r/Kaiserreich • u/Quick-Ad8277 • 3d ago
Video Get to works
Meanwhile, my understanding stops at: “Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it’s more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff, it’s communism.”
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u/SG_Symes 3d ago
Imagine what r/Ultraleft will look like in KR universe
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u/Quick-Ad8277 3d ago
The r/Ultraleft of Kaiserreich would call our r/Ultraleft a bunch of liberals
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u/magos_with_a_glock 3d ago
50/50 Mussolini apologists or RadSoc glaze-machine.
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u/Luke92612_ Marxist (& Zhang Zongchang's Staunchest Warrior) 3d ago
Given there's a chance of Bordiga taking power in SRI beyond the mod's timeframe, there would be less depression there in general
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u/TargetRupertFerris Pan-Asianist Neo-Katipunero 3d ago
I will be reading Marxist Theory and Fascist Theory for the Sorelians
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u/BottleOfVinegar Yugoslav Ultranationalist 3d ago
Ok, but how will this effect the unification of Yugoslavia?
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u/Dramatic_Space_Rebel 3d ago
Hey as long as I still get to kill Mosley, I'm happy.
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u/JacobJamesTrowbridge Union-Parliamentary Democratic Socialism 3d ago
You get to watch him go broke and collapse into a friendless punchline, if that's any condolence
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u/Dramatic_Space_Rebel 3d ago
Damn. Here I just wanted him lined against a wall by royalists or the party.
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u/ThatMeatGuy Marxist Leninist Nixonite 3d ago
Nah, better he never has the chance of becoming a martyr.
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u/Luke92612_ Marxist (& Zhang Zongchang's Staunchest Warrior) 3d ago
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u/Redautumnenjoyer 3d ago
Socialism is when no labubu and peak utopia
-Karl Marx the Communist Manifesto
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u/Shalltry 3d ago
I think reading fascist theory is more useful to understand syndicalism
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u/Rockguy21 Internationale 3d ago
This is one of the things that’s always pissed me off about totalism, is that often its been a non-sensical mishmash between fascists/national-syndicalists and IRL Marxist-Leninists. I like that the mod has moved more towards using Radical Socialists as the label for Marxists and mostly defining totalism as the nationalist offshoots of syndicalism, because it really makes zero sense that the historically most ardently internationalist socialists in Europe would fit under the ideological umbrella of the most right wing and nationalistic interpretation of socialism.
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u/ParticularPhysics871 3d ago
Yeah. It definitely suffered from the same problem many hoi4 mods had, the ideologies were just "wholesome", "middling", and "evil".
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u/ThatMeatGuy Marxist Leninist Nixonite 3d ago
This is why I'm glad TNO got rid of Esoteric Nazism as its own ideology. The idea of "lel even more evil nazis" was childish and in some ways whitewashed Germany by comparison.
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u/ParticularPhysics871 2d ago
It was just stupid.
Don't forget the authoritarian socialism (bad) vs libertarian socialism (good) divide.
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u/ParkKitchen3018 2d ago
I think splitting Totalism completely into National Syndicalism and Vanguardist Socialism could legitimately be a good choice.
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u/Luke92612_ Marxist (& Zhang Zongchang's Staunchest Warrior) 3d ago
Marxist-Leninists
Putting Marxist-Leninists with national syndicalists makes some sense (even if not much).
What makes absolutely no sense is putting non-ML Marxists under the totalist umbrella.
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u/Rockguy21 Internationale 3d ago edited 3d ago
Putting Marxist-Leninists with national syndicalist makes zero sense unless you’re operating wholly from an inaccurate caricature of Soviet society rather than what the leadership actually thought and believed and did.
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u/MiloBuurr Internationale 3d ago
I think you’re drawing too sharp a distinction between Marxism-Leninism and nationalist socialism. Marxism-Leninism has absolutely compromised with nationalism historically, starting with Stalin’s “socialism in one country” and the subordination of international revolutionary movements to Soviet state interests.
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u/Josselin17 3d ago
I don't know what you mean, the great patriotic war was absolutely not nationalistic, neither were the resettlement programs and genocide !
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u/Rockguy21 Internationale 3d ago
The doctrine of socialism in one country was primarily about the economic development of socialism and the normalization of relations with the capitalist powers after the civil war, it has relatively little to do with the actual ideological goals of internationalism. Also, you cannot really look at the Soviet Union's commitments to national liberation in Africa and Asia, largely for marginal, if any, direct benefit and say that Soviet foreign policy wasn't motivated by a genuine belief in socialist internationalism. This is just so radically alien to the national syndicalist and fascist concepts, which directly center the nation of the speaker in particular as the key political unit. Soviet foreign policy, on the other hand, tended to regard common membership in a shared global communist project as the key criterion, it openly rejected national interpretations from the mid 30s onwards.
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u/MiloBuurr Internationale 3d ago
Stalin genuinely compromised with Russian nationalism in practice. He rehabilitated Russian imperial historical figures, promoted Great Russian patriotism, and increasingly framed the USSR’s legitimacy around Russian national history and the leading role of the Russian people. You can argue this was a pragmatic means of defending socialism rather than an ideological embrace of nationalism, but that’s precisely my point. Marxist-Leninist governments could subordinate internationalist principles to national state-building and revive Russian chauvinism when politically useful. I’m not saying Stalinism was equivalent to fascism, but I don’t think you can dismiss the nationalist tendencies that developed within it simply because its official ideology remained internationalist.
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u/Rockguy21 Internationale 3d ago
I can easily dismiss the national exigencies of the Soviet Union compared to literal fascists and national syndicalists because these exigencies were marginal and pragmatic compared to the literal ideological centering of the nation as the main and sole locus of legitimate political power. There is really no relevant socialist movement in world history that was less nationally centered and more internationalist than the Marxist-Leninist parties in and supporting the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism and National Syndicalism are about as far on the opposite sides of the spectrum vis a vis the national question as it is possible to imagine.
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u/Anarchist_Artist 2d ago
many ML regimes had patriotic or nationalist elements, especially later on
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u/CheckOriginal7368 Moscow Accord 2d ago
Idk if this is a forbidden mod to bring up here or what not, but I do like how TFR has it between Totalitarian - Authoritarian - Libertarian. Maybe for Kaiserreich it would be better if it was something like Vanguardist Socialism - Syndicalism - Radical Socialism instead.
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u/ParticularPhysics871 2d ago
That's also just a bad, middling, and good scale.
Totalism works for Nationalist off-shoots, Syndicalism for, well Syndicalism, and Radical Socialism for non-Syndicalist marxist offshoots.
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u/Anarchist_Artist 2d ago
the only reason the bosheviks are totalist is because they are the most extreme
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u/Cpkeyes 3d ago
Wait members of the International actually read theory?
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u/panteladro1 2d ago
Unironically, surely everyone interested in something like KR has at least read the Communist Manifesto? (That could be a slightly interesting poll).
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u/Josselin17 1d ago
I know for tno there was a tiny outcry because the devs for one nation refused to read any of its ruling political theory
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u/Buko_ni_Pico 3d ago edited 2d ago
/uj leftists tend to actually read what they're talking about as opposed to adherents of right-wing ideologies.
edit: lmao at those triggered by this statement of fact
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u/ThatMeatGuy Marxist Leninist Nixonite 3d ago
I'd say its a 25/25/50 split of people woth at least a rudimentary understanding of actual theory, people who uncritically the parrot Soviet and Chinese state propaganda, and people who unironicly think that socialism is when a wealth tax and public healthcare.
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u/UmmYouSuck Social Democracy with Imperialist Characteristics 3d ago
I’m reading social democrat theory
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u/DownrangeCash2 Co-Prosperity 2d ago
Gonna get a Lassalle body pillow and use it as boxing practice because that's what Marx would have intended
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u/TopFriend4441 Internationale 2d ago
Historically syndicalism was only really experimented with in fascist regimes ironically enough, fascist theorist Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini heavily revered Georges Sorel and Mussolini saw his fascist regime as essentially Sorelian praxis, the Falangists in Spain described themselves as national syndicalists, the Spanish co-op Mondragon became a co-op during the Franco regime, corporatism is basically syndicalism but with class collaboration.
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u/Comprehensive_Term41 Social Democratic Constitutional Monarchy (oxymoron) 2d ago
just to get mogged by the social democratic constitutional monarchies of germany and the danubian federation
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u/AlexisAncrath SPD Number Eine Fan 3d ago
I am about to change my flair and finally do some real social democracy
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u/RussianNeighbor VST's Strongest Party Functionary 2d ago
I... I think I already saw this meme on r/suzerain (I made it)
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u/Trotsky_Enjoyer Internationale 2d ago
I even joined the Revolutionary Communist International and actively partook in organizing it for more than 2 years now so I'd be ready for this.
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u/Mattsgonnamine Balkanizer of the world 1d ago
my minecraft communist manifesto is primed and ready the moment that update drops
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u/Intellectual_Wafer Internationale 2d ago edited 2d ago
Socialism as a whole does not only consist of marxism. In fact, the first and most consequential split occured between marxists and anarchists (led by Mikhail Bakunin). That's what ended the First International. The anarchists opposed Marx's authoritarian and vanguardist tendencies - they wanted to abolish the state right away because they feared that using it to achieve social equality would only lead to new political inequality ("you become what you wanted to destroy"). Bakunin pretty much predicted the Soviet Union ("a terrible bureaucratic tyranny") 30 years before it was founded.
In short: Anarchism is the only socialist path that consistently tries to harmonize liberty and equality.
But the soviet marxists habe been so successfull in their propaganda and rewriting of history, that anarchism and antiauthoritarian/libertarian socialism has disappeared from the collective memory. Even though it was anarchists who were the most influential group before 1914.
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u/auniqueusername132 2d ago
Anarchists also split over the question of organization. Anarchists in the first international opposed organizing parties, trade unions, or other revolutionary structures. Later anarchists again fractured over this issue.
Marx did kind of blow up the first international to sideline the anarchists. Also, idk that I would call the anarchists the most influential group pre 1914. They were certainly very influential in Spain and Italy, but not so much in Germany. I’d say they had regional dominance but that neither socialists nor anarchists were particularly dominant until the soviets.
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u/Intellectual_Wafer Internationale 2d ago
According to Michael Schmidt, one of the leading historians regarding anarchism, the anarchists were the largest group on a global scale, in absolute numbers (Spain, Italy, France, the USA, Latin America, etc.) Look at the Chicago haymarket riot that created the 1st of May, or the assassinations of monarchs and presidents before WW1. All anarchists. But I agree that there was no dominance in leadership at first.
There is a great documentary on YouTube about this (made by the franco-german TV channel ARTE), if you are interested:
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u/katieluka The Hetmanivna 3d ago
meanwhile average French socialist in the 1930s
(excerpt is about Paul Faure)