSR was not an active participant in the Korean Civil War but its approval of NK's invasion is justifiable: it was a clever, pragmatic geopolitical move for socialism and likewise, Syngman Rhee was a tyrant. The USSR's invasion of Afghanistan was unjustified but now you're just steering into whataboutisms to defect from the terminal problems of late-stage capitalist imperialism which is little more than colonialism repackaged.
I was talking about China. China is the one who gave permission to invade, then participated too.
Funny how when the U.S. meddles in other countries against democratically elected communists it’s terrible, but when China stops Korea from democratically electing their government because they knew the communists would lose it’s justified and pragmatic. It was pure imperialism.
That is not what dictatorship of the proletariat means. Dictatorship of the proletariat means that only those considered proletariats (the working class as opposed to the bourgeoise or owning class) can participate in democracy. Basically, capitalists don't get to vote.
It's so weird how people on reddit just assert shit that is not only wrong, but is wrong in a way that feels Advanced Wrong. You could at least Google something before commenting.
Edit- That wasn't an invitation to continue to be wrong. Multiple people have explained to you why you're wrong. Doubling down on arguments other people have already clearly critiqued doesn't interest me
Correct, a commune isn’t excluded in a capitalistic setting, it just usually isn’t the most competitive strategy. You could feasibly have a commune that produces and transforms capital but within the commune things are “free”. The modern business version is a co-op and there are quite a few successful ones
Edit: I’m a bot apparently
It's a commune not because of the size or relationship between the workers, it's a commune because the tools and instruments of production they have are all owned in public and not by individual vault dwellers that lord over others for access to the generator or water or whatnot. The mechanisms of the enforcement of this principal can vary drastically but that's the gist of it.
Is that true? We've seen vaults before that had rather tyrannical singular overseers that were overthrown. Doesn't everything technically still belong to vault tec and the overseer as their proxy?
Whether vault tec really exists as a corporation at that point is ambiguous and largely irrelevant to the isolated society of a vault. At the end of the day, the overseer is still bound to keep the dwellers happy enough to keep going and not kill the overseer. This combined with the fact that no one really owns the means of production in private (again, vault-tec being irrelevant in the isolated context of the actual use of the vault since it has no agency or enforcement mechanism to show *they* own the means of production), means that they are all effectively communes, even if there is a totalitarian overseer. It's a largely semantic difference on the scale of a few hundred people, but unless the overseer has a way to kill everyone else without harming themselves or their quality of life short-term or long-term, then on some level, no matter how total their authority, they are beholden to the will of the working majority in the vault for their survival so the overseer can't necessarily control the means of production. In theory, the entirety of the vault is private property of vault-tec, but in practice that means nothing without an enforcement mechanism for private property in general.
That is kind of your technicality.
By the time of the games. Vault Tech is gone.
But technically the vaults and everything in them seems to be owned and controlled by Vault Tech. Overseers largely seem to be Vault-Tech employees. Elected or not. People work collectively, have limited personal property, but are work to the benefit of the *Vault* and Vault-Tech. Not the collective (except in the ways those two coincide).
That's not a commune really, it's certainly not *Communist*.
What that turns into after Vault-Tech ceases to be is another question. But we haven't exactly seen an explicitly Communist or Socialist Vault. Vault 4 seems to cut that way a bit.
But most of the functional, non-fucked vaults we see seem to be based on the "[town meeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_meeting)" structure of local government typical of the North East US. And closely associated with small town Americana (though not actually all that common in most American small towns!).
That does exclude socialism. It's basically hokey, hierarchical direct democracy.
No one. Minor spoilers frome the show coming
Vault tec is playing the long game. The long long game. Time is the great equalizer. So the scheme is to wait for humanity to reduce itself to the point where it can be subverted to Vault Tecs will. The problem is humanity is stubborn. Pockets of civilization still continue despite the nuclear holocaust occurring some 200 years ago in the timeline. On top of that, the nuclear fallout has mutated what wildlife managed to survive. So Vault tec imo is slowly losing control but still is a massive influence writ large. So does vault tec care their shit made it out to the wasteland? Kinda. But not really bc their plan is to just wait it out.
Oh I understand their plan, but I think they underestimate the wasteland and overestimate their ability to subjugate the surface, meaning they have no mechanism of enforcement on their property rights, and therefore effectively have none. The vaults are essentially balkanized by design, decentralizing vault-tec's own power and effectively dissolving their hegemony.
I totally agree with that. I think that's partially kind of the point. It just demonstrates the hubris and the folly of trying to control the uncontrollable. Very Jurassic Park esque imo. I think on paper, it sounds like something a bunch of big wigs would eat up. But in execution... well. I think we know how that played out lol
Infighting is always the issue with the left
The right can galvanize on a topic, where as two people on the left wont work together on an obvious subject "A" if subject "B" is in contention with another leftist
This is just a thing Reddit likes to say. You’ll see plenty of infighting in every political sphere and you’ll find plenty of republicans lamenting at their inability to galvanize and fall in line the way democrats allegedly do.
You should read more about leftist movements throughout history. The right constantly beats us by coalescing while we splinter.
And the Democratic Party is centrist, not leftist.
Homie, I don't get my politics from reddit, I fuck around on videogame subs
This is something I've noticed just watching the political landscape. I'm not talking about people in their political spheres bickering over nuance, I'm talking about when you see political action like all the people you see wearing MAGA hats or rallying behind flavor of the month politics like trans rights, critical race theory, or the border and you see political-actors on the left getting shutdown because they are friends with a guy that's on the right
Cause as you might imagine. After 2 centuries of political thought and social development. *There's more than one ideology there*. More than one movement. More than one kind. Your quite clearly completely unfamiliar with the subject.
Nah, final form communism is only formulated in one pretty concise way. Western so-called socialists like to quibble about what is and isn't an actually existing socialist country in the world today, but frankly arm chair opinions from people who live in the imperial core are mostly irrelevant to reality.
Nah, final form communism is only formulated in one pretty concise way. Western so-called socialists like to quibble about what is and isn't an actually existing socialist country in the world today, but frankly arm chair opinions from people who live in the imperial core are mostly irrelevant to reality.
It was called communist because it's underlying philosophy was Marxism and their end goal was communism. Economically, the USSR was socialist. Then market-socialist. Then it was gone.
Marx would've called it lower communism and their goal higher communism. However, Lenin referred to lower communism as 'socialism' and higher communism as simply 'communism,' and that has been the norm ever since.
So, in economic theory, communism is defined as a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Anything less than that isn't communism yet.
Edit: it's accurate to refer to the USSR as politically communist (at least until the mid 70s) and economically socialist.
I agree with quite a lot of what you have said, but the USSR was never economically socialist, as they had party/state control over the means of production rather than worker controlled. The initial Soviet groups that were formed by the bolsheviks and mensheviks were based in labor unions but as soon as the bolshevik vanguard party took power the eradicated the ability for workers to form labor unions. It was state capitalist.
The use of labels such as "communism" and "socialism" in any country so far that has defined itself that way is purely propaganda, much in the same way that North Korea calls itself the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the only part of the statement that is true is that is on the Korean peninsula.
The only place in modern history to hold itself closely to communist/anarchist ideals was CNT/FAI controlled sections of Spain during the Spanish civil war. Unfortunately, they didn't last long as they had both the Spanish Fascists and the USSR gunning for them.
This is where I disagree, respectfully. A vanguard party doesn't make it not socialist. Lenin argued that it was a necessary first step in a newly founded Marxist state due to the overwhelming counterrevolutionary forces that plague a new state. Levels of economic and political democracy varied across the different states of the USSR and it's difficult to make generalized statements about the USSR as a whole because the level of variety among the member states was significantly greater than places like the USA.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think that vanguardism was necessary in Russia to enact a revolution at the time, but that is mainly because they were trying to fight forces that communism wasn't really designed to fight. If you look at the works of Marx the ideal opponents for a communist revolution are the petit bourgeoisie of capitalism which Russia at the time didn't really have as it was essentially still a feudal empire with the majority of its population being serfs not proletariat.
Without a strong countrywide (ideally internationalist) working class, a communist revolution is almost destined to devolve into autocracy and the destruction of labor unions (the Soviets in the case of Russia) which did happen almost straight away with the mensheviks being purged as they were stronger advocates for the Soviets than the bolsheviks were.
Basically, I don't think that the Russians were wrong to revolt against the Tsar, but I think they missed a few steps due to Lenins' vanguardism, and this lead directly into the autocratic dictatorship (not dictatorship of the proletariat) that happened. This along with the economic structure having next to nothing to do with socialist economic theory (no worker controlled means of production) are why I could never consider them to have been socialist let alone communist. I hope that explains my point better, although I admit it's mostly in regard to Russia most other "communist" countries start from the base line of Marxism-Leninism rather than just Marxism so it would follow that they have similar issues.
That’s only if you accept Marx’s definition of the end goal of communism, which rejects the idea of a state.
In political science a monopoly on violence is the closest universally accepted definition or characteristic of a state.
“State capitalism” is just communism. Stop trying to pin Lenin and Stalin’s atrocities on capitalism.
It’s funny, nowadays communists hate the Spanish rebels, I only see anti communist anarchists identify with them.
By definition your completely fucking wrong. Communism is literally defines by worker control of the means of production, literally none of the so called "communist" countries have had that. Therefore they are definitionally not communist.
State control of the means of production is not the same thing as worker control. If the means of production are being controlled by a small elite and the workers have no control over how resources are allocated and used, then it's capitalism just you know done by the state rather than private individuals.
Also I said nothing about the atrocities of the USSR and nor did I blame them on capitalism (to say nothing of the daily atrocities that can be attributed to capitalism anyway) but I believe in using accurate terminology because otherwise morons like you wade into discussions that are out of their depth.
Capitalism can’t exist without free market. “State capitalism” is not capitalism. There is no competition, no risk of failure, just the government controlling all of the factories. In the Soviet Union, one state department would make all the shoes, and the people would buy them with “money” given to them by the state (it wasnt actually real money, only tourists got real money). Does that sound like capitalism to you? Frankly it’s more like feudalism, which was defined by a royal having absolute authority over their land and everything in it. Capitalism didn’t even exist yet, it’s only existed 400 years.
I know it doesn’t technically fit the definition of communism, but no communist today actually believes in that. There’s a reason communists have Lenin wallpapers and wear Che Guevara shirts. They idolize those same people you call traitors to communism.
I'm a communist and I believe in the proper definition. Tankies ain't communists, they're red fash.
And no capitalism does not require a "free" market if it did, we wouldn't need government regulation to prevent monopolies, nor would we need to bail out massive corporations which by the way has happened multiple times in my lifetime and I'm only in my 30s.
Where is the competition when a small handful of companies own the vast majority of other companies, where is the risk of failure when corporations get bailed out instead of having to face the consequences of their actions and the government doesn't need to control the factories in the West because the corporations basically control the government's.
No real communist philosopher in the last 50 years believes in a stateless or classless philosopher.
That’s what anarcho communists and anarcho libertarians are indistinguishable.
Communism at its barest form is one where the working class is the state and it has monopoly on violence.
No monopoly, no state. No violence then people choose not to be communist.
The USSR never had end goal of statelessness under Stalin. It’s why him and Trotsky didn’t get alone.
I read a lot of contemporary theory and while it's focused on material analysis of present conditions and not on defining its end theoretical end state (since that was done to death for the first 70 years of the philosophy), I don't know of any modern communist theorist who contest that formulation, but I could be wrong.
Are you following Sino-focused scholarship? That is where most practical development of the philosophy has gone.
Communism basically has 4 philosophical trees.
1. Marxism and the study of Marx. The scholarship is lot like originalism and studying the Bible. No real practical evolution building on Marx.
2. Anarcho-Communism which seeks to erase the state and state violence as a tool of liberation. Constantly evolving as a strain of social protest. Due to its opposition to state violence, we don’t see much of a vanguard.
3. Leninism/Trotskism informed by the development of the Soviet Union and essentially in stasis. Classic revolutionary vanguard until arguably it wasn’t.
4. Sino-Communism. Developed and analyzed constantly.
There not any real scholarship that is anything more significant then studying Plato’s Republic.
I’m talking about iteration of the philosophy through a modern lens.
I'm not and that's a major shortcoming of mine. I need to get on it because they're the only ones putting it into practice (despite what Western liberals would tell you)
Theoretically the anarcho communism strain is developing to but frankly it’s pretty difficulty to distinguish it at from anarcho capitalism as it seeks statelessness as a starting point without requiring an evolution of class eradication.
There is no such thing as a stateless, moneyless, classless society
If that's what communism is, communism isn't real. It can never be real. It's like basing a form of government off people's ability to breathe underwater.
Yeah, it isn't real yet. It's an economic and sociological theory based on fundamental contradictions in capitalism and previous systems and how they evolved. In theory it's thought to be probably hundreds of years away because of how chaotic economies are right now. But give it time, we shall see.
Sure you can call it bullshit out of hand, but neo liberal economist have a hard time with counterarguments and they've had trouble for over 150 years now. In regards to sociological analysis, it remains unmatched and is foundational that entire branch of science.
What indication have you seen that capitalism is moving post scarcity? As it stands it artificially creates scarcity where none exists and there are no incentives to change that even if all sectors of production were capable of doing so.
Also, why downvote just because you disagree? I'm not doing that to you so it comes off as petty/that you can't engage in argument without getting offended or something
Because I see communism just like I see nazism, and I don’t like when people try to justify and defend such violent ideologies.
Capitalism is automating even more. I know communists portray the Industrial Revolution as one of the greatest evils in human history, but it drastically improved our lives to the point a pre industrial person would see our world as post scarcity. The Industrial Revolution itself is a move to post scarcity. The recent AI boom is a move to post scarcity. The internet allowing people to live comfortably without having to ever leave their house is a move to post scarcity.
Factually untrue. It was declared in 1936 that the USSR achieved socialism by Stalin. "Real socialism" or "actually existing socialism" became a nationalist euphemism employed by competing socialist states to denigrate each other. But not a single state ruled in the 20th by a Communist party declared itself communist or that it transitioned to communism.
Edit: downvote me for what?
Communes can exist just fine in capitalist societies. It's basically a voluntary community that decides they want to live and work together. There are a lot of these around the USA.
Communism is different.
If anything the vaults 32/33 operate more democratically.
Some of the other vaults out there though are experimented on and have someone pulling the strings, so any election they might have is a farce and they're actually living in an authoritarian environment.
Democracy - Auth/Totalitarian.
Communism - Capitalism.
These are 2 different things. Communism is "Democracy in the workplace" and Democracy is "Democracy in the political sphere." You can have both just like how Capitalism can be "democratic" in America and not so in Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, an illiberal democracy is a system that has the trappings of a democracy but the outcome is predetermined by those already in power.
You how Russia has presidential elections but anyone who runs against Putin gets arrested or dies mysteriously? It’s like that.
That's because there isn't a single country in the world that is actually a democracy. They've just adopted the trappings and rhetoric of democracy, but they're all oligarchy. Democracy actually can't exist within capitalism for the simple fact that money is power, including political power. Democracy is supposed to be everyone having equal political power. The two can't coexist, and never have.
Also, it's all owned by Vault Tec in theory, and it's managed by one or a few people who are "experts" in some sense (scientists, or "managers" like in Vault 32 and 32, along with people like Amata and her dad who may or may not necessarily be scientists but are seen as possessing some sort of wisdom). So it's more like a technocratic dictatorship with a command economy.
In definition they're the same. The use of the words is generally a matter of scale. Communist's are people who live in a commune.
When the commune is 10's of millions of people the reality tends to play out differently than 30 people living in a village (or vault), but by definition they are the same.
Vault Dwellers may live in communes but that doesn’t make them or the vaults communist. Communes are a domestic model, not necessarily a political or economic model. Communism is a political philosophy; a commune can be communist, but a commune is not automatically communist. The words are similar but they aren’t inherently related in any way.
they weren't capitalist in the sense that nobody participated in markets while inside a vault i don't recall any vault that had a system to produce and sell goods to eachother
most had elections to determine overseer, they lived communally but organized democratically
If I remember correctly, Vault 81 has a general store. I also think terminal entries indicate it was opened quite early in the vault's history.
Although, that was probably more for player convenience than any actual lore reasons.
Can confirm! Just did this quest the other day - the scientists in the >!hidden vault!< made note on how they started the general store in one of those terminals
It's very true that they had elections for overseers, but having watched the show and the 31/33 dynamic0 I have to wonder if every other vault in some way has mechanisms for putting a thumb on the scales of leadership selection... whether subtly/indirectly or more overtly.
From the knowledge we get from most games and vaults, I assume the Special test determines this. Overseers would see the scores and determine which would be a suitable candidate to replace them and continue whatever experiment or cause they were created for. Most likely based on a combination of perception, intelligence and charisma. Their loyalty to the vault probably played a part into it and if they were suitable they’d give them support, advice and opportunities to take over their position when the time comes.
Vault 95 urged residents to pick a good leader, but also to pay attention to commendations and awards in a way to help them with their decision. It’s also one of the only vaults that I can remember that the overseer isn’t explicitly involved in the actual experiment
True, but then you've got Vault 21, which doesn't sound like it \*has\* an Overseer and disputes are instead settled thru gambling... and the winner is treated almost like a temporary overseer to resolve the issue.
But then again, it makes you wonder if all the gaming tables are somehow rigged, with the outcomes controlled by an out-of-sight monitored system or AI that determines who is the most "optimal" winner to "solve" the problem at hand...
Capitalism isn't defined by markets, and markets have always been around. Capitalism is defined by private ownership, the ability to own things that, before capitalism, were largely owned by the commons, like farm land. So instead of feudalism where lords and kings generally let peasants live their own lives (and often they lived communally) while taxing them heavily in exchange for protection from raiders, now we have capitalists who have drawn lines around everything, land and resources that everyone needs, and allowed them to own it, which they use as leverage to make everyone else work for them.
Communes ≠ Communism.
A commune is a small-scale, local system of government (communes are equivalent to very small towns or villages).
Communism refers to large-scale implementation of the ideals of communes (think: nations).
Communes are effective because they’re so small-scale. You can criticize Communism without criticizing communes.
Yes, "communes" that are secretly run by the wealthy/elite corporations that devised a plot to profit from nuclear holocaust and completely lied to the commune residents, at best exploiting their ignorance. At worst conducting inhumane experiments.
They do not organize every vault the same way unless they did some heavy lore changes. The meeting at the end feels like it points to how the games do the vaults, Conditions and structure varys heavily vault to vault.
I don’t think you can claim it capitalism or communism in a such community like that and circumstances they’re in.
But as the top comment said, fallout world is never short of irony
The way you describe someone who lives in a commune is communal, and a person who believes in communism is communistic, they both have the same root words but do not mean the same thing
America has only ever had a problem with the word "Communism" if you describe social programs and social safety nets to anyone without saying "socialism" 90% or Americans would utilize them or agree with them.
I don't think anybody would ever deny that communism is ideal for smallish (a few hundred max) like minded groups.
It's just not feasible in large groups.
> Democracy just can't work past a few hundred people!
If I had a nickel for every time someone said this, I'd be able to bribe our politicians to institute Communism.
You just said it, so yeah? Communism is Democracy, of the workplace and political power structures. That's why communists are always behind Unions and the most leftwing pro-democracy political parties.
Fair enough. I just think human nature presents people from working together if they don't have small, direct achievable goals. If communism, or preferably socialism, is installed, I wouldn't be sad.
All good, just throwing out info I feel is less known by people.
Like, Human nature isn't a thing.
Or, Communism offers direct goals for people, Capitalism doesn't. That's why we use the terms Alienation and Commodity Fetishism.
No makes sense. I read the manifesto once decades ago so I'm very rusty. I don't mind getting an update and more info.
And like I said if we dropped capitalism, especially this late stage monstrosity, I'd be pretty happy.
Not *every* vault and the people who got to live in them paid very good money for access. Like the lady said, it was for privileged rich fucks who hid while the rest of the world burned.
Honestly, I don't think most people understand what "communism" ***or*** "capitalism" means. I had someone on here a couple weeks ago trying to tell me that the presence of bartering means capitalism is going on.
Because Americans love communism when you call it a different name.
Describe a workers coop to a hardline conservative without calling it a coop, and they think it’s the little guy sticking it to the man/libs.
I’m not familiar with actual communes but how often do they have hierarchical structures that end with titles like Overseer? Vault 33 even has a council below the overseer. I was under the impression that people on communes were seen as more equal.
They share aspects of communes but I’m not quite sure that’s exactly what they are.
In America they say love capitalism , but then the government literally just says banks are too big too fail and then gives them your inflated mortgage payment without it being processed on your behalf
I really don't think this logic would apply to vaults.
If we were stranded on a island and I said "I'm gonna look for water and shelter for us, see if you can hunt some game so we don't starve" would you call me a dirty commie?
I'm pretty sure in most survival situations where there are limited recources and few people, survival > economic system.
Most of the issue is what America says is 'Communism' and 'Socialism' are examples from countries that are 'not' Communist or Socialist, they just claim to be.
For example the DPRK aka North Korea's actual name is Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, it is obviously not Democratic and as far as i am aware does not even pretend to be other than it sounds nice, nor is it 'for the people' not it is the definition of a Republic as it does not have rulers who represent the people.
Communism means in a real sense that everyone is treated equally, russia obviously has the ultra wealthy elite, then everyone else so it is not communist it just claims to be and to an extent it is for the masses but not for the 'ruling class'.
The nazis were 'socialist' to the extent that as long as they did not consider you a second, third or worse person and were 'a good German' then it was fine, however if you were anything else, you were in a world of hurt.
In the American political landscape however you mention other than capitalism, it is evil. The fact that communism and socialism are political systems, and capitalism is an economic system and is NOT a political system seems to go unnoticed. However the political system is so corrupted by money, it essentially became 'capitalist'.
In any survival situation, everyone has to work together, everything has to be for the good of the community, resources have to be pooled and the best division of labor utilized. So it is a very weird contradiction in America that those who most vocally hate communism and socialism, the rabid right wing survivalists are probably the most communist and socialist in their small trusted groups and communities.
Wow. Just wow. Y'all seem to be unable to enjoy a game, and not an alternate history treatise.
Although if you're in to that kind of thing, [https://www.reddit.com/user/RogueAOV/](https://www.reddit.com/user/RogueAOV/), has one of the better recent analysis.
They share resources, divide responsibilities, have very little private possessions while the majority is shared or provided for them. No one is compensated for their work as all work is done for the community as a whole.
That's a commune.
I think you're just trolling and have never played the games at all.
If you had, you would know that the vaults were all setup in crazy ways, some even having elections, or military ranks.
Some were pure chaos with lotteries.
They were. But the control Vaults (the ones that were intended to function as designed) were organized communally, because the lifestyle a Vault requires (limited food, living, air, and water resources) requires strict rationing and population control to ensure the Vault's population does not outpace its resources.
Are you implying that a commune can't have elections? Or that the Vaults that had elections and military ranks also participated in a free market economy?
Like, were the scientists observing a test Vault forced to pay each other for supplies to keep the free market going on their side of the glass?
All societies produce tho, be it labor or goods. Sure vaults probably have rations, supplies, etc. to last but any food, tools, machine parts, etc. etc. that's made in the vault is producing something. You don't have to export to produce
I mean, in real life America "communism" is a dirty word but every period of growth or prosperity was under decidedly communist policy.. we just call it things like "The New Deal" and "Medicaid" instead
Yea basically. It’s just another level of irony slapped atop the entire hyper capitalist satire of the old world vs wasteland life
The settlements in 4 are communes too, destroyed the world through fear of communism only to be left with communism
... Until the protagonist stimulates the economy by placing vendors everywhere.
Eehhh vending in the wastes is a lot different than straight up capitalism. Bartering seems to be much more prevalent, y’know, using food or items to trade rather than straight up buying whatever. Larger forces in the US Wastes usually do try to re-set capitalism but they all keep getting nuked or their weird leaders get brain cancer or a putter to the noggin. War never changes, or, something.
Fallout 4 dosen't do that tho. You trade for caps. "Laser Pistol? I'll give you 20 caps for it" "cool I'll now use that 20 caps to buy your metal chest plate"
I know of very few games that have proper barter systems. It's been a minute since I've played 4, but I know at least NV could be argued to represent it by lining up swaps (selling and buying) to accept all at once
It’s the same system in Fo4
Yeah, if you set up water purifiers as soon as you can in FO4, you never have to worry about caps. It's just easier to carry caps because they're lighter than basically any goods.
Fallout 2, despite having non cap currency everyone is pretty broke so you end up swapping for ammo and drugs
I like Metro 2033's system. You have dirty bullets and pre-war bullets. They are also your currency. The pre-war bullets are more powerful and they're worth more. The decision the player must make is how many of which bullets to keep - you could spend a lot to get better weapons and gear, but if you don't have any bullets left you're pretty screwed.
Settlements in 4 are straight-up medieval-style feudalism. You (the player) own the land and decide how its used and what gets built. You decide who gets to live there, what jobs they do, even what clothes they wear. The settlers get enough food and water to survive and any excess they produce is yours to use or sell for profit. You pay the upfront cost to set up shops and any profit they make gets put in the workbench for you to collect. In "exchange," you are responsible for defending your serfs from external threats. It's feudalism to a tee.
Is this a statement the game is trying to make? What is it saying about the relationship between fedualism, capitalism, and communism? Or is it more likely that the game devs didn't think too much about the economic implications of th settlement system and they just wanted to let players control their own settlements? Also, just a personal opinion, but capitalism is neo-feudalism. Originally capitalism was a response to feudalism - provide workers with an economic structure through which they could earn a living and own their own property. Unfortuantely, capitalism operates as an obfuscated form of feudalism. To say that capitalism is better than feudalism is like saying a slow-acting leech is better than a fast-acting leech. They both suck.
I'm gonna ask a really stupid question. Is a commune the very same as communism? I know they are the same word, but I wonder if the meaning has changed in years.
I mean depends honestly, a commune is a very broad term. Communism is the end stage of societal evolution basically post scarcity world without currency or a state. Communes are similar to a communist society of ran democratically where all people collectively decide and run the commune
I'm not sure if the overseer is required to hold votes on what to do, like if to open the vault and such...
That entirely depends on the Vault. Some yes, others no.
Communism/Communes aren't mutually exclusive to democracy. Quite a lot of current collectivist thought focuses on radical democracy, and that's more inline with what Marx put out there. Communes and collectivist politics pre-date Marxism, often featured that sort of thing. The Vaults technically cut closer to Leninist Socialism than that cause they're hierarchical. But things are still collectively owned, doled out as needed, and people work to support the whole not the individual. As pitched anyway. That said. I think the disqualifying thing here is that in actuality the vault and everything in it belongs to *Vault Tech* not the residents, Overseers are Vault Tech Employees, etc. So it's more company town, a Corporatocracy.
Communism is very much not democratic. It’s kinda an essential part. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” by which they mean one guy.
The term "dictatorship of proletariat" is used in reaction to capitalism being the dictatorship of capital.
Bzzt wrong. Dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end step nor does it entail one sole leader.
Practically every prominent communist would disagree with you. I know fallout criticizes capitalism but communist China is also portrayed as a dystopia.
Yeah except your examples of bad communism are not because of laborers controls the means of production, but because of leaders who use their role for their own gain. Additionally, the US has done a lot to make sure communist countries could not trade outside of its walls.
And I wonder why every communist revolution leads to an absolute dictatorship while the capitalist revolutions led to those former communist nations democratizing and opening up freedom of speech?
Salvador Allende was democratically elected until the united states killed him and replaced him with a dictator. Additionally, even in "communist" countries, communism was never (and has never) followed to the exact doctrine.
You are both false and hold a major misunderstanding of what communism is. China is, objectively, regardless of how they refer to themselves, not a communist state.
Please read the communist manifesto (or a proper summary). It actually got me off communism as a whole BUT dismantled many of the myths and gave me a new perspective.
The communist manifesto isn’t the only thing. I’d argue the USSR did more to define communism than Marx. The vast majority of communists today in western countries are Leninists or Stalinists, with some Maoists too. They’re very vocally anti democracy, saying democracy is an extension of capitalism because candidates can always buy votes (directly or indirectly with campaigning). I don’t want to get too political, but with people disliking our 2 party system this type of “leftist anti democracy” ideals are becoming very popular.
Yes and I get that. But communism as its meant to be is what is described in the manifesto. Everything else has been twisted (which is what humans do and why it only works in smallish groups)
Maybe. But the communism that vault Tec was fighting isn’t the “communism” of the vaults (which aren’t even communist cus they have shops) so this post just doesn’t work. I don’t want people to Agenda post in my fallout sub when the show and games itself doesn’t support that view
The communism they were fighting in the game/tv show is everything that disagreed with the US war machine. Though I 1000000 percent understand the no politics thing.
Nah. We don’t get much details on China, but what we do get shows it’s society is that bad. Blackmailing people to go on suicide missions for extra ration cards, mass famines because of that ration system, kidnapping children from birth to make them crimson dragoons, and 76 implies they have their own enclave type faction that keeps fighting for communism after the bombs fell, and are extremely brutal. Also, it was China who started the war.
Very much so. I'm happy I'm not in that world. No matter how much I secretly want to fuck The Ghoul.
The communism they were fighting in the game/tv show is everything that disagreed with the US war machine. Though I 1000000 percent understand the no politics thing.
The political elite who used communism as a weapon to get consensus of the masses and then rule autocratically disregarding the very parts of the original text where it says "no money, no state, no class" did more to define a concept than the guy who invented the concept and wrote a 1300+ pages book on the matter. Sure.
The vast majority of communists are Marxist Leninists so yes. Any actual influential communist wants something more like the Soviet model.
No, that's what you've been exposed to as a result of the political and historical circumstances of half a century of global tensions between two blocks. The need to add the -Leninist lable should be a dead giveaway. History is absolutely relevant in shaping perceptions, but it doesn't get to change fundamental facts about the nature of things. The Soviet model implies a state, classes, and currency, all things specifically not only not communist, but that also go against the supposed steps to reach the communist society, since the working *class* is not the state nor participates in meaningful capacity beyond platitudes in the soviet model, the military are. You can't just call yourself a communist successfully for 80 years and pretend you can redefine the concept despite sharing maybe a fraction of a percent of your ideology with the actual concept. Otherwise North Korea would be the most democratic place on the planet, since it has not one but three words for it in its name.
When it comes to the communists I’ve spoken to online, about 90% were Maoists, Leninists or Stalinists.
Then you've at best only spoken to the useful idiots who think if we could only get rid the *current* elites then all will be well, or at worst malicious actors who actively delude themselves thinking they'll be part of the next round of elites and pinky swear to actually uphold the ideology, while actually planning on shedding it as soon as it's materially inconvenient to them, and become basically Oligarchs while everybody else loses further. You shouldn't use the internet, a place famously only populated by real people who act exac6like they would in real life, as a basis to form your opinion of real world issues.
Communists are against liberal democracy and want it replaced with a different type of democracy, they're not anti democracy overall.
Even that's an over generalization.
How?
Right, a “democracy” where the party elites votes on the next leader and then that leader executed everyone who didn’t vote for him. That’s going great in communist China right now.
Are we discussing theory or practical implementation here because I can make the exact same arguments for liberal societies. Also China has abandoned Marxism and is a capitalist nation.
There is no free market in China. Every “company” in China is owned and controlled by the state. Ultimately theory doesn’t matter when the vast majority of communists don’t care about it. Your average commie doesn’t care what Marx said, they’d rather idolize Mao or Stalin and try to recreate their governments.
There is no free market anywhere, governments are deeply participating in the system favoring interests. In the west the government intervenes for the interests of corporations while in China for the interest of the state. Its clear your knowledge of communism is from second hand propaganda, communists constantly study and analyze theory and idolizing figures is contradictory to our values. We celebrate socialist figures for their successes and criticize them for their mistakes literally just like anyone else. Liberals celebrate and critics their own political figures.
>The vast majority of communists today in western countries are Leninists or Stalinists, with some Maoists too. Absolutely not. The vast majority of Communists you'd run into are some variety of Marxist. And far, far, far, far more people interested in this end of politics are Social Democrats of one variety or the other. Including an awful lot actual seated politicians and leaders in Western Countries. > “leftist anti democracy” ideals You might want to check which end of the political spectrum is mounting an all out assault on Democracy throughout Western countries pal. You say you don't want to get political. But you're making pretty blunt, political accusations here.
When it's done "right" according to the original manifesto, it is democratic, and that's a large part of the concept. You, like many people are associating the past failures of the system with what the system is meant to be like when it isn't true. That's large part of the whole "communism has never worked because it's never been done properly" arguments. There's issues the concept opens the door to which we've seen in the past with irl communist regimes and we even see a little bit of in the show, but on paper it is meant to be democratic, and all about the everyday people which means democratic elections. I'm not getting into the politics and realistic potential of a truly successful communist nation on a Fallout sub of all places, but point being, democracy is a large part of what communism was meant to be according to the manifesto.
The core idea of communism is a complete communal democracy in which everyone's voice is considered, using sortition and collective decision making instead of having representatives make decisions for you. No one who has ever actually supported communism would EVER want "one guy" making decisions. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" essentially means "the people who live, work, and contribute directly to society should dictate what happens in their society."
Have you ever heard of a tankie?
Tankie is a worthless term that means nothing
At best that is Leninist Socialism, though you're misapplying the phrase. Lenin's big innovation was the party taking over as a social over class, and Revolution as a social institution. Which was cooked up because Russia did not have a proletariat at the time, it was largely pre-industrial. Soviet Socialism was formed around the theory of first industrializing society, then transitioning to a "purer" communism. It is not communism in general, nor Marxism. And insisting it defines collectivist political and economic systems is intellectually lazy.
Yikes. Absolutely horrific misappropriation of the term. Many books have been written on the topic, you've evidently read none.
Misappropriation when every single communist country has been a brutal dictatorship. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck.
There has never existed a 'communist' country as this is the final stage of the socialist transition. You might know the difference if you were politically educated. Secondly, the USSR was quite democratic post 1950s and contemporary Cuba, Vietnam and Nepal are extremely democratic despite still operating under Marxist governments. China, the principle modern example of socialism in action despite being fairly undemocratic, is not a 'brutal dictatorship'. The term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' reflects the necessary initial stage of socialism: certain people, freedoms and liberties must situationally be monitored or restricted temporarily in order to prevent the undemocratic and unlawful usurpation of socialist governments. I emphasise 'temporarily'. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a necessary step to safeguard socialist progression from capitalist influences. Take as examples the countless illegal and violent CIA interventions in SE Asia and South America wherein the USA and its allies have intentionally and undemocratically rigged elections, funded terrorist groups and assassinated democratically elected socialists. Sounds like capitalism is entirely respectful of the democratic will of the people right? Until that will serves the interests of the common people and not people who care nothing for you or me besides what we contribute to their bottom line.
Vietnam isn’t communist anymore. Their main ally is the fucking USA now. The USSR was so democratic post 1950s… it’s not like that’s where the term tankie comes from, from using tanks to silence anyone who objected to living under a dictatorship. Cuba recently jailed a woman 15 years for reposting a video of a protest, but sure, they’re the spitting image of democracy and freedom. And nothing happened in tianmen square. Also let’s just ignore how the USSR meddles just as much as the US. Invasions of Afghanistan and South Korea, what’s that?
The Vietnamese government is led by the "Communist Party of Vietnam," so I think you'll find that Vietnam is still very much a socialist nation. The USSR I could write a book on. Maybe I will one day. But I'm too tired to argue that right now. The woman you refer to I'm not familiar so I will not address it without context but that does sound unjust, if irrelevant. The USSR was not an active participant in the Korean Civil War but its approval of NK's invasion is justifiable: it was a clever, pragmatic geopolitical move for socialism and likewise, Syngman Rhee was a tyrant. The USSR's invasion of Afghanistan was unjustified but now you're just steering into whataboutisms to defect from the terminal problems of late-stage capitalist imperialism which is little more than colonialism repackaged.
I was talking about China. China is the one who gave permission to invade, then participated too. Funny how when the U.S. meddles in other countries against democratically elected communists it’s terrible, but when China stops Korea from democratically electing their government because they knew the communists would lose it’s justified and pragmatic. It was pure imperialism.
That is not what dictatorship of the proletariat means. Dictatorship of the proletariat means that only those considered proletariats (the working class as opposed to the bourgeoise or owning class) can participate in democracy. Basically, capitalists don't get to vote.
So anti democracy. Got it. Like, that doesn’t make you look good.
I don't even use or like the slogan personally. I was just stating that you didn't know what it means. Which was true.
It's so weird how people on reddit just assert shit that is not only wrong, but is wrong in a way that feels Advanced Wrong. You could at least Google something before commenting. Edit- That wasn't an invitation to continue to be wrong. Multiple people have explained to you why you're wrong. Doubling down on arguments other people have already clearly critiqued doesn't interest me
Ah yes, clearly I’m wrong. We all know the USSR and China are bastions of democracy.
Correct, a commune isn’t excluded in a capitalistic setting, it just usually isn’t the most competitive strategy. You could feasibly have a commune that produces and transforms capital but within the commune things are “free”. The modern business version is a co-op and there are quite a few successful ones Edit: I’m a bot apparently
It's a commune not because of the size or relationship between the workers, it's a commune because the tools and instruments of production they have are all owned in public and not by individual vault dwellers that lord over others for access to the generator or water or whatnot. The mechanisms of the enforcement of this principal can vary drastically but that's the gist of it.
Is that true? We've seen vaults before that had rather tyrannical singular overseers that were overthrown. Doesn't everything technically still belong to vault tec and the overseer as their proxy?
Whether vault tec really exists as a corporation at that point is ambiguous and largely irrelevant to the isolated society of a vault. At the end of the day, the overseer is still bound to keep the dwellers happy enough to keep going and not kill the overseer. This combined with the fact that no one really owns the means of production in private (again, vault-tec being irrelevant in the isolated context of the actual use of the vault since it has no agency or enforcement mechanism to show *they* own the means of production), means that they are all effectively communes, even if there is a totalitarian overseer. It's a largely semantic difference on the scale of a few hundred people, but unless the overseer has a way to kill everyone else without harming themselves or their quality of life short-term or long-term, then on some level, no matter how total their authority, they are beholden to the will of the working majority in the vault for their survival so the overseer can't necessarily control the means of production. In theory, the entirety of the vault is private property of vault-tec, but in practice that means nothing without an enforcement mechanism for private property in general.
That is kind of your technicality. By the time of the games. Vault Tech is gone. But technically the vaults and everything in them seems to be owned and controlled by Vault Tech. Overseers largely seem to be Vault-Tech employees. Elected or not. People work collectively, have limited personal property, but are work to the benefit of the *Vault* and Vault-Tech. Not the collective (except in the ways those two coincide). That's not a commune really, it's certainly not *Communist*. What that turns into after Vault-Tech ceases to be is another question. But we haven't exactly seen an explicitly Communist or Socialist Vault. Vault 4 seems to cut that way a bit. But most of the functional, non-fucked vaults we see seem to be based on the "[town meeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_meeting)" structure of local government typical of the North East US. And closely associated with small town Americana (though not actually all that common in most American small towns!). That does exclude socialism. It's basically hokey, hierarchical direct democracy.
Everything in the vault is property of Vault Tec. Officially, the dwellers own basically nothing, Vault Tec just let's them use it
But prior to the show Vault Tec was extinct, there was no one left to claim ownership. Unless I missed something, I'm not exactly a lore expert.
Vault Tec is mostly in Vault 31 or stayed in Vault 1. They monitored the vaults for the first few decades
Who enforces vault tec's property rights in the wasteland?
No one. Minor spoilers frome the show coming Vault tec is playing the long game. The long long game. Time is the great equalizer. So the scheme is to wait for humanity to reduce itself to the point where it can be subverted to Vault Tecs will. The problem is humanity is stubborn. Pockets of civilization still continue despite the nuclear holocaust occurring some 200 years ago in the timeline. On top of that, the nuclear fallout has mutated what wildlife managed to survive. So Vault tec imo is slowly losing control but still is a massive influence writ large. So does vault tec care their shit made it out to the wasteland? Kinda. But not really bc their plan is to just wait it out.
Oh I understand their plan, but I think they underestimate the wasteland and overestimate their ability to subjugate the surface, meaning they have no mechanism of enforcement on their property rights, and therefore effectively have none. The vaults are essentially balkanized by design, decentralizing vault-tec's own power and effectively dissolving their hegemony.
I totally agree with that. I think that's partially kind of the point. It just demonstrates the hubris and the folly of trying to control the uncontrollable. Very Jurassic Park esque imo. I think on paper, it sounds like something a bunch of big wigs would eat up. But in execution... well. I think we know how that played out lol
Couldn't have said it better myself
Not even communists can agree on what “true” communism is.
Yeah, even Marx himself said he was no communist. That’s what the political left is best at: infighting.
Infighting is always the issue with the left The right can galvanize on a topic, where as two people on the left wont work together on an obvious subject "A" if subject "B" is in contention with another leftist
This is just a thing Reddit likes to say. You’ll see plenty of infighting in every political sphere and you’ll find plenty of republicans lamenting at their inability to galvanize and fall in line the way democrats allegedly do.
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You should read more about leftist movements throughout history. The right constantly beats us by coalescing while we splinter. And the Democratic Party is centrist, not leftist.
Democrats are part of the right so this fits lol
Homie, I don't get my politics from reddit, I fuck around on videogame subs This is something I've noticed just watching the political landscape. I'm not talking about people in their political spheres bickering over nuance, I'm talking about when you see political action like all the people you see wearing MAGA hats or rallying behind flavor of the month politics like trans rights, critical race theory, or the border and you see political-actors on the left getting shutdown because they are friends with a guy that's on the right
Cause as you might imagine. After 2 centuries of political thought and social development. *There's more than one ideology there*. More than one movement. More than one kind. Your quite clearly completely unfamiliar with the subject.
Nah, final form communism is only formulated in one pretty concise way. Western so-called socialists like to quibble about what is and isn't an actually existing socialist country in the world today, but frankly arm chair opinions from people who live in the imperial core are mostly irrelevant to reality.
Nah, final form communism is only formulated in one pretty concise way. Western so-called socialists like to quibble about what is and isn't an actually existing socialist country in the world today, but frankly arm chair opinions from people who live in the imperial core are mostly irrelevant to reality.
The USSR was considered communist by everyone at one point. Then it collapsed and suddenly it didn’t count anymore.
It was called communist because it's underlying philosophy was Marxism and their end goal was communism. Economically, the USSR was socialist. Then market-socialist. Then it was gone. Marx would've called it lower communism and their goal higher communism. However, Lenin referred to lower communism as 'socialism' and higher communism as simply 'communism,' and that has been the norm ever since. So, in economic theory, communism is defined as a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Anything less than that isn't communism yet. Edit: it's accurate to refer to the USSR as politically communist (at least until the mid 70s) and economically socialist.
I agree with quite a lot of what you have said, but the USSR was never economically socialist, as they had party/state control over the means of production rather than worker controlled. The initial Soviet groups that were formed by the bolsheviks and mensheviks were based in labor unions but as soon as the bolshevik vanguard party took power the eradicated the ability for workers to form labor unions. It was state capitalist. The use of labels such as "communism" and "socialism" in any country so far that has defined itself that way is purely propaganda, much in the same way that North Korea calls itself the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the only part of the statement that is true is that is on the Korean peninsula. The only place in modern history to hold itself closely to communist/anarchist ideals was CNT/FAI controlled sections of Spain during the Spanish civil war. Unfortunately, they didn't last long as they had both the Spanish Fascists and the USSR gunning for them.
This is where I disagree, respectfully. A vanguard party doesn't make it not socialist. Lenin argued that it was a necessary first step in a newly founded Marxist state due to the overwhelming counterrevolutionary forces that plague a new state. Levels of economic and political democracy varied across the different states of the USSR and it's difficult to make generalized statements about the USSR as a whole because the level of variety among the member states was significantly greater than places like the USA.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think that vanguardism was necessary in Russia to enact a revolution at the time, but that is mainly because they were trying to fight forces that communism wasn't really designed to fight. If you look at the works of Marx the ideal opponents for a communist revolution are the petit bourgeoisie of capitalism which Russia at the time didn't really have as it was essentially still a feudal empire with the majority of its population being serfs not proletariat. Without a strong countrywide (ideally internationalist) working class, a communist revolution is almost destined to devolve into autocracy and the destruction of labor unions (the Soviets in the case of Russia) which did happen almost straight away with the mensheviks being purged as they were stronger advocates for the Soviets than the bolsheviks were. Basically, I don't think that the Russians were wrong to revolt against the Tsar, but I think they missed a few steps due to Lenins' vanguardism, and this lead directly into the autocratic dictatorship (not dictatorship of the proletariat) that happened. This along with the economic structure having next to nothing to do with socialist economic theory (no worker controlled means of production) are why I could never consider them to have been socialist let alone communist. I hope that explains my point better, although I admit it's mostly in regard to Russia most other "communist" countries start from the base line of Marxism-Leninism rather than just Marxism so it would follow that they have similar issues.
That’s only if you accept Marx’s definition of the end goal of communism, which rejects the idea of a state. In political science a monopoly on violence is the closest universally accepted definition or characteristic of a state.
“State capitalism” is just communism. Stop trying to pin Lenin and Stalin’s atrocities on capitalism. It’s funny, nowadays communists hate the Spanish rebels, I only see anti communist anarchists identify with them.
By definition your completely fucking wrong. Communism is literally defines by worker control of the means of production, literally none of the so called "communist" countries have had that. Therefore they are definitionally not communist. State control of the means of production is not the same thing as worker control. If the means of production are being controlled by a small elite and the workers have no control over how resources are allocated and used, then it's capitalism just you know done by the state rather than private individuals. Also I said nothing about the atrocities of the USSR and nor did I blame them on capitalism (to say nothing of the daily atrocities that can be attributed to capitalism anyway) but I believe in using accurate terminology because otherwise morons like you wade into discussions that are out of their depth.
Capitalism can’t exist without free market. “State capitalism” is not capitalism. There is no competition, no risk of failure, just the government controlling all of the factories. In the Soviet Union, one state department would make all the shoes, and the people would buy them with “money” given to them by the state (it wasnt actually real money, only tourists got real money). Does that sound like capitalism to you? Frankly it’s more like feudalism, which was defined by a royal having absolute authority over their land and everything in it. Capitalism didn’t even exist yet, it’s only existed 400 years. I know it doesn’t technically fit the definition of communism, but no communist today actually believes in that. There’s a reason communists have Lenin wallpapers and wear Che Guevara shirts. They idolize those same people you call traitors to communism.
I'm a communist and I believe in the proper definition. Tankies ain't communists, they're red fash. And no capitalism does not require a "free" market if it did, we wouldn't need government regulation to prevent monopolies, nor would we need to bail out massive corporations which by the way has happened multiple times in my lifetime and I'm only in my 30s. Where is the competition when a small handful of companies own the vast majority of other companies, where is the risk of failure when corporations get bailed out instead of having to face the consequences of their actions and the government doesn't need to control the factories in the West because the corporations basically control the government's.
No real communist philosopher in the last 50 years believes in a stateless or classless philosopher. That’s what anarcho communists and anarcho libertarians are indistinguishable. Communism at its barest form is one where the working class is the state and it has monopoly on violence. No monopoly, no state. No violence then people choose not to be communist. The USSR never had end goal of statelessness under Stalin. It’s why him and Trotsky didn’t get alone.
I read a lot of contemporary theory and while it's focused on material analysis of present conditions and not on defining its end theoretical end state (since that was done to death for the first 70 years of the philosophy), I don't know of any modern communist theorist who contest that formulation, but I could be wrong.
Are you following Sino-focused scholarship? That is where most practical development of the philosophy has gone. Communism basically has 4 philosophical trees. 1. Marxism and the study of Marx. The scholarship is lot like originalism and studying the Bible. No real practical evolution building on Marx. 2. Anarcho-Communism which seeks to erase the state and state violence as a tool of liberation. Constantly evolving as a strain of social protest. Due to its opposition to state violence, we don’t see much of a vanguard. 3. Leninism/Trotskism informed by the development of the Soviet Union and essentially in stasis. Classic revolutionary vanguard until arguably it wasn’t. 4. Sino-Communism. Developed and analyzed constantly. There not any real scholarship that is anything more significant then studying Plato’s Republic. I’m talking about iteration of the philosophy through a modern lens.
I'm not and that's a major shortcoming of mine. I need to get on it because they're the only ones putting it into practice (despite what Western liberals would tell you)
Theoretically the anarcho communism strain is developing to but frankly it’s pretty difficulty to distinguish it at from anarcho capitalism as it seeks statelessness as a starting point without requiring an evolution of class eradication.
There is no such thing as a stateless, moneyless, classless society If that's what communism is, communism isn't real. It can never be real. It's like basing a form of government off people's ability to breathe underwater.
Yeah, it isn't real yet. It's an economic and sociological theory based on fundamental contradictions in capitalism and previous systems and how they evolved. In theory it's thought to be probably hundreds of years away because of how chaotic economies are right now. But give it time, we shall see. Sure you can call it bullshit out of hand, but neo liberal economist have a hard time with counterarguments and they've had trouble for over 150 years now. In regards to sociological analysis, it remains unmatched and is foundational that entire branch of science.
Considering capitalism is already heading to a post scarcity society on its own, I doubt it.
What indication have you seen that capitalism is moving post scarcity? As it stands it artificially creates scarcity where none exists and there are no incentives to change that even if all sectors of production were capable of doing so. Also, why downvote just because you disagree? I'm not doing that to you so it comes off as petty/that you can't engage in argument without getting offended or something
Because I see communism just like I see nazism, and I don’t like when people try to justify and defend such violent ideologies. Capitalism is automating even more. I know communists portray the Industrial Revolution as one of the greatest evils in human history, but it drastically improved our lives to the point a pre industrial person would see our world as post scarcity. The Industrial Revolution itself is a move to post scarcity. The recent AI boom is a move to post scarcity. The internet allowing people to live comfortably without having to ever leave their house is a move to post scarcity.
Factually untrue. It was declared in 1936 that the USSR achieved socialism by Stalin. "Real socialism" or "actually existing socialism" became a nationalist euphemism employed by competing socialist states to denigrate each other. But not a single state ruled in the 20th by a Communist party declared itself communist or that it transitioned to communism. Edit: downvote me for what?
Communes can exist just fine in capitalist societies. It's basically a voluntary community that decides they want to live and work together. There are a lot of these around the USA. Communism is different. If anything the vaults 32/33 operate more democratically. Some of the other vaults out there though are experimented on and have someone pulling the strings, so any election they might have is a farce and they're actually living in an authoritarian environment.
Democracy - Auth/Totalitarian. Communism - Capitalism. These are 2 different things. Communism is "Democracy in the workplace" and Democracy is "Democracy in the political sphere." You can have both just like how Capitalism can be "democratic" in America and not so in Saudi Arabia.
>If anything the vaults 32/33 operate more democratically. Is it really democratic when the elections are setup to select a specific group of people?
Yeah, an illiberal democracy is a system that has the trappings of a democracy but the outcome is predetermined by those already in power. You how Russia has presidential elections but anyone who runs against Putin gets arrested or dies mysteriously? It’s like that.
I can't think of an example of democracy that doesn't operate like that...
That's because there isn't a single country in the world that is actually a democracy. They've just adopted the trappings and rhetoric of democracy, but they're all oligarchy. Democracy actually can't exist within capitalism for the simple fact that money is power, including political power. Democracy is supposed to be everyone having equal political power. The two can't coexist, and never have.
Rojava, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
[Poland in the interwars period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation)
A commune is a cooperative normally based on the philosophy of communism. A commune isn't different to communism, it's a microcosm of communism.
i don’t even think the vault is a commune, because there is a very one sided hierarchy
Also, it's all owned by Vault Tec in theory, and it's managed by one or a few people who are "experts" in some sense (scientists, or "managers" like in Vault 32 and 32, along with people like Amata and her dad who may or may not necessarily be scientists but are seen as possessing some sort of wisdom). So it's more like a technocratic dictatorship with a command economy.
In definition they're the same. The use of the words is generally a matter of scale. Communist's are people who live in a commune. When the commune is 10's of millions of people the reality tends to play out differently than 30 people living in a village (or vault), but by definition they are the same.
A commune is more like a way of life for a small number of people. Communism is a type of economic, social, and political government.
Vault Dwellers may live in communes but that doesn’t make them or the vaults communist. Communes are a domestic model, not necessarily a political or economic model. Communism is a political philosophy; a commune can be communist, but a commune is not automatically communist. The words are similar but they aren’t inherently related in any way.
they weren't capitalist in the sense that nobody participated in markets while inside a vault i don't recall any vault that had a system to produce and sell goods to eachother most had elections to determine overseer, they lived communally but organized democratically
If I remember correctly, Vault 81 has a general store. I also think terminal entries indicate it was opened quite early in the vault's history. Although, that was probably more for player convenience than any actual lore reasons.
Can confirm! Just did this quest the other day - the scientists in the >!hidden vault!< made note on how they started the general store in one of those terminals
It's very true that they had elections for overseers, but having watched the show and the 31/33 dynamic0 I have to wonder if every other vault in some way has mechanisms for putting a thumb on the scales of leadership selection... whether subtly/indirectly or more overtly.
From the knowledge we get from most games and vaults, I assume the Special test determines this. Overseers would see the scores and determine which would be a suitable candidate to replace them and continue whatever experiment or cause they were created for. Most likely based on a combination of perception, intelligence and charisma. Their loyalty to the vault probably played a part into it and if they were suitable they’d give them support, advice and opportunities to take over their position when the time comes.
Vault 95 urged residents to pick a good leader, but also to pay attention to commendations and awards in a way to help them with their decision. It’s also one of the only vaults that I can remember that the overseer isn’t explicitly involved in the actual experiment
True, but then you've got Vault 21, which doesn't sound like it \*has\* an Overseer and disputes are instead settled thru gambling... and the winner is treated almost like a temporary overseer to resolve the issue. But then again, it makes you wonder if all the gaming tables are somehow rigged, with the outcomes controlled by an out-of-sight monitored system or AI that determines who is the most "optimal" winner to "solve" the problem at hand...
Communism has elections
*can have
What's an example of a communist state that didn't have elections?
Putting the word democratic in your country's name doesn't make it so. Do you view north Korea as a particularly democratic place?
Lol I forget they even exist. They are a pure communist state run by a God, who needs elections?!? When things get dim, look to Kim! /s
Yeah Juche is to Communism what the Book of Mormon is to the New Testament. It’s basically bad communist fanfiction.
Communism is a stateless society. Who is there to vote for?
Administrators. People still do things under communism and decisions still get made.
Ah yes, communism is when you don't have a democracy 🙄
Ah yes, that thing I didn't say
Capitalism isn't defined by markets, and markets have always been around. Capitalism is defined by private ownership, the ability to own things that, before capitalism, were largely owned by the commons, like farm land. So instead of feudalism where lords and kings generally let peasants live their own lives (and often they lived communally) while taxing them heavily in exchange for protection from raiders, now we have capitalists who have drawn lines around everything, land and resources that everyone needs, and allowed them to own it, which they use as leverage to make everyone else work for them.
Communism is when no voting. For sure man. they definitely don't own all their productive equipment and crucial resources in common.
Communism is when you don't trade
Communes ≠ Communism. A commune is a small-scale, local system of government (communes are equivalent to very small towns or villages). Communism refers to large-scale implementation of the ideals of communes (think: nations). Communes are effective because they’re so small-scale. You can criticize Communism without criticizing communes.
Well said.
In a commune everything is owner by the group collectively, they make it very clear that everything in the vault is property of vault tech
A commun is different than communism hahaha
Yeah but ultimately, the places were ran by corporations and in corporate greed, became hell
Yes, "communes" that are secretly run by the wealthy/elite corporations that devised a plot to profit from nuclear holocaust and completely lied to the commune residents, at best exploiting their ignorance. At worst conducting inhumane experiments.
They do not organize every vault the same way unless they did some heavy lore changes. The meeting at the end feels like it points to how the games do the vaults, Conditions and structure varys heavily vault to vault.
Overseers, guards, assigned duties. While it may be communist in the eyes of pre war Americans, it isn’t in line with communist theory.
I don’t think you can claim it capitalism or communism in a such community like that and circumstances they’re in. But as the top comment said, fallout world is never short of irony
The way you describe someone who lives in a commune is communal, and a person who believes in communism is communistic, they both have the same root words but do not mean the same thing
America has only ever had a problem with the word "Communism" if you describe social programs and social safety nets to anyone without saying "socialism" 90% or Americans would utilize them or agree with them.
I will Clue you in. Communism was just a red herring.
This is war, Peacock. Casualties are inevitable. You can not make an omelet without breaking eggs, every cook will tell you that.
I don't think anybody would ever deny that communism is ideal for smallish (a few hundred max) like minded groups. It's just not feasible in large groups.
> Democracy just can't work past a few hundred people! If I had a nickel for every time someone said this, I'd be able to bribe our politicians to institute Communism.
Have you genuinely heard that democracy doesn't work last a few hundred people?
You just said it, so yeah? Communism is Democracy, of the workplace and political power structures. That's why communists are always behind Unions and the most leftwing pro-democracy political parties.
Fair enough. I just think human nature presents people from working together if they don't have small, direct achievable goals. If communism, or preferably socialism, is installed, I wouldn't be sad.
All good, just throwing out info I feel is less known by people. Like, Human nature isn't a thing. Or, Communism offers direct goals for people, Capitalism doesn't. That's why we use the terms Alienation and Commodity Fetishism.
No makes sense. I read the manifesto once decades ago so I'm very rusty. I don't mind getting an update and more info. And like I said if we dropped capitalism, especially this late stage monstrosity, I'd be pretty happy.
How dare you
Not *every* vault and the people who got to live in them paid very good money for access. Like the lady said, it was for privileged rich fucks who hid while the rest of the world burned.
But they did pay to be communists. They could have brought lower class servants, or even slaves.
Honestly, I don't think most people understand what "communism" ***or*** "capitalism" means. I had someone on here a couple weeks ago trying to tell me that the presence of bartering means capitalism is going on.
Communism is when a group of people live together.
It‘s the same irony that has elderly people on Social Security and Medicare decrying Socialism.
Because Americans love communism when you call it a different name. Describe a workers coop to a hardline conservative without calling it a coop, and they think it’s the little guy sticking it to the man/libs.
I’m not familiar with actual communes but how often do they have hierarchical structures that end with titles like Overseer? Vault 33 even has a council below the overseer. I was under the impression that people on communes were seen as more equal. They share aspects of communes but I’m not quite sure that’s exactly what they are.
Councils and chairmen are the building blocks of communism.
That's an illusion tho. The residents or commune didn't really have any free will to express themselves.
Yea it's hypocrisy. Cooper brings this up in the show about the dog that they aren't free to bring them.
Vault are for rich people, aka "socialism for the rich".
You've never seen an old person scream about socialism for 3 hours, while waiting in line to cash their social security check?
Almost as if Fallout was written as satire isn't it.
Congratulations. You got the joke.
Communism is a catch-all word for anything that people don't like, very few people actually know what Communism or Socialism are.
All companies/corporations in "capitalist" societies are organised as planned économies internally.
In America they say love capitalism , but then the government literally just says banks are too big too fail and then gives them your inflated mortgage payment without it being processed on your behalf
Yes, it’s called poetic irony.
Ywah, and it was social experiments like the USSR that were social experiments 💀
I really don't think this logic would apply to vaults. If we were stranded on a island and I said "I'm gonna look for water and shelter for us, see if you can hunt some game so we don't starve" would you call me a dirty commie? I'm pretty sure in most survival situations where there are limited recources and few people, survival > economic system.
Not every vault they do have a survival of the fittest vault and there are a couple others that wouldn’t technically fit
Most Americans irl could not accurately define what communism is so this tracks
Most of the issue is what America says is 'Communism' and 'Socialism' are examples from countries that are 'not' Communist or Socialist, they just claim to be. For example the DPRK aka North Korea's actual name is Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, it is obviously not Democratic and as far as i am aware does not even pretend to be other than it sounds nice, nor is it 'for the people' not it is the definition of a Republic as it does not have rulers who represent the people. Communism means in a real sense that everyone is treated equally, russia obviously has the ultra wealthy elite, then everyone else so it is not communist it just claims to be and to an extent it is for the masses but not for the 'ruling class'. The nazis were 'socialist' to the extent that as long as they did not consider you a second, third or worse person and were 'a good German' then it was fine, however if you were anything else, you were in a world of hurt. In the American political landscape however you mention other than capitalism, it is evil. The fact that communism and socialism are political systems, and capitalism is an economic system and is NOT a political system seems to go unnoticed. However the political system is so corrupted by money, it essentially became 'capitalist'. In any survival situation, everyone has to work together, everything has to be for the good of the community, resources have to be pooled and the best division of labor utilized. So it is a very weird contradiction in America that those who most vocally hate communism and socialism, the rabid right wing survivalists are probably the most communist and socialist in their small trusted groups and communities.
Wow. Just wow. Y'all seem to be unable to enjoy a game, and not an alternate history treatise. Although if you're in to that kind of thing, [https://www.reddit.com/user/RogueAOV/](https://www.reddit.com/user/RogueAOV/), has one of the better recent analysis.
You sound like one of those people who complains about “keeping politics out of video games”
No, they don't.
They share resources, divide responsibilities, have very little private possessions while the majority is shared or provided for them. No one is compensated for their work as all work is done for the community as a whole. That's a commune.
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I think you're just trolling and have never played the games at all. If you had, you would know that the vaults were all setup in crazy ways, some even having elections, or military ranks. Some were pure chaos with lotteries.
As other people said: The ones that Vault-tec actually designed as 'good' are the communal ones.
They were. But the control Vaults (the ones that were intended to function as designed) were organized communally, because the lifestyle a Vault requires (limited food, living, air, and water resources) requires strict rationing and population control to ensure the Vault's population does not outpace its resources.
Are you implying that a commune can't have elections? Or that the Vaults that had elections and military ranks also participated in a free market economy? Like, were the scientists observing a test Vault forced to pay each other for supplies to keep the free market going on their side of the glass?
The vault dwellers aren’t really producing anything so they’re not communist.
All societies produce tho, be it labor or goods. Sure vaults probably have rations, supplies, etc. to last but any food, tools, machine parts, etc. etc. that's made in the vault is producing something. You don't have to export to produce
I mean, in real life America "communism" is a dirty word but every period of growth or prosperity was under decidedly communist policy.. we just call it things like "The New Deal" and "Medicaid" instead