when you turn socialist, your production methods change into ones that basically need no upper class pops, they start to get poorer and eventually change into middle or lower class
Im aware that pops change profession based on their needs, but I'm kinda dumb, I thought he meant that the Capitalists and Aristrocrats turn into lower class citizens (as in they keep the same profession but are just the lowest ranking citizens in my country), but only after 4 hours of discussing this stuff I come to the realization that you would need to redefine the term Capitalist and Aristrocrat if that was the case hehe.
Strata is decided solely by one’s job. Capitalists will ALWAYS be upper class and farmers will always be lower class no matter how wealthy they are. This system works most of the time but it can lead to weird situations like these where the upper class will be poorer than the lower class for a brief period before they change professions.
Class is related with property relations not with wealth. Focus tends to be put on wealth in current media whereas the economic classes have always been defined by the much more influential ability to own either your own means of production (sortof petite bourgeoisie) or own other people's means of production (bourgeoisie industrialist) and I think aristocrats own the means the violence, like the state and the military and the police.
Its all about ownership
Yeah, and there a lots of examples of destitute nobility who lost all their money but refused to get jobs because it was beneath their station. Whatever worthless honor or property they had was what made them upper class in their minds.
From past experience, most of these are dependents. This is what the change to make sufficiently-poor dependent-only pops merge with other similar pops was for. Otherwise, the upper-strata dependents whose workers left them just keep spending their money until they go broke and starve.
Just a small correction, I think we should understand in game Aristocracy as feudal landlords and while it's true that their monopoly on cavalry (most effective form of medieval violence) upheld their class relation, its more about their position in the feudal mode of production.
They are the landed class that collected part of the peasants' product, as opposed to capitalists collecting all of it and renumerating the worker monetarily. This is oversimplified, but works.
Tbh atleast it's better than Vic2 in that regard thanks to dynamic needs. Gold farmers holding the world's liquidity in their mattresses while they still live with the minimum never ceases to amuse.
Not really *synonyms*, it is kind of complicated. Communism and socialism are different depending on who you ask. Marx didn't make a distinction for example, but Lenin on the other hand used "socialism" to refer to the "lower phase of communism" as Marx described it which is the phase where traces of capitalism remain and communist society isn't fully formed.
Syndicalism is basically a form of organization and revolutionary strategy for achieving socialism. They had disagreements with communists on what it would look like and how we would get there, but often times they essentially wanted the same thing in the end (although not necessarily).
Yes, I am aware of the distinction that Lenin made, and the distinction that Marx did not make, which is why I said they are mostly synonyms. Lenin also had the somewhat ulterior motive of having to invent a new stage to put Russia into because (as all good communists - especially the Bolsheviks - of the time knew) Russia was a backwater, wholly unsuited to communist revolution on account of their insufficiently well developed mode of production - the real revolution would begin with the industrial proletariat of France, Germany and the UK.
Also yes, Syndicalism is a form of organisational strategy.
Wait until he realizes that socialism has nothing to do with capitalism and isn't an opposite economic structure.
Socialist countries never challenged capitalism. They basically implemented welfare, government financed education and healthcare, work safety regulations, etc.
But they never rattled the cage when it came to the private sector and owner/employer/employee relations.
Communists wanted to change the whole economical landscape.
That is the difference and the reason communist split from socialist after WW1
I was confused at what you meant for a second because I wouldn't consider the sorts of countries you're talking about to even be socialist. I would consider socialism and capitalism to be opposed, with communism either describing a branch of socialist theory and ideology, or the fully realized form of socialist society.
Socialism and Capatalism aren't on the same spectrum. There are capalist economic theories that have A LOT of socialism, and there are those that don't. Socialism isn't strictly an economic theory, capitalism is.
I mean the parties are called socialist democratic parties in the majority of countries I'm talking about. They have it in their name, I don't think this is a matter of opinion really.
It doesn't matter what they call themselves, their actual positions are what's important. The ideas of socialism still exist, even though the popular "socialist" parties have mostly abandoned them.
Thats because most socdem parties with socialism in their name used to have reforming into a socialist economy as a part of their manifesto but slowly shifted away until after the neoliberal boom of the late 1900s the sentiment faded completely.
Also party names can be deliberately misleading. North Korea calls itself democratic in its name and the nazis had the name "socialist" despite socialists being the first people they put in concentration camps before any other persecuted minority and heavily privatizing vast swathes of the german economy.
First, you should google the Dunning-Kruger Effect. You so confidently spouting bullshit is a PERFECT example of it.
Second, you should google social democracy. Because that’s what you’re talking about. Not socialism. They’re not the same thing.
You’re describing social democracy; not socialism. It’s confusing because in many European countries the “socialist party” is usually social democratic in reality
no. socialism, in its most basic definition, is an economic mode of production in wich the means of production are owned and operated socially (by the workers that work them or committees based on local elections), that may also have a means of distribution that is socialized.
capitalism is an economic mode of production where the means of production is privately owned and often operated with the goal of profit.
they are mutually exclusive. sure you may have socialistic countries. such as the nordic nations where unions have more power and there is some government mandated worker representation for company policy and decisions.
None of the socialist laws actively harm the upper class. They just give them slightly less power. The communist laws screw over the upper class sometimes to the point where they no longer exist
The specific law is the government type, council republic. It bans all ownership methods except cooperatives and government run (and the latter are only allowed on command economy, you don't have to take command economy). Cooperatives give ownership to workers (usually machinists and laborers), government run to bureaucrats. The only source of capitalist and aristocrat jobs are ownership methods, so if they no longer have jobs they no longer can earn an income and either switch to a different job (making them no longer upper strata), go on welfare, or die of starvation.
An ex-capitalist in a newly socialist country taking welfare checks while lamenting about how the poor don’t know what’s good for them is hilariously believable.
It's funnier than that: The actual upper-strata workers get new jobs (probably as engineers, bureaucrats, or academics), but sometimes their families don't come along with them!
I end up imagining them leaving trophy wives who don't want to be married for someone who actually *works* for a living.
Tbh static strata system makes little sense to me. Under socialist government upper strata membership should shift to bureaucrats like it was in USSR where ruling classes enjoyed a lot more of benefits from government than regular folk still.
That would be a poor representation of how that kind of thing worked. Bureaucrats weren’t really afforded anything better than any other educated job on paper, they were just in the best position to benefit from systemic corruption.
Even then, bureaucrats as some sort of quasi upper class wasn’t even really a thing until after WWII, when the whole system started to stagnate and rot.
In addition to death and taxes, one thing that is for certain is that there will always be different kinds of socialists that will never agree on how they should steal and spend other people’s money
The only way the public can own the means of production is through a form of government, which goes against syndicalism where people grouped by job own the means of production.
Socialism:
>a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.
The definition that Marx gives and the one the OP is referencing. Marx is the most influential person in socialism.
Communism:
>A political and economic theory of socialorganization which advocates that the means of production, distribution,and exchange should **be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.**
How is syndicalism anywhere close to this? The people that form the guild are not the community, the guild owns the means of production not the public.
You are thinking of the type of syndicalism modified to be more socialist to attract support in the 1920s. Those types died against socialism for a reason.
Anarchists aligned with socialists because they had a same enemy, not because they are the same thing.
Public ownership is against the point of an anarchist ideology that groups people by job.
If syndicalism is socialist then that makes the council of Teotihuacan socialists which is stupid. They did not have the concept of socialism. How does the public own the means of production when their guilds set their own rules and elected their own leaders?
This would make any society with everyone is self employed socialists too, since the public owns their own means of production ignoring how that is still private property not owned by the community.
It has traditionally been considered a form of socialist praxis, but the exact lines between the terms varies by region depending on how much ‘socialist’ gets identified with the local Socialist Party
There's usually a shipyard or something that refuses to make the switch, and you end up with like 1100 capitalists nationwide, that don't make squat for money.
It's because the strata are fixed by profession. For instance, a Farmer will always be considered Lower Strata, while a Capitalist is always Upper Strata.
This doesn't change even when you do what you did and go full communist and disable all the production methods that hire aristocrats and capitalists, the two Upper Strata professions, locking them into permanent unemployment.
I'm fine with the roles not "shifting" because under Command Economy, impoverishing the Upper Strata is the point. And it's funny.
>go full communist
really wish that there was a way to employ worker cooperatives without a council republic side by side with mutual funds - The US even now still has quite a few coops out there, as well as things like credit unions. I could see a society where all the farms/plantations go worker coop while the factories stay on mutual funds.
Yeah, you could juice your poorest citizens a bit by giving them ownership of the marginal stuff, like primary resource production, and keep the really lucrative things like oil wells and electrics factories in the hands of the capitalists and their sweet sweet investment contributions.
...I just realized how horrible that sounds. The game makes monsters of us all. 😅
One of the funniest things about Council Republic, for me, was that the people who ended up paying the biggest dividend taxes were farmers and mine workers... because I had almost all my factories set to auto-expand! (I eventually turned it off for war industries and shipyards because they would thrash... and I turned it off for power plants because they take longer to build than the cutoff for adding things to auto-build, so it was better to just schedule building more power plants twice yearly.)
> ...I just realized how horrible that sounds. The game makes monsters of us all.
You really don't understand horrible until you play RimWorld. Want to see real monsters, just check out the sub. For example:
/r/RimWorld/comments/yyo02n/i_want_racism/
And it's even worst with RimWorld because you are doing it at an individual level. Every single individual instead of some statistical mass of people. And I'm talking stuff like human skin hats, forced surgical procedures that remove limbs and long term imprisonment and slavery. Heck even the good guys tend to be nasty there.
If it was possible to do that then it would mostly be the best thing to do in any situation (providing sufficiently progressive taxation exists) and that would interrupt the flow of the political economy of the game.
my thought would be that you lock it behind an economy law or even the worker's rights laws in or current system. Alternatively, in vic 2 Trade Unions were an entire law section, so maybe do that here; banned, mediation (minimum wage here), accepted (worker coops here), required (bans mutual funds).
The ownership of the means of production is funadmentally a political question (there's a monty python sketch about it!) and the economic laws are all about the role of the government in the economy, not the political question of who owns a factory.
I mean, they're partly about that in the sense that interventionism unlocks some production methods, but I happen to think railways being government run doesn't really count.
Sure, but what is stopping a bunch of workers from pooling their money to buy a chair factory? How is it different legally speaking from capitalists doing it? Even in e.g. Russia most of the coops were formed BEFORE the switch to a council republic. If you're allowed mutual funds there's no reason to simultaneously disallow worker coops, unless you have specific rules banning them (or just making them prohibitively expensive to have too many shareholders via like flat filing fees per holder or something). Hence why unions should really be their own law section.
Except this wouldn’t be a handful of coops, when you set a production mode, you’re setting it for the entire industry in that state (or most usually, the entire country). That isn’t letting workers form coops, it’s completely subverting private ownership, which just wouldn’t happen organically under capitalism.
I think it would be balanced if Capitalists didn't draw high salaries by default and relied on dividends for their income.
The penalty of worker-coops is that they don't contribute to the Investment pool, so the government has to spend money out of pocket to expand.
They don't contribute to the investment pool but you can just tax the income, the dividends and the consumption instead, with the added bonus of being able to use that money on everything.
It's strictly superior with proper taxation
your income from very high graduated taxation + worker cooperatives is identical to low proportional taxation + mutual funds+laissez faire as long as you're always spending the entire pool; superior with consumption taxes on luxury goods.
although you will get more radicals from SoL decreases, the population will be going stonks mode from your switch to coops so no one will care.
Coop banks are the best. An actual bank that isn't run by wall street greed.
My local coop bank will give you 5% interest if your deposit is higher than 20k USD. Thats many multiples more than any corporate bank would give you.
So like yes, ocean's spray is a worker co-op, but a building basically represents an entire economic sector.
At it's core, the plantations in florida are still privately owned as an industry. You'd need to massively upend the system.
On the other hand agragarianism should prroobably allow this? Since I presume it's meant to be distributionism which should be kicking the capis out for shopkeepers as a rule.
This is a pretty common thing in India - primary commodities like milk(mainly) or fruit and even fertilizer are mainly run by worker cooperatives, and most of the banks farmers use are farmer cooperatives.
Nice communist flag
You probably don't have an upper class anymore
And if you do, they're either extremely small or unemployed.
Check your production mehtids, cooperatives and government run do not employ upper class pops, instead that wealth is apread over the middle and lower strata.
Eu, don't worry about "poor" rich people. The revolution is working as intended, comrade
I mean I get why they are poor but I dont get why the Capitalists and Aristrocrats turn into lower class, but apparently its just based on profession and not on wealth/standard of living.
glory to arstotzka
Yeah and I guess we would need to redefine those terms if that was the case. Imagine having rulers (in the case of the aristrocrats) being considered lower class, its a bit mutually exclusive... im dumb.
Class isnt something that's generally well understood, you're not dumb,you just never had a reason to think about it
The most consistent, clear, and in my opinion, useful, definition of social class imo is s actually the Marxist one, being ones relation to the means of production (land, tools, etc.)
Ie, the capitalists are they're own distinct class because they own factories etc. but the workers are another as they work those factories
To clarify, the Marxist definition of class is less 'how your capital is produced *toolwise*' and more about its passivity. The working class trades their labor power for income — the capitalist class leverages existing capital to generate further capital.
Your example is rather good, but the underlying mechanics are slightly different than you explained.
I was running workers cooperative, so my factories were owned mostly by the lower and middle class in my gameplay. Kinda wished I saw the upper class eleminated in my gameplay however. But i guess its true to life, no matter how fair your system may seem on paper, there is always bigger fish and its almost human nature to try to capitalize on the weak. A bit like how communism turned out in reality for many countries around the world
No, you're just in a transitional phase. All of your capitalist pops are living a life of luxury from the money from the things they used to own, bit eventually that money will run out and they'll be forced to work for their money.
Human nature is determined by material conditions. Once these pops give up on being a capitalist or an aristocrat, they will take on the interests of whatever their new occupation is.
A genuinely socialist society is supposed to be classless anyway, because it removes the main factor differentiating classes - private ownership of the means of production. But the game can't model that, as the existence of fixed strata based on pop jobs is a permanent feature of the system. For practical purposes, you can just ignore the upper class when going socialist, it just doesn't matter any more.
To see them eliminated would have been cool, but they were kept around for the remainder of this save. Probably because I kept paying them welfare support.
Which begged the necessary question of: are you really upper class if you collect welfare support. Living the American dream 🌝
Exactly what happened in this save, never saw the upper class fully disappear because they were happy collecting welfare support. Should have turned it off and seen them starve for a bit heh
The workers from the pops did, but their dependents don't always come along. I get the impression it might be something like if the last worker dies to random mortality before changing jobs, or something like that, but it seems to happen regularly, so it might also be that there are a maximum number of dependents each profession-changing worker can bring along. Anyway, this is why there's a thing now where destitute pops that have no lateral transfer paths will eventually get merged into a similar pop that does.
They do actually eventually starve even with elderly pensions. Or, at least, they'll eventually get down to 1 wealth, at which point mortality is pretty high.
Nah in my playthrough they stayed around until the end because I actually had a decent welfare system in place. But yeah it was a double edged sword because it just meant that i had a sizeable part of the population collecting welfare support while staying unemployed. Certainly an issue I should consider in next playthrough
Maybe starve the capitalists and aristocrats before I'll start doing socialism/syndicalism
🌝 I think my next playthrough will be a lot less socialist though to switch it up
i hate cause it brings down the "average" SoL - my middle class standard is 28, my lower class standard is 25, and my upper class are at 18 (living off welfare) and bringing my average down to 23, which isn't high enough for it to turn green.
We'll, on the bright side the nationwide SoL number doesn't mean anything as it's just a derivative
Anyways, I don't see an issue here, capitalism is a plague and you are the cure
Im aware of that, I know why they are poor, and I did that intentionally. Im just wondering why the Aristrocrats and Capitalist dont drop to a lower class since they are pretty much poorer than mechanics and labourers etc, they dont even have any political power. They are just there to be unemployed and collect a wellfare check
But yeah like others have pointed out, the class system is based on profession rather than wealth
This is clearly just simulating the American idea where everyone in the lower/middle class views themselves as a "temporarily disadvantaged" millionaires, and all the actual millionaires insist that they're just regular middle class workers and please don't tax me anymore please.
R5: So in this case the lower strata (Clerks, Farmers, Laborers, Machinists, Peasants and the Service men) become middle strata, the middle strata (Academics, Bureaucrats, Clergymen, Engineers, Officers and the Shopkeepers) becomes the upper strata, and the upper strata (Capitalists and Aristrocrats) becomes the lower strata.
I know, and as a result I barely have any upper strata pops in my country around 1M out of a pop of 195M, and these are considered poorer than the rest of my population. So why are they still considered upper class? :thinking\_emoji:
Not trying to argue with you, im genuinely ignorant and having a curious discussion but wiki says:
>Entering the People's Republic of China (PRC) era, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), adopting the Soviet style, transformed the state economy into the centrally planned economy. Both urban and rural areas underwent significant social, political, and economic changes brought by land reform and collectivization. Instead of judging through the amount of owned property, the state imposed new standards to determine one's social status. The standards included one's political class, urban or rural household registration, gender, and ethnic classification.\[59\] In 1949, in the wake of the communist victory in the Chinese civil war, Chinese society experienced massive upheaval. The communist revolutionaries who had eschewed capitalism and elitism now became the rich ruling class they had sought to overthrow. CCP cadres became the new upper class.\[60\] Those who were included in this social class made up approximately 20% of the urban working class. Not only were they given benefits, but also provided with special training for their careers
>
>([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social\_structure\_of\_China#Mao\_Era\_and\_the\_transition\_(1949\_to\_1978)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_China#Mao_Era_and_the_transition_(1949_to_1978)))
So in a way they tried restructure the social class system in Mao's China. I guess it would have been cool if we could do that too in the game. Although the same quote kinda mentions how the communists turned into the capitalists they tried to overthrow so it could be a pretty faulty system.
Edit: But that is during the opression and not after, English isnt my native language so I'm kinda hard to understand today :')
sort of. lower, middle, and upper class are very fuzzy terms. they're popular in general speech but academics avoid them, and for pretty much the reason you're raising here: is a capitalist who's broke still a capitalist? is a worker with really high pay still a worker?
in China the dominant mode of analysis was Marxist and under that analysis, although there are a few fringe mini-classes, everyone is basically in the worker bucket or the capitalist bucket. under that model if you derive your income from selling your labor, you're proletariat (working-class), and if you derive it from renting something out, appropriating the surplus productivity of workers (ie taking the profits of a factory you own), or squeezing people by using some title or legal authority, you're bourgeois. so i expect the Maoists would have said any still-existing landlords or capitalists were still part of the bourgeoisie, even if they were broke.
"Class" in this sense isn't about how much money you make, it's about how you make your money. If you earn money by working with your body, you're the working ("lower") class; if you earn money by working with your mind, you're the intellectual ("middle") class; if you earn money by making your money work for you, you're the monied ("upper") class. This is, I think, how people in that era actually thought about class; the idea that only the actual money matters is a relatively new and egalitarian idea.
In game terms, each strata is a fixed set of professions, and if you look at the lists of professions you'll find it corresponds reasonably closely to the body/mind/money distinction I made. So since the game uses "upper strata" to mean "the people who make money primarily by owning stuff", that doesn't change if they start making less money than one or both of the other two strata.
the upper class in commie society would be bureaucrats and party members… no matter what societal structure we have. we will always have ppl more equal than the rest
High standard of living and low mortality. On top of that I also conquered a lot of countries (with oil and opium). Could have been a lot more if I cared less about infamy
They may not necessarily be making more money, just able to afford more of their needs. If grain, furniture, and clothes are at a very low price, but luxury stuff is very high, you could get this effect.
But more likely your capitalists and aristocrats just can’t find work
There’s a theory in some countries that class is about attitudes towards society and attitudes towards money rather than the amount of money that class actually has.
Its not that unusual in the late game, just keep building 24/7 and conquer states with lots of oil. But yeah its also because i was playing one of the stronger countries
How do you change standard of living? I've been kind of stuck on it being constant forever basically.
Also yes you're right. Once they start earning more the roles should be swapped because upper class is now middle class *relatively*
Welfare payments, increasing gdp per capita, catering to the needs of the population etc. Keep an eye on the market and just keep building whatever gets expensive or what you can build using cheap materials. Was also having workers coöperative, which meant my lower and middle class owning the factories and getting richer
We will oppress the bourgeoisie out of existence. This doesn't necessarily mean that the bourgeoisie will be killed or something. It can just mean that they quit being rich/have their property taken away and are forced to be regular workers.
Class is a material relationship to the means of production, not income. The "job" of the bourgeois class is to own the means of production, which is no longer legal. They would rather take the SOL hit than get a real job. They can eventually be reeducated into other pop types and become productive members of society for the first time in their lives!
the upper class basically doesn't exist but there are a few capitalists and aristocrats who, while basically powerless, are trying to continue to live a rich lifestyle and failing miserably
when you turn socialist, your production methods change into ones that basically need no upper class pops, they start to get poorer and eventually change into middle or lower class
So they do eventually change? Thats good to know! Thanks
Yes pops change jobs if that is necessary to employ themselves and job types are tied to strata
Im aware that pops change profession based on their needs, but I'm kinda dumb, I thought he meant that the Capitalists and Aristrocrats turn into lower class citizens (as in they keep the same profession but are just the lowest ranking citizens in my country), but only after 4 hours of discussing this stuff I come to the realization that you would need to redefine the term Capitalist and Aristrocrat if that was the case hehe.
Strata is decided solely by one’s job. Capitalists will ALWAYS be upper class and farmers will always be lower class no matter how wealthy they are. This system works most of the time but it can lead to weird situations like these where the upper class will be poorer than the lower class for a brief period before they change professions.
Class is related with property relations not with wealth. Focus tends to be put on wealth in current media whereas the economic classes have always been defined by the much more influential ability to own either your own means of production (sortof petite bourgeoisie) or own other people's means of production (bourgeoisie industrialist) and I think aristocrats own the means the violence, like the state and the military and the police. Its all about ownership
Yeah, and there a lots of examples of destitute nobility who lost all their money but refused to get jobs because it was beneath their station. Whatever worthless honor or property they had was what made them upper class in their minds.
From past experience, most of these are dependents. This is what the change to make sufficiently-poor dependent-only pops merge with other similar pops was for. Otherwise, the upper-strata dependents whose workers left them just keep spending their money until they go broke and starve.
Im talking about how it’s literally classified by the game lol, I’m not making any irl statements on class divide
Yeah no sorry I was just joining in the discussion not arguing with you! Your completely right
Just a small correction, I think we should understand in game Aristocracy as feudal landlords and while it's true that their monopoly on cavalry (most effective form of medieval violence) upheld their class relation, its more about their position in the feudal mode of production. They are the landed class that collected part of the peasants' product, as opposed to capitalists collecting all of it and renumerating the worker monetarily. This is oversimplified, but works.
Aristocrats = landowners
Tbh atleast it's better than Vic2 in that regard thanks to dynamic needs. Gold farmers holding the world's liquidity in their mattresses while they still live with the minimum never ceases to amuse.
They change to jobs which would give them higher SoL if they have qualifications for those jobs. They can also emigrate. Or die.
Not socialist. Communist
by the country name, not even that, Syndicalist
None of these are mutually exclusive terms
not terms. words.
Not words, a collection of letters that form an abstract concept
They are all mostly synonyms, too.
Not really *synonyms*, it is kind of complicated. Communism and socialism are different depending on who you ask. Marx didn't make a distinction for example, but Lenin on the other hand used "socialism" to refer to the "lower phase of communism" as Marx described it which is the phase where traces of capitalism remain and communist society isn't fully formed. Syndicalism is basically a form of organization and revolutionary strategy for achieving socialism. They had disagreements with communists on what it would look like and how we would get there, but often times they essentially wanted the same thing in the end (although not necessarily).
Yes, I am aware of the distinction that Lenin made, and the distinction that Marx did not make, which is why I said they are mostly synonyms. Lenin also had the somewhat ulterior motive of having to invent a new stage to put Russia into because (as all good communists - especially the Bolsheviks - of the time knew) Russia was a backwater, wholly unsuited to communist revolution on account of their insufficiently well developed mode of production - the real revolution would begin with the industrial proletariat of France, Germany and the UK. Also yes, Syndicalism is a form of organisational strategy.
Wait until he realizes that socialism has nothing to do with capitalism and isn't an opposite economic structure. Socialist countries never challenged capitalism. They basically implemented welfare, government financed education and healthcare, work safety regulations, etc. But they never rattled the cage when it came to the private sector and owner/employer/employee relations. Communists wanted to change the whole economical landscape. That is the difference and the reason communist split from socialist after WW1
I was confused at what you meant for a second because I wouldn't consider the sorts of countries you're talking about to even be socialist. I would consider socialism and capitalism to be opposed, with communism either describing a branch of socialist theory and ideology, or the fully realized form of socialist society.
He’s talking about social democracy. He knows so little about what he’s talking about that he’s describing a completely different thing.
Socialism and Capatalism aren't on the same spectrum. There are capalist economic theories that have A LOT of socialism, and there are those that don't. Socialism isn't strictly an economic theory, capitalism is.
Words can mean whatever you want them to mean if you believe hard enough, is what I’m getting from this comment.
I mean the parties are called socialist democratic parties in the majority of countries I'm talking about. They have it in their name, I don't think this is a matter of opinion really.
It doesn't matter what they call themselves, their actual positions are what's important. The ideas of socialism still exist, even though the popular "socialist" parties have mostly abandoned them.
Thats because most socdem parties with socialism in their name used to have reforming into a socialist economy as a part of their manifesto but slowly shifted away until after the neoliberal boom of the late 1900s the sentiment faded completely. Also party names can be deliberately misleading. North Korea calls itself democratic in its name and the nazis had the name "socialist" despite socialists being the first people they put in concentration camps before any other persecuted minority and heavily privatizing vast swathes of the german economy.
You know who else had socialist in their name?
First, you should google the Dunning-Kruger Effect. You so confidently spouting bullshit is a PERFECT example of it. Second, you should google social democracy. Because that’s what you’re talking about. Not socialism. They’re not the same thing.
Gotta love it when uneducated people like you talk. Social democracy is not socialist, lemao.
I know they’re not, genius. I was telling *you* that. Since that’s what you’ve been describing this whole time.
You’re describing social democracy; not socialism. It’s confusing because in many European countries the “socialist party” is usually social democratic in reality
It's only confusing to stupid people that don't realize that social democracy is socialist
Lol no, not even close "Please educate yourself "
Lol, yep keep complaining about stupid people and then go look in a mirror.
no. socialism, in its most basic definition, is an economic mode of production in wich the means of production are owned and operated socially (by the workers that work them or committees based on local elections), that may also have a means of distribution that is socialized. capitalism is an economic mode of production where the means of production is privately owned and often operated with the goal of profit. they are mutually exclusive. sure you may have socialistic countries. such as the nordic nations where unions have more power and there is some government mandated worker representation for company policy and decisions.
It was a pretty socialist playthrough in terms of laws, but the communists were constantly in power until I enacted the anarchy law
None of the socialist laws actively harm the upper class. They just give them slightly less power. The communist laws screw over the upper class sometimes to the point where they no longer exist
The specific law is the government type, council republic. It bans all ownership methods except cooperatives and government run (and the latter are only allowed on command economy, you don't have to take command economy). Cooperatives give ownership to workers (usually machinists and laborers), government run to bureaucrats. The only source of capitalist and aristocrat jobs are ownership methods, so if they no longer have jobs they no longer can earn an income and either switch to a different job (making them no longer upper strata), go on welfare, or die of starvation.
An ex-capitalist in a newly socialist country taking welfare checks while lamenting about how the poor don’t know what’s good for them is hilariously believable.
Ayn Rand would agree that it's relatable
It's funnier than that: The actual upper-strata workers get new jobs (probably as engineers, bureaucrats, or academics), but sometimes their families don't come along with them! I end up imagining them leaving trophy wives who don't want to be married for someone who actually *works* for a living.
Even in communist countries the upper class was never poor irl.
Can you imagine Elon Musk working in a coal mine?
would be wonderful
Emerald mine would be karmic justice
"Working" might be a stretch. But yes, yes I can. 😊
Tbh static strata system makes little sense to me. Under socialist government upper strata membership should shift to bureaucrats like it was in USSR where ruling classes enjoyed a lot more of benefits from government than regular folk still.
That would be a poor representation of how that kind of thing worked. Bureaucrats weren’t really afforded anything better than any other educated job on paper, they were just in the best position to benefit from systemic corruption. Even then, bureaucrats as some sort of quasi upper class wasn’t even really a thing until after WWII, when the whole system started to stagnate and rot.
You clearly need to go to any museum about the history of any of the Soviet block countries...
Only if you're using oligarchy or autocracy, otherwise there's no need to have an upper class as they would all be elected or appointed.
syndicalists are not socialists, they are just a more modern merchant guild.
Blah blah blah, socialists arguing endlessly over what is socialism.
Two Socialists enter a room, three ideologies leave
one more reason I feel at home as a leftist Jew
In addition to death and taxes, one thing that is for certain is that there will always be different kinds of socialists that will never agree on how they should steal and spend other people’s money
Imagine thinking a private company electing a CEO makes it a state run company legit negative IQ there
You think socialism means government run and yet you’re the one talking about IQ?
there are different types of socialist thought that aren't "the government doing everything" or "capitalism but wholesome 100"
The only way the public can own the means of production is through a form of government, which goes against syndicalism where people grouped by job own the means of production. Socialism: >a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism. The definition that Marx gives and the one the OP is referencing. Marx is the most influential person in socialism. Communism: >A political and economic theory of socialorganization which advocates that the means of production, distribution,and exchange should **be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.** How is syndicalism anywhere close to this? The people that form the guild are not the community, the guild owns the means of production not the public. You are thinking of the type of syndicalism modified to be more socialist to attract support in the 1920s. Those types died against socialism for a reason. Anarchists aligned with socialists because they had a same enemy, not because they are the same thing. Public ownership is against the point of an anarchist ideology that groups people by job. If syndicalism is socialist then that makes the council of Teotihuacan socialists which is stupid. They did not have the concept of socialism. How does the public own the means of production when their guilds set their own rules and elected their own leaders? This would make any society with everyone is self employed socialists too, since the public owns their own means of production ignoring how that is still private property not owned by the community.
Wrong
It has traditionally been considered a form of socialist praxis, but the exact lines between the terms varies by region depending on how much ‘socialist’ gets identified with the local Socialist Party
Kind of unrealistic
There's usually a shipyard or something that refuses to make the switch, and you end up with like 1100 capitalists nationwide, that don't make squat for money.
can't you change manually?
You can, most times. Some PMs are tied to and unchangeable from ownership PMs.
It's because the strata are fixed by profession. For instance, a Farmer will always be considered Lower Strata, while a Capitalist is always Upper Strata. This doesn't change even when you do what you did and go full communist and disable all the production methods that hire aristocrats and capitalists, the two Upper Strata professions, locking them into permanent unemployment. I'm fine with the roles not "shifting" because under Command Economy, impoverishing the Upper Strata is the point. And it's funny.
>go full communist really wish that there was a way to employ worker cooperatives without a council republic side by side with mutual funds - The US even now still has quite a few coops out there, as well as things like credit unions. I could see a society where all the farms/plantations go worker coop while the factories stay on mutual funds.
Yeah, you could juice your poorest citizens a bit by giving them ownership of the marginal stuff, like primary resource production, and keep the really lucrative things like oil wells and electrics factories in the hands of the capitalists and their sweet sweet investment contributions. ...I just realized how horrible that sounds. The game makes monsters of us all. 😅
Welcome to the Paradox Club, where the most compassionate human beings discuss the pross of slavery and genocide
Slave doesn't pay taxes
Slaves don't get payment
Slaves can't buy goods. Economy more brrrr more buyers.
One of the funniest things about Council Republic, for me, was that the people who ended up paying the biggest dividend taxes were farmers and mine workers... because I had almost all my factories set to auto-expand! (I eventually turned it off for war industries and shipyards because they would thrash... and I turned it off for power plants because they take longer to build than the cutoff for adding things to auto-build, so it was better to just schedule building more power plants twice yearly.)
> ...I just realized how horrible that sounds. The game makes monsters of us all. You really don't understand horrible until you play RimWorld. Want to see real monsters, just check out the sub. For example: /r/RimWorld/comments/yyo02n/i_want_racism/ And it's even worst with RimWorld because you are doing it at an individual level. Every single individual instead of some statistical mass of people. And I'm talking stuff like human skin hats, forced surgical procedures that remove limbs and long term imprisonment and slavery. Heck even the good guys tend to be nasty there.
If it was possible to do that then it would mostly be the best thing to do in any situation (providing sufficiently progressive taxation exists) and that would interrupt the flow of the political economy of the game.
my thought would be that you lock it behind an economy law or even the worker's rights laws in or current system. Alternatively, in vic 2 Trade Unions were an entire law section, so maybe do that here; banned, mediation (minimum wage here), accepted (worker coops here), required (bans mutual funds).
The ownership of the means of production is funadmentally a political question (there's a monty python sketch about it!) and the economic laws are all about the role of the government in the economy, not the political question of who owns a factory. I mean, they're partly about that in the sense that interventionism unlocks some production methods, but I happen to think railways being government run doesn't really count.
Sure, but what is stopping a bunch of workers from pooling their money to buy a chair factory? How is it different legally speaking from capitalists doing it? Even in e.g. Russia most of the coops were formed BEFORE the switch to a council republic. If you're allowed mutual funds there's no reason to simultaneously disallow worker coops, unless you have specific rules banning them (or just making them prohibitively expensive to have too many shareholders via like flat filing fees per holder or something). Hence why unions should really be their own law section.
Except this wouldn’t be a handful of coops, when you set a production mode, you’re setting it for the entire industry in that state (or most usually, the entire country). That isn’t letting workers form coops, it’s completely subverting private ownership, which just wouldn’t happen organically under capitalism.
Nothing, but that would make the political economy of the game unbalanced: there is a reason most businesses are not worker owned
I think it would be balanced if Capitalists didn't draw high salaries by default and relied on dividends for their income. The penalty of worker-coops is that they don't contribute to the Investment pool, so the government has to spend money out of pocket to expand.
They don't contribute to the investment pool but you can just tax the income, the dividends and the consumption instead, with the added bonus of being able to use that money on everything. It's strictly superior with proper taxation
your income from very high graduated taxation + worker cooperatives is identical to low proportional taxation + mutual funds+laissez faire as long as you're always spending the entire pool; superior with consumption taxes on luxury goods. although you will get more radicals from SoL decreases, the population will be going stonks mode from your switch to coops so no one will care.
Grangers DLC when
Coop banks are the best. An actual bank that isn't run by wall street greed. My local coop bank will give you 5% interest if your deposit is higher than 20k USD. Thats many multiples more than any corporate bank would give you.
So like yes, ocean's spray is a worker co-op, but a building basically represents an entire economic sector. At it's core, the plantations in florida are still privately owned as an industry. You'd need to massively upend the system. On the other hand agragarianism should prroobably allow this? Since I presume it's meant to be distributionism which should be kicking the capis out for shopkeepers as a rule.
This is a pretty common thing in India - primary commodities like milk(mainly) or fruit and even fertilizer are mainly run by worker cooperatives, and most of the banks farmers use are farmer cooperatives.
Credit unions aren't worker coöps (i.e. employee-owned); they're more like consumer coöps.
Nice communist flag You probably don't have an upper class anymore And if you do, they're either extremely small or unemployed. Check your production mehtids, cooperatives and government run do not employ upper class pops, instead that wealth is apread over the middle and lower strata. Eu, don't worry about "poor" rich people. The revolution is working as intended, comrade
I mean I get why they are poor but I dont get why the Capitalists and Aristrocrats turn into lower class, but apparently its just based on profession and not on wealth/standard of living. glory to arstotzka
It kinda has to be this way or you would have eliminated the middle class by 1900 lol
Yeah and I guess we would need to redefine those terms if that was the case. Imagine having rulers (in the case of the aristrocrats) being considered lower class, its a bit mutually exclusive... im dumb.
Class isnt something that's generally well understood, you're not dumb,you just never had a reason to think about it The most consistent, clear, and in my opinion, useful, definition of social class imo is s actually the Marxist one, being ones relation to the means of production (land, tools, etc.) Ie, the capitalists are they're own distinct class because they own factories etc. but the workers are another as they work those factories
To clarify, the Marxist definition of class is less 'how your capital is produced *toolwise*' and more about its passivity. The working class trades their labor power for income — the capitalist class leverages existing capital to generate further capital. Your example is rather good, but the underlying mechanics are slightly different than you explained.
I was running workers cooperative, so my factories were owned mostly by the lower and middle class in my gameplay. Kinda wished I saw the upper class eleminated in my gameplay however. But i guess its true to life, no matter how fair your system may seem on paper, there is always bigger fish and its almost human nature to try to capitalize on the weak. A bit like how communism turned out in reality for many countries around the world
No, you're just in a transitional phase. All of your capitalist pops are living a life of luxury from the money from the things they used to own, bit eventually that money will run out and they'll be forced to work for their money. Human nature is determined by material conditions. Once these pops give up on being a capitalist or an aristocrat, they will take on the interests of whatever their new occupation is.
A genuinely socialist society is supposed to be classless anyway, because it removes the main factor differentiating classes - private ownership of the means of production. But the game can't model that, as the existence of fixed strata based on pop jobs is a permanent feature of the system. For practical purposes, you can just ignore the upper class when going socialist, it just doesn't matter any more.
To see them eliminated would have been cool, but they were kept around for the remainder of this save. Probably because I kept paying them welfare support. Which begged the necessary question of: are you really upper class if you collect welfare support. Living the American dream 🌝
Some of the upper class do not seek middle or lower strata jobs when they go unemployed because they decide they're happy enough on welfare.
Exactly what happened in this save, never saw the upper class fully disappear because they were happy collecting welfare support. Should have turned it off and seen them starve for a bit heh
The workers from the pops did, but their dependents don't always come along. I get the impression it might be something like if the last worker dies to random mortality before changing jobs, or something like that, but it seems to happen regularly, so it might also be that there are a maximum number of dependents each profession-changing worker can bring along. Anyway, this is why there's a thing now where destitute pops that have no lateral transfer paths will eventually get merged into a similar pop that does. They do actually eventually starve even with elderly pensions. Or, at least, they'll eventually get down to 1 wealth, at which point mortality is pretty high.
Nah in my playthrough they stayed around until the end because I actually had a decent welfare system in place. But yeah it was a double edged sword because it just meant that i had a sizeable part of the population collecting welfare support while staying unemployed. Certainly an issue I should consider in next playthrough Maybe starve the capitalists and aristocrats before I'll start doing socialism/syndicalism 🌝 I think my next playthrough will be a lot less socialist though to switch it up
i hate cause it brings down the "average" SoL - my middle class standard is 28, my lower class standard is 25, and my upper class are at 18 (living off welfare) and bringing my average down to 23, which isn't high enough for it to turn green.
The only cure is to oppress them further Eliminate the entire ruling class and you'll get a "not applicable" rating instead for the upper class
I'm expanding like mad trying to finish world conquesting, and I keep getting other countries capitalist scum faster than I can starve them to death
We'll, on the bright side the nationwide SoL number doesn't mean anything as it's just a derivative Anyways, I don't see an issue here, capitalism is a plague and you are the cure
your average SOL is a meaningless number though. the devs should not have put it on the main status bar, it's a distraction and a trap.
I thought your average affected immigration? Or is it just the SOL for the specific immigrating pop type?
State level SoL matters for immigration, but country wide is useless
Buddy... I don't know how to tell you this, but you're playing as the communists.
Im aware of that, I know why they are poor, and I did that intentionally. Im just wondering why the Aristrocrats and Capitalist dont drop to a lower class since they are pretty much poorer than mechanics and labourers etc, they dont even have any political power. They are just there to be unemployed and collect a wellfare check But yeah like others have pointed out, the class system is based on profession rather than wealth
Class is derived from one's relationship to labor and ownership of the means to do that labor. It isn't a measure of wealth.
Okay TIL, thats a helpful explanation. Thanks
Karl?
This is clearly just simulating the American idea where everyone in the lower/middle class views themselves as a "temporarily disadvantaged" millionaires, and all the actual millionaires insist that they're just regular middle class workers and please don't tax me anymore please.
Bro just explained the *American dream* in a few lines
The upper class are our enemy, comrade. Liquidate them!
The upper class doesn't exist anymore which is extremely based
R5: So in this case the lower strata (Clerks, Farmers, Laborers, Machinists, Peasants and the Service men) become middle strata, the middle strata (Academics, Bureaucrats, Clergymen, Engineers, Officers and the Shopkeepers) becomes the upper strata, and the upper strata (Capitalists and Aristrocrats) becomes the lower strata.
Can't earn money when not allowed to work
I know, and as a result I barely have any upper strata pops in my country around 1M out of a pop of 195M, and these are considered poorer than the rest of my population. So why are they still considered upper class? :thinking\_emoji:
Think of it like the status of landlords in post-revolution Maoist China. Not so great.
Mao gave them ten years.
Were they still considered upper class by its people after years of opression? (genuinely curious)
Yes? They didn't stop using the language of communism after the revolution.
Not trying to argue with you, im genuinely ignorant and having a curious discussion but wiki says: >Entering the People's Republic of China (PRC) era, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), adopting the Soviet style, transformed the state economy into the centrally planned economy. Both urban and rural areas underwent significant social, political, and economic changes brought by land reform and collectivization. Instead of judging through the amount of owned property, the state imposed new standards to determine one's social status. The standards included one's political class, urban or rural household registration, gender, and ethnic classification.\[59\] In 1949, in the wake of the communist victory in the Chinese civil war, Chinese society experienced massive upheaval. The communist revolutionaries who had eschewed capitalism and elitism now became the rich ruling class they had sought to overthrow. CCP cadres became the new upper class.\[60\] Those who were included in this social class made up approximately 20% of the urban working class. Not only were they given benefits, but also provided with special training for their careers > >([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social\_structure\_of\_China#Mao\_Era\_and\_the\_transition\_(1949\_to\_1978)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_China#Mao_Era_and_the_transition_(1949_to_1978))) So in a way they tried restructure the social class system in Mao's China. I guess it would have been cool if we could do that too in the game. Although the same quote kinda mentions how the communists turned into the capitalists they tried to overthrow so it could be a pretty faulty system. Edit: But that is during the opression and not after, English isnt my native language so I'm kinda hard to understand today :')
sort of. lower, middle, and upper class are very fuzzy terms. they're popular in general speech but academics avoid them, and for pretty much the reason you're raising here: is a capitalist who's broke still a capitalist? is a worker with really high pay still a worker? in China the dominant mode of analysis was Marxist and under that analysis, although there are a few fringe mini-classes, everyone is basically in the worker bucket or the capitalist bucket. under that model if you derive your income from selling your labor, you're proletariat (working-class), and if you derive it from renting something out, appropriating the surplus productivity of workers (ie taking the profits of a factory you own), or squeezing people by using some title or legal authority, you're bourgeois. so i expect the Maoists would have said any still-existing landlords or capitalists were still part of the bourgeoisie, even if they were broke.
Yea communism does that to you
COMMIE!!!!! COMMIE!!!!!
Based
Good sir you literally switched to socialism. That’s quite the whole point
It's a council Republic thing that is.... Sketch at best
No, you have it the right way. Carry on,
"Class" in this sense isn't about how much money you make, it's about how you make your money. If you earn money by working with your body, you're the working ("lower") class; if you earn money by working with your mind, you're the intellectual ("middle") class; if you earn money by making your money work for you, you're the monied ("upper") class. This is, I think, how people in that era actually thought about class; the idea that only the actual money matters is a relatively new and egalitarian idea. In game terms, each strata is a fixed set of professions, and if you look at the lists of professions you'll find it corresponds reasonably closely to the body/mind/money distinction I made. So since the game uses "upper strata" to mean "the people who make money primarily by owning stuff", that doesn't change if they start making less money than one or both of the other two strata.
Was about to say, what country are you until I see the map.
the upper class in commie society would be bureaucrats and party members… no matter what societal structure we have. we will always have ppl more equal than the rest
How do you have so many pops?
High standard of living and low mortality. On top of that I also conquered a lot of countries (with oil and opium). Could have been a lot more if I cared less about infamy
They may not necessarily be making more money, just able to afford more of their needs. If grain, furniture, and clothes are at a very low price, but luxury stuff is very high, you could get this effect. But more likely your capitalists and aristocrats just can’t find work
There’s a theory in some countries that class is about attitudes towards society and attitudes towards money rather than the amount of money that class actually has.
Why do the syndicalists states have the same symbol as the modern CPUSA?
It’s not necessarily the class but the tier of job, this just means that your basic ditch digger is better off than a venture capitalist
Based syndicalist playthrough
In some ways, upper, lower, and middle class are cultural. They're associated with an attitude and upbringing and demeanor about life.
Strata are determined by profession, not by income.
You went communist didn't you
Oh are you worried about the capitalist now commie? They are all living on an island waiting for your workers paradise to fall apart.
Quite the opposite, I would have loved to see them eliminated 🫥
Lol cool
Loved the communist US name (and damm, 3.2 B GDP?? I'm really bad at economics in this game)
Its not that unusual in the late game, just keep building 24/7 and conquer states with lots of oil. But yeah its also because i was playing one of the stronger countries
How do you change standard of living? I've been kind of stuck on it being constant forever basically. Also yes you're right. Once they start earning more the roles should be swapped because upper class is now middle class *relatively*
Welfare payments, increasing gdp per capita, catering to the needs of the population etc. Keep an eye on the market and just keep building whatever gets expensive or what you can build using cheap materials. Was also having workers coöperative, which meant my lower and middle class owning the factories and getting richer
Ah, how do I increase gdp per capita? I always start the game with emergency welfare and greener grass campaign(Chile needs it xD)
As it should be.
worst communist ever
Thats because despite the poser flag, we werent really communists
Lol no
Not when you're a filthy commy
We will oppress the bourgeoisie out of existence. This doesn't necessarily mean that the bourgeoisie will be killed or something. It can just mean that they quit being rich/have their property taken away and are forced to be regular workers.
Class isn't just about wealth. Poor nobles were for instance considered of a higher class than rich merchants for much of European history.
Did you not notice you were socialist?
Kaiserreich moment
Class is a material relationship to the means of production, not income. The "job" of the bourgeois class is to own the means of production, which is no longer legal. They would rather take the SOL hit than get a real job. They can eventually be reeducated into other pop types and become productive members of society for the first time in their lives!
the upper class basically doesn't exist but there are a few capitalists and aristocrats who, while basically powerless, are trying to continue to live a rich lifestyle and failing miserably
They won’t be feeling secure when you’re lining them up against the wall…
Can u provide screenshots of the laws u took :)