Maoist Review of Civ IV

[Murky]

He was being an idealist.

I think the correct term would be an "ideologue" or impractical idealist. These are the types that believe in their ideology so strongly that they continue on with it even if the consequences of doing so are a disaster.

 

[idle]

A crazy review, but interesting.

I do find Spock's quote on Communism quite irritating. How about "When I ask why the poor have no food, they tell me about Stalin's artificially created famine."

How about you look up on the dumping of grain and other foods to keep the price up, while people are starving all over the world?

 

[Sid the Lucid]

I read the album review of a new Neil Young album while I was there. There was basically no consideration given to the music at all. The songs were recommended solely by how Marxist they were. The reviewer decided that ultimately, the final track entitled 'America the Beautiful' killed the entire album.

Does anybody really decide what music they like this way???

 

[Gam]

What I have been consistently unable to understand as regards communism is how eliminating all teachers, doctors, artists and other intellectuals-- the so-called burgeousie-- is going to help society in the least. Should everyone dumb themselves down to a certain level? In the history of communist nations in this world, it seems as if they have to in order to evade execution for being intelligent.

 

[Gam]

Ummm...I think you must have been playing "Knights of Tiananmen Square" 'cause I sure as hell didn't get that message from KOTOR.

Haha... yes, in light of this fact you've brought up, his comment is indeed dripping with irony, not to mention slathered with hypocricy.

Perhaps he should look at the fact that after the communist 'revolutions,' incredibly bloody campaigns were waged against those attempting to incite a 'revolution,' not to mention one back to a time when they weren't stolen from and threatened with execution every time they turned around.

Evidently the reviewer believes that revolution to communism is imperative, and squelching it is bad, but revolution away from communism is evil-- because communism is evidently the only 'right' path-- and must the ruthlessly crushed. Indeed.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

What I have been consistently unable to understand as regards communism is how eliminating all teachers, doctors, artists and other intellectuals-- the so-called burgeousie-- is going to help society in the least. Should everyone dumb themselves down to a certain level? In the history of communist nations in this world, it seems as if they have to in order to evade execution for being intelligent.

Actually that depends on the particular communist revolution,... as regards intellectuals they ususally supported them...at least as much as any other police state... ie support the ones that support your dogma. The anti-intellectual Communist movement (cultural revolution, and a few others) was not necessarily communism except in the fact that
1) intellectuals tended not to stick to the Party line
2) intellectuals were 'white collar' and hence guilty by association with businessmen, etc.

However, anti-intellectualism per se was never part of early communism
(using the teachers, artists, etc. to support the revolution was very important)


As for the reviewers beliefs regarding 'good' and 'bad' rebellions they are given as partisan and not surprising... most Americans would say the Colonies trying to seperate from Britain was good and the States trying to secede from the Union was wrong. The idea that the end justifies the means is quite common and not necessarily flawed.

 

[shpritc]

If you have an ideology that purports to be a way to organize society, but it doesn't work with actual humans, then the ideology is flawed. And if you have an ideology that results in mass slaughter and extreme misery EVERY SINGLE TIME it's implemented in the real world, then even attempting to defend the ideology is just wrong.

It's also silly to talk about leaders 'corrupting' Communism, all of that stuff about the dictatorship of the proletariat is not just in the Communist Manifesto for show. Even in 'pure' communism the idea is not to just create a free society, it's to create a very authoritarian one which, after getting rid of troublemakers, will become a utopian one.

Communism is much worse than Nazism, the fact that people defend it even though it produces far worse horrors quite routinely is nothing short of astounding.

Right on brother, I will never understand why many people dont regard Stalin in the same way that Hitler is reagarded. he was responsible for more murder and supression then Hitler was. The only "mitigating" factor I spose was that he didnt single out one race for anyhilation, he was an equal opportunity mass murderer.

Atrocities aside, communism could never be economically superior even in its pureist form. There is no incentive to succeed at any carreer since there is no reward for choosing a lifes work that is difficult. Plus there is no incentive to produce more, as there is no benefit to the individual to do so.

Communism buy its very nature and by the nature of humanity will fail, every time it is tried.

It is the nature of mankind to be free, and it is the nature of government to infringe on freedom.

By the way anyone else have a problem with the Mnt Rushmore wonder being available due to researching fascism? I find that very irritating.

On the ammusing side, environmentalism is listed as a civic under economics. Regardless of your stance on the environment, the only effect environmental policies have on the economy are negative.

 

[Pantastic]

As for the reviewers beliefs regarding 'good' and 'bad' rebellions they are given as partisan and not surprising... most Americans would say the Colonies trying to seperate from Britain was good and the States trying to secede from the Union was wrong.

And how many millions of the British did the colonists send to die in work camps or murder outright after the war? But, oh yeah, those nasty Americans are just as bad as Stalin!

 

[joshuakira]

one of my first memories at university was some ratty prof shoving a MiM tract at me in my first day of orientation......i thought it was funny how agressively he was preaching so i took it and gave it a read, which i found even more entertaining. i swear these guys get the WORST writers in the world for their material. who can't see though all that brainwashed/sunday-school/absolutist style?

i guess things became a little more clear to me after an enlightening class on 20th Cen Chinese history. it seems the MiM beleives it's their mission to revive the Red Gaurd's philosophy. the most significant aspect of that philosophy is not anything marx would approve of, but rather a spreading of MAO's philosophy as an undeniable and incontrovertable gosple, simplified and adjusted (far further even than the great lengths mao himself strayed) for a maximum effect among folks at the very lowest position of society (in 1960's china it was aimed at the peasants). obviously this is in dierct contrast to everything marxist, or even stalinist (his method was to cull the peasants and use the intellectuals as weapons) theory stands for.

this style obviously required no substantiation or even elaboration beyond raving the same refrains over and over again with such enthusiasm and violence that anyone who's mind was not empty enough to be converted by way of information overflow was smart enough to pretend they had been. the crazy thing is that i think the only kids on college campuses susceptable to this approach would be those poor bastard sons of fat cat capitalists that raised the american flag every morning and raped their sisters at night. i mean you'd have to be SOOOOOO angry at your parents to sign up with these nutjobs it boggles my mind.....

the thing about communism is: it does work, but only if you keep it simple, honest and free. clearly it's taken countries down the darkest of paths many times; dictators, or more precisely egomaniacal sociopaths, are drawn to make use of it's compelling message, one that rivals christianity in its ability to give hope to the oppressed. i don't want to make a huge mistake now, but i'll mention that as far as i know, Ho Chi Min didn't seem to fit into the Stalin, Lenin, Kim, Mao, Pot, Castro molds. i don't recall vietnam being ravaged by internal suppression in a systematic campaign of murder and land redistribution. it looked like a legit device in decades long war of independance used by a desperate nation with no natural resources against colonial france and imperial america. (do correct me if i'm wrong here)

the sad thing about communism is also the sad thing about capitalism. it's a common charge that both have been fatally flawed from their inceptions due to "human nature". the truth is that neither concept is flawed at all; human nature is to be freindly, to realize that happy neighbors make good neighbors, that sympathy towards the weak is more rewarding than looking out for #1. the flaw as i see it is in the fear and lack of confidence in every individual to stand up for himself and his nation in demanding a fair shake at life. what always seems to happen is that we let the terror of uncertainty in our minds force us into making concessions to "great leaders", or "political parties" who always seem to tell us that those exact terrors are beyond our power to overcome and that only through devoting our hearts and minds, or at least our flesh and blood, to them can we be safe, sheltered, fed, and made happy. but, in EVERY case where people surrender their liberty and concience for security we find out that the security promissed is neither sufficient TO one, nor sufficient FOR all. a communist society is just as much a utopia as a free market. both are believed to be practiced succesfully in a handfull of small-scale, pre-literate societies in the "uncivilized" world.

the communist party suffered(suffers) from the same ailment that plagues the capitalists: the deep-seated belief that if you are not growing, ie. adding more money to the pile, expanding your fences, making more babies, building ever taller buildings, creating more powerful weapons, gaining more followers, discovering ways to further exploit the cosmos, if you are not WINNING then you are losing. nothing has ever made this point more clear to me than my first copy of CivIV (it's important to know that i felt i had to throw the first copy away). why play if you don't try to win?

just as in the game, reality seems to show that most people aren't trying to win at "earth", they just want to be on the side that promises them the most security and happiness. in 1776 some english citizens felt that their situation would be better if they stopped sending thier money to england. soon after, some poor parisians noticed that their lack of food was somehow related to all the gold on the king's carriage. still, after the battles were won and universal dignity was finally in reach, a handfull of ambitious, well intentioned, men of wealth and fame felt it was necessary to fortify their nation's place in the world through compromise and conquest; a constitution that forgets to mention that a quarter of the population were slaves in chains, a reign of terror, a continental genocide, a war of world conquest...........

comparing the few seemingly idyllic tribal groups that make egalitarianism a priority and the global power states that speak of their own values of liberty and justice may be beyond the limits of appropriateness. however, i notice that aside from all their other differences one stands out in my mind the most. the happy people don't have ANY money. the concept is beyond their experience. the happy people have no ideology of economics, we are not only obsessed with ours but we are so in spite of the fact that we call it the dismal science.

just as americans point in horror to the millions of dead under communist soil the result of class war and cultural cleansing, so the chinese and the soviets become sick at the thought of millions of dead black slaves and the many more millions who struggle to earn slave wages building ivory towers for the tycoons.

in what way is an oligarchy of the industrialists preferable to a dictatorship of the proletariate? the red gaurd and the MiM hardly seem less effective than textbook manufacturers and the fox news team. for all their naivity and lack of true commitment, the hippies in the 60s got as close to realizing that civilization was doomed as anyone ever got. and as if it were a sort of self fulfulling prophesy civilization fought for it's life by dooming the hippies. while even a row of soldiers with fixed bayonets couldn't stop a teenage girl with acid in her head and flowers in her hand, a mall filled with the latest fashions and conveniences crushed the soul of a generation into submission. the opiate of consumerism, the narcotic effect of conformity, rescued the west from the free mind. shiny things in exchange for a shining vision.

let us not forget that this orgasm of capitalism would not have been possible without the development of a system that worked as a high efficiency filter for pleasure. is it an unrelated coincidence that the war against hippy culture was conducted simultaneously with a reconsolidation of poverty and a premature end to the civil rights movement within the black community, not to mention a desperate and often failing struggle to maintain "democracy" in, and control of, nations in asia and south america which were necessary for the consumerist labor market?

how people can allow themselves to be convinced by the ameircan myth of a land of liberty, or justice, or values of any kind is just as confusing as the idea that anyone could pick up a MiM tract and have his opinion swayed by such infantile nonsense.

don't blame communism for any suffering, don't blame capitalism either. blame ignorance and fear! you'll never meet a happy man in all the world who hasn't refused the influence of fear on his mind. capitols and flags, no matter where or when they are, offer nothing but a shadow of life, a false sense of liberty, and a fruitless pursuit of happiness. in fact, the only things you need for any of these things is to look for them with clear eyes and an honest heart, within yourself, and beyond the ends of the universe.

peace

 

[joshuakira]

What I have been consistently unable to understand as regards communism is how eliminating all teachers, doctors, artists and other intellectuals-- the so-called burgeousie-- is going to help society in the least. Should everyone dumb themselves down to a certain level? In the history of communist nations in this world, it seems as if they have to in order to evade execution for being intelligent.

that behavior was limited to maoism, as means of strict control in the market of ideas. it was in a way the first successful prosecution of thought crime to take place in the open and on a large scale. as i understand the pol pot government killed anyone that could count past ten. the idea is on one hand revenge as part of class warfare, but more importantly the elimination of anyone capable of arousing movements that impeded party policies.

hitler (while not exactly an anti-intelectual) burned books that contained ideas that had any possibility of causing readers to question his authority. while mao stated he hoped to leave the past behind and start a new "people's culture" it was interpreted by the red gaurd to mean that ANYTHING that aroused memories of the past had to be destroyed. if you were said to have read books about feudal china, you either had to be re-educated or removed, those who spoke of liberalism, fascism, or colonialism were harshly dealt with. art, music, poetry, novels with complicated characters, toys, or anything else that didn't directly imply that the only good in the world was the communist party and that all people of virtue were maoists at birth through death was automatically erased.

the only nation ever more thoroughly brainwashed is those poor people in north korea....

 

[joshuakira]

By the way anyone else have a problem with the Mnt Rushmore wonder being available due to researching fascism? I find that very irritating.

how is carving faces of presidents into the face of a mountain not a fascist sentimentality? mt rushmore reminds me of the situation described by tacitus and seutonius. in imperial rome after a certain point people began to realize that there were good emperors and bad emperors, even some great emperors. eventually the senate (probably with the "help" of a suggestion from a posterity minded emperor) decide to delare certain emperors good, or bad, making the greatest ones permanent gods to be worshiped in their own temples. augustus, trajan, and their like were so fondly remembered. while nero, commodus, and the other psychopaths were reviled to the degree that public curses on their names were voted on in the senate.

so america takes that idea and jimmies it from the explicitly fascist state of rome (the fasci an axe that has it's handle wrapped in a mass of tightly bound sticks was the symbol of rome's fascism, or, in translation, togetherness was remember by the fascist revival that started in italy in the 20th century) by making "gods", with the largest portraits on the face of the earth, out of washington, jefferson, lincoln, and roosevelt. while i admit my disdane for nationalism, fascism, and the america that was created by them i can't think of any four people more deserving, or at least appropriate for, such an honnor. the fact remains though, it is COMPLETELY contrary to the concept of human equality in a modern democracy. i think jefferson and maybe washington and lincoln would be disgusted by it, obviously roosevelt would luuuuuuuuuuuuuuve it. the united states in theory has little use for a president, it was never intended to be a possition of such power, but leading up to and certainly following TR's presidency we became an imperial nation headed by imperial presidents.

 

[HypnosTene]

I've always thought Civ had a bit of a Marxist bias. Religion, as the Maoist article mentioned, has always been portrayed as the opiate of the masses. The quote for the communism tech in Civ4 is something about feeding the hungry. In contrast, the quote for fascism is the out-of-context Hitler quote of the big lie, which is never quoted in its entirety. They could have used the "hatred is the basis of communism" Lenin quote for the communism tech or Hitler's quote that ""If freedom is short of weapons, we must compensate with willpower" for the fascism tech. The choice of quotes betrays the game designer's biases.

This is certainly true. And it always amused me how the game designers continue to think that communism and, in civ4, state property result in the least corruption. I think that clearly shows they are biased (and don't really know what they're talking about).

 

[Wipperwill]

What I have been consistently unable to understand as regards communism is how eliminating all teachers, doctors, artists and other intellectuals-- the so-called burgeousie-- is going to help society in the least. Should everyone dumb themselves down to a certain level? In the history of communist nations in this world, it seems as if they have to in order to evade execution for being intelligent.

/rant on

If only those in charge intelligent, ruling the ignorant masses is easy. Stupid people are like cattle. They believe anything the government tells them, such as, "we are in a WAR against terrorism". War? Whats our plan? Who's the generals? Are we also going to war against stupidity? How about arrogance? When is this war going to end? Oh, never you say? So these police state measures will never stop? And only get worse?

Ya, I would say Osama accomplished what he wanted, but the american people let him.

"Those who sacrifice liberty for security..." ....you know the rest.

/rant off

 

[shpritc]

Joshuakira, by that logic any nation that has statues of their great leaders are fascist. A statue is in no way contrary to the concept of human equality. And dont equate nationalism with fascisim. They are very different. There is nothing wrong with having pride in your nation.

And if you think the US is an emperial nation, you dont understand the meaning of the word emperial.

Also equating Mnt Rushmore, to the worship of Roman gods is about as inacurate comparison as I can think of, also the same comparisan would have to be applied to any nation with statues of their historical figures, which would be pretty much all of them.

But I am not surprised with your feelings on this subject, your stated disdain for America is clearly behind how you feel.

 

[naterator]

And if you think the US is an emperial nation, you dont understand the meaning of the word emperial.

and you obviously don't know either the definition or the correct spelling.

im·pe·ri·al (m-pîr-l)
ADJECTIVE:

1-Of, relating to, or suggestive of an empire or a sovereign, especially an emperor or empress: imperial rule; the imperial palace.
2-Ruling over extensive territories or over colonies or dependencies: imperial nations.
3-a-Having supreme authority; sovereign.
b-Regal; majestic.
4-Outstanding in size or quality.
5-Of or belonging to the British Imperial System of weights and measures.

NOUN:

1-An emperor or empress.
2-The top of a carriage.
3-Something outstanding in size or quality.
4-A variable size of paper, usually 23 by 33 inches (55.8 by 83.8 centimeters).
5-A pointed beard grown from the lower lip and chin.

 

[ULTIMATEGP]

that was a good read and yes like all others said he did take the game a little too seriously but u goota admit he unerstood and gave a good informed review on the game.

 

[Panda]

That was the best marxist game review I've ever read.

 

[MazX_TheDog]

Actually that depends on the particular communist revolution,... as regards intellectuals they ususally supported them...at least as much as any other police state... ie support the ones that support your dogma. The anti-intellectual Communist movement (cultural revolution, and a few others) was not necessarily communism except in the fact that
1) intellectuals tended not to stick to the Party line
2) intellectuals were 'white collar' and hence guilty by association with businessmen, etc.

However, anti-intellectualism per se was never part of early communism
(using the teachers, artists, etc. to support the revolution was very important)


As for the reviewers beliefs regarding 'good' and 'bad' rebellions they are given as partisan and not surprising... most Americans would say the Colonies trying to seperate from Britain was good and the States trying to secede from the Union was wrong. The idea that the end justifies the means is quite common and not necessarily flawed.

This is plain wrong. Many of the teachers of the world were priests and when Communism came to town they usually got the end of the smoking gun.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This is plain wrong. Many of the teachers of the world were priests and when Communism came to town they usually got the end of the smoking gun.

Well that's like saying Nazis hated X because lots of X were Jews and therefore went to the camps. Communists hated Priests, regardless of whether they were teachers/doctors, etc.

 

[Sovietof17]

tell me how your capitalism works out for you in 200 years when you're 50 feet underwater being fried by solar radiation seeping through a patchwork ozone

who cares, as long as you can take the kids to soccer practice and the wife out to a nice steak dinner right