Who else hates the idea that the world could’ve been saved if only...

Jogre said:
Josh Sawyer definitely is, I've seen him retweet stuff about Labour Unions and collectivised workplaces.
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Clown_Shoe_Prostitute said:
I think calling Sawyer a Marxist is a bit extreme. He's definitely in favor of more socialized policies but I doubt he's a whole-ass Marxist.
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He definitely interacts with that side of twitter a fair bit. Like he's probably not a Posadist or something but I'm sure he's read at least some Marx considering how well read he is in general. But it's also possible this has just arose like it has for a lot of people being online over the past decade or so
 
Many modern self proclaimed socialists are less in favor of the revolutionary political authoritarian shit than they were a long time ago(not to say all of them were like that). At least openly. They're moreso interested in democratizing the workplace. But Marxist is kind of a loose word. It could imply favor towards Marx inspired thought and socialist policies to settle a disbalance between the bourgeois and the proletariat or it could mean what Marx thought was inevitable: revolutionary action to begin the two steps toward a stateless society and a dictatorship of the proletariat.
When people say ________ is a Marxist, I genuinely have to guess at what that means. Now mind you, I'm not always the most educated on this topic so I could be corrected on some of this.

But yeah, Fallout is a cool guy. eh kills mutants and delivers mail
 
Señor Wally said:
But Marxist is kind of a loose word. It could imply favor towards Marx inspired thought and socialist policies to settle a disbalance between the bourgeois and the proletariat...
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The word for that is revisionist. To be fair, they've been calling themselves Marxists since the SPD in the 1800s.

Clown_Shoe_Prostitute said:
I think calling Sawyer a Marxist is a bit extreme. He's definitely in favor of more socialized policies but I doubt he's a whole-ass Marxist.
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Hardboiled Android said:
He definitely interacts with that side of twitter a fair bit. Like he's probably not a Posadist or something but I'm sure he's read at least some Marx considering how well read he is in general. But it's also possible this has just arose like it has for a lot of people being online over the past decade or so
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Dayglow Drifter said:
He has referred to himself as a socialist several times and appears to actually understand what that means
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At a glance he's got a lot of coop, union and left-nationalist stuff. I know the type. I'd say I was disappointed if I wasn't beyond used to it by now.

I think Hardboiled Android is probably right. I don't know how much he's read, but I'd be surprised if he knew about accumulation crises and an idea of the present crisis that's pretty much isolated to the Communist Left, while still retweeting AOC.
 
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Iprovidelittlepianos said:
I keep seeing this idea thrown around (particularly on places like Reddit) that fusion technology was on the verge of ending the Pre-War resource shortages, and that the Great War could’ve been avoided if only they had more time. This always bothers me because I like to think of the Great War as inevitable, not something that the pre-war world almost avoided. Not to mention that it portrays technology, particularly nuclear technology, in a “heroic” light that I feel is really at odds with the whole “Mankind’s Hubris” theme that Fallout has going on.

Does this piss anyone else off? Or am I the bad guy here?
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I mean we know it's not inevitable because we didn't have a nuclear war.
 
Dayglow Drifter said:
He has referred to himself as a socialist several times and appears to actually understand what that means
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Well, good for him, knowing what he is. Too often people throw around “socialist” without realizing what that actually is. Prime example is the American Right constantly labeling the Left as “radical Socialists”. They’re not there yet.

Take it from an open and proud AnCap, you’ll fucking know when someone is ACTUALLY radicalized.
CT Phipps said:
I mean we know it's not inevitable because we didn't have a nuclear war.
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It’s also not 2077
 
KingArthur said:
Too often people throw around “socialist” without realizing what that actually is.
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I mainly said that to differentiate him from the dumbass liberals who call themselves a socialist just because support the government spending money on things.

I once saw a meme where it's like "support the military? you're a socialist!" and it was mind-numbingly retarded.
 
Dayglow Drifter said:
I mainly said that to differentiate him from the dumbass liberals who call themselves a socialist just because support the government spending money on things.

I once saw a meme where it's like "support the military? you're a socialist!" and it was mind-numbingly retarded.
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It sounds mind-numbingly retarded.

And I figured, that’s what I meant by him being an actual socialist. Libs love calling themselves socialist or Marxist or whatever, without knowing what that entails.
 
Dayglow Drifter said:
I mainly said that to differentiate him from the dumbass liberals who call themselves a socialist just because support the government spending money on things.

I once saw a meme where it's like "support the military? you're a socialist!" and it was mind-numbingly retarded.
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"Socialism is when the Government does stuff. And it's more socialist, the more stuff it does. And if it does a REAL lotta stuff, it's communism"
 
Dayglow Drifter said:
This has always been one of the foundational tenets of both Socialism and Marxism
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No, it hasn't. Marxists, cooperatives, and syndicalists have been in conflict since the First International, and social-democrats joined the list after the Second.

The communist view has always been that unions are organs of mediation and negotiation between workers and capitalists, which makes them completely useless for the overthrow of capitalism. In the imperialist epoch, unions are even integrated directly into the state apparatus, acting as essential instruments of capital's totalitarianism. They stand in the way of working class action whenever possible (especially at the most crucial moments), suffocate our class with bourgeois ideology alongside the social-democratic parties, and when workers succeed in taking action against their exploiters in spite of them, they swoop in to claim credit at the last minute.

The coop movement is just as bad. The bourgeoisie has actually historically happily promoted cooperative businesses, because they have a slight advantage - they don't have to deal with capitalist consumption, so all surplus value can be invested into capital accumulation. But the law of value remains in force, the valorisation of capital via working class labour continues, and surplus value is still extracted in exchange for a fractional wage to produce products to sell as commodities. In effect, cooperatives allow the working class to manage their own exploitation. The bourgeoisie don't have to directly exploit the value of the fruits of each worker's labour to profit. [bourgeois economists are all over this stuff - see this article]

The syndicalists at least promoted unions as a means to overthrow the capitalist system. The latest social-democratic slogan of "democratising the workplace" pretty much amounts to very slightly (and vaguely) altering the capitalist management system, which, if they didn't need tightened controls to enable their offences against workers as the crisis continues, they would probably happily accept, because the idea of workers lining THEMSELVES up is pretty much perfect . Of all the slogans they've shat out this is probably the most cynical.

It's not a coincidence that the slogan is pretty close to the actual socialist slogan (phrase, really - it's too ambiguous to use on its own) of "workers' self-management", but this has nothing to do with rearranging the division of labour and leaving the rest of the capitalist system intact to allow workers to manage their own exploitation. "Workers' self-management" refers to the control of society (and production) by the working class alone (aka, "the proletariat organised as the ruling class" - a DOTP) - delegated to no higher bodies or organisations - via their elected and recallable "workmen and accountants" in the factory committees and workers' councils. Even this is just a transitional form as class itself is abolished, leaving the councils only for economic administration.

Sorry for the text wall. My point is, what Sawyer's into just isn't Marxism. I wish it was, it's not often you find out the lead designer of one of your favourite games is a socialist.
Señor Wally said:
Well, now it's like the main thing without the political restructuring. At least according to folks like Richard Wolff anyway.
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I genuinely have no idea why anyone takes Richard Wolff seriously.
Dayglow Drifter said:
I once saw a meme where it's like "support the military? you're a socialist!" and it was mind-numbingly retarded.
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I once saw someone say the FBI and CIA are examples of socialism. No, they weren't kidding.
 
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Zvezda said:
No, it hasn't. Marxists, cooperatives, and syndicalists have been in conflict since the First International, and social-democrats joined the list after the Second.

The communist view has always been that unions are organs of mediation and negotiation between workers and capitalists, which makes them completely useless for the overthrow of capitalism. In the imperialist epoch, unions are even integrated directly into the state apparatus, acting as essential instruments of capital's totalitarianism. They stand in the way of working class action whenever possible (especially at the most crucial moments), suffocate our class with bourgeois ideology alongside the social-democratic parties, and when workers succeed in taking action against their exploiters in spite of them, they swoop in to claim credit at the last minute.

The coop movement is just as bad. The bourgeoisie has actually historically happily promoted cooperative businesses, because they have a slight advantage - they don't have to deal with capitalist consumption, so all surplus value can be invested into capital accumulation. But the law of value remains in force, the valorisation of capital via working class labour continues, and surplus value is still extracted in exchange for a fractional wage to produce products to sell as commodities. In effect, cooperatives allow the working class to manage their own exploitation. The bourgeoisie don't have to directly exploit the value of the fruits of each worker's labour to profit. [bourgeois economists are all over this stuff - see this article]

The syndicalists at least promoted unions as a means to overthrow the capitalist system. The latest social-democratic slogan of "democratising the workplace" pretty much amounts to very slightly (and vaguely) altering the capitalist management system, which, if they didn't need tightened controls to enable their offences against workers as the crisis continues and stubborn rigidity ti, they would probably happily accept, because the idea of workers lining THEMSELVES up is pretty much perfect . Of all the slogans they've shat out this is probably the most cynical.

It's not a coincidence that the slogan is pretty close to the actual socialist slogan (phrase, really - it's too ambiguous to use on its own) of "workers' self-management", but this has nothing to do with rearranging the division of labour and leaving the rest of the capitalist system intact to allow workers to manage their own exploitation. "Workers' self-management" refers to the control of society (and production) by the working class alone (aka, "the proletariat organised as the ruling class" - a DOTP) - delegated to no higher bodies or organisations - via their elected and recallable "workmen and accountants" in the factory committees and workers' councils. Even this is just a transitional form as class itself is abolished, leaving the councils only for economic administration.

Sorry for the text wall. My point is, what Sawyer's into just isn't Marxism. I wish it was, it's not often you find out the lead designer of one of your favourite games is a socialist.

I genuinely have no idea why anyone takes Richard Wolff seriously.
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Damn, man. I appreciate the thought out, insightful and civil response.
 
CT Phipps said:
I mean we know it's not inevitable because we didn't have a nuclear war.
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The conditions of the Fallout world and the conditions of the real world are vastly different.

Fallout presents a world of extreme resource scarcity combined with cold war paranoia, combined with the collapse of any international institutions meant to oversee the world, and then presents the Great War as an inevitability from those conditions.

In the real world, the far more likely inevitable apocalypse is going to be mass-desertification of the planet and displacement of people from climate change.

The wider point of the Great War in Fallout is that some sort of great collapse would have happened in their world anyway because there were enough factors to make it inevitable. While there are obvious parallels you could draw to the real world, the wider point is that it's inevitable in the world of fallout.
 
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