gauging interest: rebirth of the socialist international

[Hereno]

why not 100% taxation for common thing?

 

in all honesty, it amazes me that people actually join alliances who tax at a 100% rate. why the !@#$ would you want the alliance to literally control everything about your nation to the point of not even being able to actually play the damn thing yourself? 

 

for a while, at the beginning, we did it at a 50/50 rate, just so we could suck money out of our inactives and redistribute it, but by the end, we were down to between 5-10%, depending on the needs of the alliance. personally, i think taxing at a higher rate than 5-10% is just ridiculous. like i get that the game is all about minmaxing to the point of absurdity but goddamn. plus, letting people keep their money let them experiment themselves and bring back information about what works and what doesn't.

[Phiney]

Context for newbies/trip down memory lane: https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3300-i-provided-the-logs-that-set-off-the-powderkeg-who-are-you-in-all-of-this/

For anyone having a jolly good time reading /rereading this, the war ended by our terms being met and Hereno stepping down.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

Ranting

I'm not going to even read this garbage until you learn to use paragraphs and proper grammar.

 

"Marxist-Leninists" have established more long-lasting states in the actual real-world than your political line ever has Hereno. You will forever he arguing on the internet and your politics will never have any influence anywhere.

 

Also the "anarchists" in the Ukraine were bandits led by a military dictatorship.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Hereno]

I'm not going to even read this garbage until you learn to use paragraphs and proper grammar.

 

"Marxist-Leninists" have established more long-lasting states in the actual real-world than your political line ever has Hereno. You will forever he arguing on the internet and your politics will never have any influence anywhere.

 

Also the "anarchists" in the Ukraine were bandits led by a military dictatorship.

 

why is it that everybody who i destroy just goes "hurr durr you don't use capital letters, i'm not even gonna read what you have to say"?

 

there's worse things in the world than being wrong

 

i guess the anarchists in kronstadt were a bunch of bandits or "whites" or whatever other excuse you have for massacring them, too, mr. "we need to have constant mass killings of people in the party at all times to make sure there are no capitalists"

 

the anarchists in spain were doing pretty great too until you Stalinist !@#$ started helping the actual literal none other than Francisco Franco kill them

Edited April 11, 2016 by Hereno

[Sabcat]

I'm not going to even read this garbage until you learn to use paragraphs and proper grammar.

 

"Marxist-Leninists" have established more long-lasting states in the actual real-world than your political line ever has Hereno. You will forever he arguing on the internet and your politics will never have any influence anywhere.

 

Also the "anarchists" in the Ukraine were bandits led by a military dictatorship.

 

What sort of weak, mealy mouthed crap is this? Leninism, by it's own measure has  never done anything but fail.  What makes Leninism and Leninists unique is their inability to see what's wrong with the ideas, instead it's reality that's at fault.  The continued clinging to this dead ideology is no less insane that Fukuyama's declaration of the end of history.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

You know Hereno Trotsky had an interesting thing to say about the Ukrainian anarchists:

 

Since the Makhnovists are sitting on the railway branch-line from Mariupol, they are refusing to allow the coal and grain to leave except in exchange for other supplies. It has come about that, while rejecting the “state power†created by the workers and peasants of the whole country, the Makhnovists leadership has organized its own little semi-piratical power, which dares to bar the way for the Soviet power of the Ukraine and all of Russia. Instead of the country’s economy being properly organized according to a general plan and conception, and instead of a co-operative, socialist and uniform distribution of all the necessary products, the Makhnovists are trying to establish domination by gangs and bands: whoever has grabbed something is its rightful owner, and can then exchange it for whatever he hasn’t got. This is not products-exchange but commodity-stealing

 

Funny that sounds exactly like the policy of you and your Pirate friends here in P&W...

Edited April 11, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Andrezj Kolarov]

What sort of weak, mealy mouthed crap is this? Leninism, by it's own measure has  never done anything but fail.  What makes Leninism and Leninists unique is their inability to see what's wrong with the ideas, instead it's reality that's at fault.  The continued clinging to this dead ideology is no less insane that Fukuyama's declaration of the end of history.

Fail? Under Stalin's Five-Year Plans the USSR had the largest industrial and electricity output in the world. The country went from having practically zero industry to having iron and steel industry, aircraft industry, automobile industries, tractor and machine-tool industry, modern chemical industry, a coal and metallurgical industry, a textile industry. This industry exists to this day and is this the industrial base of Russia. What industrial achievements do Hereno's anarchists have which exist to this day?

 

Also funny how every single one of your criticisms of Leninism is word-for-word the exact same "communism has failed" criticism of the capitalist right-wing press.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Sabcat]

Fail? Under Stalin's Five-Year Plans the USSR had the largest industrial and electricity output in the world. The country went from having practically zero industry to having iron and steel industry, aircraft industry, automobile industries, tractor and machine-tool industry, modern chemical industry, a coal and metallurgical industry, a textile industry. This industry exists to this day and is this the industrial base of Russia. What industrial achievements do Hereno's anarchists have which exist to this day?

 

Also funny how every single one of your criticisms of Leninism is word-for-word the exact same "communism has failed" criticism of the capitalist right-wing press.

 

So that was the Leninist project, industrialise a largely agrarian society of the course of a few generations so that......it could be handed over to free market capital? Absolute shite, the Leninist project was supposed to be a transitional step on the path to communism. It failed.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

So that was the Leninist project, industrialise a largely agrarian society of the course of a few generations so that......it could be handed over to free market capital? Absolute shite, the Leninist project was supposed to be a transitional step on the path to communism. It failed.

You really ought to educate yourself, there's many works which detail exactly how the USSR restored capitalism:

http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/

[Sabcat]

You really ought to educate yourself, there's many works which detail exactly how the USSR restored capitalism:

http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/

 

You seem to misunderstand. I'm not talking about the internal policies of the USSR, I'm talking about its dissolution.

[Andrezj Kolarov]

You seem to misunderstand. I'm not talking about the internal policies of the USSR, I'm talking about its dissolution.

Same thing, the policies eventually led to perestroika/glasnost, which led to the dissolution.

[Hereno]

You know Hereno Trotsky had an interesting thing to say about the Ukrainian anarchists:

 

Since the Makhnovists are sitting on the railway branch-line from Mariupol, they are refusing to allow the coal and grain to leave except in exchange for other supplies. It has come about that, while rejecting the “state power†created by the workers and peasants of the whole country, the Makhnovists leadership has organized its own little semi-piratical power, which dares to bar the way for the Soviet power of the Ukraine and all of Russia. Instead of the country’s economy being properly organized according to a general plan and conception, and instead of a co-operative, socialist and uniform distribution of all the necessary products, the Makhnovists are trying to establish domination by gangs and bands: whoever has grabbed something is its rightful owner, and can then exchange it for whatever he hasn’t got. This is not products-exchange but commodity-stealing

 

Funny that sounds exactly like the policy of you and your Pirate friends here in P&W...

 

http://www.ditext.com/arshinov/voline.html

 

i intend to read through arshinov's account of the makhnovschina in more detail and let you know. the link i gave is a preface written by voline. you can click the link at the top and go to the appendix and read some of the declarations they made. you can see what their flag is, as well. my nation's biography is something that they went around posting everywhere. they were interested in creating free soviets and they also disregarded the cheka and declared that bolshevik policies such as the draft did not apply in their territory. i don't claim to be an expert, but i do know that the ussr had a long history of suppressing perfectly good anarchist movements based on their being anarchist movements; you cannot make these claims about, say, the CNT/FAI, so even if you were to be right about the free territory, which i don't think you are, it would mean nothing, as within 3 decades the soviet union would have allied itself with fascists twice and done so against anarchists.

[Sabcat]

Same thing, the policies eventually led to perestroika/glasnost, which led to the dissolution.

 

Which is, however you look at it, a failure of Leninism. The cod science dialectic is/was/always will be utterly meaningless when looking forwards. That's the failure of Marxism and by extension Leninism with the added bastardisation of "class consciousness" into a liberal justification for a ruling class.  

[Andrezj Kolarov]

Which is, however you look at it, a failure of Leninism. The cod science dialectic is/was/always will be utterly meaningless when looking forwards. That's the failure of Marxism and by extension Leninism with the added bastardisation of "class consciousness" into a liberal justification for a ruling class.  

Mistakes were made, and mistakes can be learned from. Of course I'm in favor of a "ruling class", it's just that I'd prefer that the workers be the ruling class (who constitute the vast majority of society) rather than the bourgeoisie.

 

The reality is, it is impossible to be a revolutionary without also being an authoritarian, all revolutions are about imposing a central authority which represses its opponents and denies them free speech or rights. The French Revolution replaced feudalism with bourgeois "democracy", it did so by inflicting terror on its enemies and thousands of aristocrats and clergy; the opponents of the new Republic. A socialist state, which replaces bourgeois "democracy" with socialist dictatorship of the masses would naturally be extremely repressive against former capitalists, landowners, military officers, criminals and other opponents.

 

The opponents of Leninism seem to live in some shiny Ivory Tower where revolution is a completely rosy picture where no one dies. I mean look what Engels had to say on the topic:

 

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

- Engels (On Authority)

Edited April 11, 2016 by Andrezj Kolarov

[Bilal the Great]

You stay away from my exploitation of the poor.

[Sabcat]

Mistakes were made, and mistakes can be learned from. Of course I'm in favor of a "ruling class", it's just that I'd prefer that the workers be the ruling class (who constitute the vast majority of society) rather than the bourgeoisie.

 

The reality is, it is impossible to be a revolutionary without also being an authoritarian, all revolutions are about imposing a central authority which represses its opponents and denies them free speech or rights. The French Revolution replaced feudalism with bourgeois "democracy", it did so by inflicting terror on its enemies and thousands of aristocrats and clergy; the opponents of the new Republic. A socialist state, which replaces bourgeois "democracy" with socialist dictatorship of the masses would naturally be extremely repressive against former capitalists, landowners, military officers, criminals and other opponents.

 

The opponents of Leninism seem to live in some shiny Ivory Tower where revolution is a completely rosy picture where no one dies. I mean look what Engels had to say on the topic:

 

So much confusion in one post and a handy little straw man as well - In my criticisms of Leninism I've not once mentioned an aversion to violence.

 

The problem Leninists and Marxists generally have is that if they are to be believed they're agents of history, the collapse of capitalism through class struggle is inevitable whether that ushers in communism or barbarism. The problem with this is, it's largely bollocks. Soviet thinkers knew this, Nikolai Kondratiev and his wave theory is probably the most notable, of course although he might well have been right (and the intervening 70 years since his execution have largely vindicated him), he was imprisoned and then shot. Reality is a persistent bastard and has no respect for the Central Committee which is why there isn't one any more.

[Ayayay]

-snip-

3 things

 

1. You were the 2nd "major" AA to be attacked. TAC fought back just fine and didn't roll over to TC despite actually being outnumbered

2. If you weren't active 80% of the time why would you be the alliances leader? Even Steve is around more than that.

3. So you didn't recruit anyone yet still had not a single member capable of doing anything but failing, got it.

 

I think the most telling part is that major members of SI, like Fox-Fire, had only 3 cities at the time of war despite the fact that the avg for mass recruitment AA's was that number. Gov and active members within TC were at least 5 and we fought a !@#$ war.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Metro

[Avruch]

Sure, ready for round 2!

[Ole]

Sure, ready for round 2!

 

Sounds fun, we'll crash that party too!

[Hereno]

3 things

 

1. You were the 2nd "major" AA to be attacked. TAC fought back just fine and didn't roll over to TC despite actually being outnumbered

2. If you weren't active 80% of the time why would you be the alliances leader? Even Steve is around more than that.

3. So you didn't recruit anyone yet still had not a single member capable of doing anything but failing, got it.

 

I think the most telling part is that major members of SI, like Fox-Fire, had only 3 cities at the time of war despite the fact that the avg for mass recruitment AA's was that number. Gov and active members within TC were at least 5 and we fought a !@#$ war.

 

What are you even talking about?

 

I was active but I'm only one person.

 

You're just in here being a dick, and I honestly doubt you even remember the city counts that people had. I don't even remember that for my own nation. Shoo, you and the rest.

[Ayayay]

What are you even talking about?

 

I was active but I'm only one person.

 

You're just in here being a dick, and I honestly doubt you even remember the city counts that people had. I don't even remember that for my own nation. Shoo, you and the rest.

Yea, I skimmed your post and I thought you said you weren't active 80% of the time, my bad.

 

Anyways, I remember it specifically because I was pointing out how worthless SocInt was to the rest of TC while you were getting rolled. A couple guys said we should help you against TEsts "bullshit war" and I went out of my way to rip that idea apart. I initially did it because you're a worthless PoS and I wanted as many reasons, no matter how meaningless they were, to not bother with you and let you get rolled. But even I was utterly shocked by how shit your AA was. The worst part was there was no reason for SI to be in that decrepit state.

 

Early game Guardian/TAC/others launched a massive anti-raider initiative which cost them a shitton of early game growth. Then the TC vs TAC war had TAC get beat down while their allies sent them resources that SI should have been selling for an easy boost as Steve and others did (Steve stayed #1 for months because of the money he made off that war). The latter could be excused because of your treaty to EoS but you guys didn't have any sort of top tier comparable to Guardian/SK/TEst and there was no benefit for us to do anything but sit back and lol as TEst rekt you. Even though I knew TC was their next target (although I will admit, Hypocrisy war came sooner than I expected) there was absolutely 0 benefit to us helping you. Even if we did intervene and no one helped TEst and we had an easy win, it wouldn't have !@#$ mattered. Your alliance was comparable to one that was 1/3rd your age and could only exist as a liability to TC. The worst part is even if people don't like you, if you're strong enough people will still want to sign treaties at least to use you as a meatshield or lap dog. Alarms should have gone off in your head when TC blew you off after EoS collapsed that you were doing something horribly wrong.

 

 

tl;dr Everything you touch turns to garbage and a !@#$ 14 year old noob could build and lead an alliance better than you ever could.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Metro

[Hereno]

Yea, I skimmed your post and I thought you said you weren't active 80% of the time, my bad.

 

Anyways, I remember it specifically because I was pointing out how worthless SocInt was to the rest of TC while you were getting rolled. A couple guys said we should help you against TEsts "bullshit war" and I went out of my way to rip that idea apart. I initially did it because you're a worthless PoS and I wanted as many reasons, no matter how meaningless they were, to not bother with you and let you get rolled. But even I was utterly shocked by how shit your AA was. The worst part was there was no reason for SI to be in that decrepit state.

 

Early game Guardian/TAC/others launched a massive anti-raider initiative which cost them a shitton of early game growth. Then the TC vs TAC war had TAC get beat down while their allies sent them resources that SI should have been selling for an easy boost as Steve and others did (Steve stayed #1 for months because of the money he made off that war). The latter could be excused because of your treaty to EoS but you guys didn't have any sort of top tier comparable to Guardian/SK/TEst and there was no benefit for us to do anything but sit back and lol as TEst rekt you. Even though I knew TC was their next target (although I will admit, Hypocrisy war came sooner than I expected) there was absolutely 0 benefit to us helping you. Even if we did intervene and no one helped TEst and we had an easy win, it wouldn't have !@#$ mattered. Your alliance was comparable to one that was 1/3rd your age and could only exist as a liability to TC. The worst part is even if people don't like you, if you're strong enough people will still want to sign treaties at least to use you as a meatshield or lap dog. Alarms should have gone off in your head when TC blew you off after EoS collapsed that you were doing something horribly wrong.

 

 

tl;dr Everything you touch turns to garbage and a !@#$ 14 year old noob could build and lead an alliance better than you ever could.

 

lmao

 

tell me how you really feel now

[Peter Quill]

I actually would be interested in this, yes. Someone here needs to counter the amount of Stormfront presence on this site.

Stormfront presence = this guy

[Hereno]

Are you joking? 

 

 

Stormfront presence = this guy

 

norden verein in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) was a stormfront invasion alliance

 

forcing them to use the odal didn't change who they were, and many of them are irl white supremacists. one of their members was the leader of the american front who punched geraldo rivera in the face (although this is forgivable, to me) and was wanted in connection with the irl murder of black people

 

a combination of their and other members, when they came to P&W, were reusing actual nazi propaganda to push their alliance

 

we managed to get sheepy to force them to quit by making a black nationalist alliance bent on conquering europe and enslaving white people - he could only get rid of us by getting rid of the nazis and still be consistent in his moderation - this is the origin of the anti-nazi rule on this website. we had to make it about white people and europeans before any of you children got the point.

 

and just because they cannot now openly be nazis doesn't mean sheepy hasn't shown them a lot of sympathy. probably because they donated, but jorg haider and the others in the RNG were allowed to use images of hitler and talk about massacring the jews in a holocaust in their factbooks, as well as openly identify as german fascist nationalists (in all but name only, they were a nazi alliance, and still remain a "german nationalist" alliance)

 

we recently had an alliance try to be vikings by using the odal rune that nordreich used for close to a decade on their flag as a substitute for banned nazi imagery in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) in P&W

 

most of you support the freedom of speech of nazis and the bent of the forums is largely to the right, with many of the ostensible "leftists" irl quick to defend the "right" of the nazis to talk about massacring many of the users here irl (nazis killed jews, roma, communists, dissidents, catholic priests, homosexuals, among others)

 

terminus est, among other alliances, is practically entirely filled with far-right wing politics of this nature. mensa seems to have a lot of these people as well. i don't think it's any surprise that they follow me around like dogs, barking whenever i post, and they're also the two alliances who originally attacked SI back in the day anyway. RGE now has 30+ members, despite two of them (including the leader) ostensibly being exiled from the alliance for having actual nazi views

 

this site has one of the strongest far-right wing presences i've seen anywhere else on the internet, barring stormfront and 4chan (maybe 7chan too, i don't really go there). and i don't really go to breitbart, etc. and who !@#$ing cares about those shitholes. so, no, i don't think he's joking. it's actually kind of disgusting.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Hereno

[Woot]

Since I joined last October I've only seen some irrelevant micros called RGE on the far right, and I've seen SWF, IR, Charming Friends, and more on the far left.

 

Not only are there more on the left, they're far more accepted, in game and on the forums. What do you honestly think would've happened if you'd started, for example, a thread called "Gauging interest - Fourth Reich Alliance"? 

 

To show this, let's check the embargoes page and list the first 10 embargo reasons we see that are obviously motivated by left/right ideology (ignoring repeats by/against the same people):

"Jingoism and slavery is no good"

"nazi's are scum"

"Solidarity with Palestine"

"anarchist"

"Fascist"

"we dont accept racist people"

"He is a evil nazi"

"Confed flag is gross"

"Racism is not tolerated you piece of dirt"

"Capitalist pig"

 

Generally speaking, this place leans left, just like virtually every other internet site filled with young people. This place couldn't tolerate Trump advertisements, you think Nazis are tolerated? If you're so far left that we're all far-right from your point of view, you're too far left.

 

Personally, I hate the communists in this game as much as I hate the people who want to play Nazis or ISIS. But at the same time I love to hate them, because political rivalries make the game so much more interesting, so good luck making your alliance.