I actually did ask about Babkov, because I was curious what action he was backing and didn't think to make the connection that some diplomats = the MFA. I just assumed that Babkov, being a hawk, was just backing the rest of the hawks, and I decided to vote to escalate as well.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
- Start date
- Alt. History Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Ok that is actually really funny
NHO
Dumb is a state of existence
- Location
- ᓚᘏᗢ
"bring closer" in this case.
Mainly because nobody noticed it was just skipped over and people gave it zero thought or upvotes and yet it is such a good question
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
When it comes to the critical reading side of things, I think part of the issue is that sometimes character foibles are only revealed when that perspective becomes no longer relevant. Like the reveal that Voz's "correct personnel" were picked for and corruption first, and had always been so, right as Voz got the boot.
In theory the discord has authors notes, but in practice it's never as detailed as the narrative, I don't think Blackstar ever reveals details to active participants, and the sheer commitment of roleplayers at times can make it even harder to isolate the signal from the noise.
There's occasionally things that really should be shared with the thread (the note that French forces would have fired on an roll under 60 might have reframed a few arguments had it been posted earlier, for instance) but I can't recall a time where the most important things weren't hidden in the narrative itself.
It's just that Stalinism as a branch of socialist ideology has the One Weird Trick where it declares that the Party is the workers and so the conditions of socialism under the party means the workers cannot be oppressed, since they're in charge. Unfortunately under this idea, our ministry an inherently Stalinist project.
A future of a Soviet Union where Socialism's promises are made true is also one where we are a small and relatively toothless thing. The MNKh may have some influence, but not as much as we might like. It's just, you know, as the pithy old phrase goes, it's difficult to get a man to understand something, if his job is dependent on him not understanding it.
In theory the discord has authors notes, but in practice it's never as detailed as the narrative, I don't think Blackstar ever reveals details to active participants, and the sheer commitment of roleplayers at times can make it even harder to isolate the signal from the noise.
There's occasionally things that really should be shared with the thread (the note that French forces would have fired on an roll under 60 might have reframed a few arguments had it been posted earlier, for instance) but I can't recall a time where the most important things weren't hidden in the narrative itself.
As far as the quest's take on socialism goes, I think the take isn't even that socialism is impossible just... We're not its friends. Not even the Soviet Union; Us, the MNKh, specifically. We are the capitalists who own the factories. We are the bourgeoisie against and under which the proletariat struggles. And whatever other way you want to frame it. Worse, we're also the government, and so there is little prospect of countervailing aid against us on that front. While we don't have the same pressures and interests as, say, a corporate shareholder, we still have them, and there's zero guarantee our ministry will align with the interests of the general populace.
It's just that Stalinism as a branch of socialist ideology has the One Weird Trick where it declares that the Party is the workers and so the conditions of socialism under the party means the workers cannot be oppressed, since they're in charge. Unfortunately under this idea, our ministry an inherently Stalinist project.
A future of a Soviet Union where Socialism's promises are made true is also one where we are a small and relatively toothless thing. The MNKh may have some influence, but not as much as we might like. It's just, you know, as the pithy old phrase goes, it's difficult to get a man to understand something, if his job is dependent on him not understanding it.
- Location
- UTC+0
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
This was only revealed after the vote was called, and it was indeed shared here. So its kind of a bad example.
As a reminder, people are free to join the Discord if they want more information about things regarding the quest. And that while there is information disparity between the people who joined the Discord Server and the people who just browse the threads, one can always ask the QM about matters in thread.
Also I would disagree with the assertion that Blackstar is letting her beliefs affect the development of the quest in that particular manner because all she has done quite the work in simulating how things would develop and how history would change. An example of this would be her going through Databases and Soviet Party Lists to find characters that will be the Department Heads and Deputies. Like, none of the Characters thus far in quest have been Original Characters.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
I think this has all turned out fairly well to be honest, don't get all the dooming and confusion. This was a likely ending of the action and it turned out well, small propaganda coup, nukes out of France, and only an unnofical commitment to stop shipping via the med, which we can go back on as soon as possible
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
My view of socialism/communism in terms of what is and isn't possible is mostly quibbles on the point of the withering away of state power in the creation of a socialist or non-capitalist economy rather than the possibility or impossibility of it as a form of organization. Communism as described by Marx likely isn't possible if only for the increasing sophistication needed for modern economics and the demands for organizational structures placed to keep even simple modern industries operational much less efficiently, but that does not mean that communism itself is impossible. A state organizational structure without markets and with a means of central allocation is possible to exist and likely far better than a comparative capitalist social structure, the question is how it can be reached with what is available. If what you have is the post-Stalin party structures left behind by the Soviet Union that built itself to function around Stalin and suddenly has to deal with its absence is, if anything one of the worst places for achieving communism. There is the common joke that the worst enemy of communism in the Soviet Union is the CPSU and that to a large extent applies.
The question of corruption is one of the power structures stemming from how Mikoyan chose to navigate the crisis post-Stalin, if you give massive amounts of power to those whose every advantage rests in increasing their access to money then their going to do the very predictable. Voznesensky to a large part embodied this and I am surprised that people didn't bin him early on when he was far less stable in his position and let the crisis get to the point that the government itself was swinging at the ministry for being too blatantly corrupt. You can crash ministers' careers if you do not like them, nothing stops you from making reasonable bad choices that they logic themselves into. If you got Mikoyan killed, like I expected you to at the moment, you'd have likely been building Cybersyn right now instead of the more distributed systems you are seeing under Klim and Voz. It would have had its massive limitations and you'd still be stuck with navigating the crisis in the consumer goods sector not working along with issues in import/export balances and agriculture being an ineffectual drag from tight control. But those aren't insurmountable problems, neither is the current system of economic organization a permanent fixture of the Soviet economy.
Some corruption is inevitable no matter the system and things will eventually rot, but that doesn't mean that renewal cannot happen, only that it is occasionally needed. It is probably the most important thing from Trotsky's pre-Stalin writings on the need to avoid a stagnant bureaucratic organ to prevent corruption. In a democratic system party infighting ideally keeps it to a manageable simmer with you having factional infighting doing some of the same role, but it's not like your USSR is even that corrupt in the scheme of things. Compare to any number of developing countries and you come off comparatively clean, if more average then not. Hell, the closer comparison would be the Chinese structures around the 11th and 12th CC in terms of economic modeling and those are practically the who's who of major enterprises or political-economic arrangements dictating policies. And well, because of said lower corruption you have not had a Jiang Zemin and likely will not have one, if only because to a large part your reaction to Stalin and Stalinism's excesses has well, been managed and to an extent is over with the end of Kosygin and Mikoyan.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
It occurs to me that the interpretation in my last post could be why the quest is named "Attempting to Fulfill the Plan" if it's meant, among other plays on phrasing, to highlight the inherent contradiction of a ministry of the planned economy implementing socialism.
"You are attempting, never succeeding, not because the task is impossible, but because you, the ministry, are the protagonist."
"You are attempting, never succeeding, not because the task is impossible, but because you, the ministry, are the protagonist."
Did someone besides myself share it?
Alright so who's writing the spin off quest where we play a freedom fighter in the Algerian national liberation movement and push the whites out of Africa? (we can have Frantz fanon bookclubs and The Battle of Algiers movie night)
or a green anarchist in the ussr doing eco terrorism against the enterprises and freeing animals from factory farms and labs?
or a member of the Black Liberation Army in the United States burning down the American plantation? (we need to introduce people here to kuwasai balagoon and assata shakur)
these are real genuine suggestions that could satisfy people's certain itches and desires for what they want to see and do
and it would filter out certain ideologies so you wouldn't have to worry about interacting with certain people because they'd be put off by these perspectives and wouldn't engage in those games
but ultimately we rolled the dice and the dice ended poorly
I still fully support sending ships and don't regret it
every single breath you take can affect the random roll of the dice so next time it might end well or it might end poorly either way pick the choice you the singular individual want
vote however you want people
genuinely do not worry about others opinions
this game is full of people with fundamentally opposed ideologies and that's just how it is
those ideologically opposed to national liberation movements or are opposed to fighting capitalism or the west with weapons are naturally going to clash with those who support these things
and there is never going to be any common ground and we'll that's perfectly fine and nothing wrong with it
you just keep on move and vote to your heart's desires
excellent example I mean I vehemently disagree with Blackstar's statement that "marx's idea of communism is impossible because you have to keep modern economics and organize modern industry"
(we must abolish the economy and the nightmare that is high industrialism for humanity to live
we will see the destruction of the anti-black ecocidial monstrosity that is the state in our lifetime)
but I'm still going to read the quest and vote however I personally think is good at whichever moment because we'll it's a game that's fun to play and go with your gut
or a green anarchist in the ussr doing eco terrorism against the enterprises and freeing animals from factory farms and labs?
or a member of the Black Liberation Army in the United States burning down the American plantation? (we need to introduce people here to kuwasai balagoon and assata shakur)
these are real genuine suggestions that could satisfy people's certain itches and desires for what they want to see and do
and it would filter out certain ideologies so you wouldn't have to worry about interacting with certain people because they'd be put off by these perspectives and wouldn't engage in those games
but ultimately we rolled the dice and the dice ended poorly
I still fully support sending ships and don't regret it
every single breath you take can affect the random roll of the dice so next time it might end well or it might end poorly either way pick the choice you the singular individual want
vote however you want people
genuinely do not worry about others opinions
this game is full of people with fundamentally opposed ideologies and that's just how it is
those ideologically opposed to national liberation movements or are opposed to fighting capitalism or the west with weapons are naturally going to clash with those who support these things
and there is never going to be any common ground and we'll that's perfectly fine and nothing wrong with it
you just keep on move and vote to your heart's desires
excellent example I mean I vehemently disagree with Blackstar's statement that "marx's idea of communism is impossible because you have to keep modern economics and organize modern industry"
(we must abolish the economy and the nightmare that is high industrialism for humanity to live
we will see the destruction of the anti-black ecocidial monstrosity that is the state in our lifetime)
but I'm still going to read the quest and vote however I personally think is good at whichever moment because we'll it's a game that's fun to play and go with your gut
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
"Join my free server on this other website that you can't see without getting an account" is just a hair removed from a crypto scam pitch. Hell, most of those scammers organize and run their operations on Discord. And I'm not even touching the data breaches.
Asking someone to join a new site is not something to be remotely casual about, or shame people for declining. Being exposed to a toxic community or having your personal data leaked is not remotely worth any quest's information.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Damn now I really wish we got Mikoyan killed. How would that lead to early cybersyn? Cool though
Understandable enough reactions to the security concerns and the other concerns. Still think that if people are that invested in quest and not want to deal with those risks, they can always ask the QM about matters as I have said earlier.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Why do people here not like Voz? He was a really fun character, easily my favorite voice of the ones we've had so far
- Pronouns
- he/him
and a lot of the people who were merely casually reading the quest didn't quite understand what he meant when he said 'correct personnel' and were blindsided by his corruption. also his insistence on using 5-10 dollar words as much as possible mean that said casual readers didn't put the brainpower towards deciphering his self-delusions
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Mostly because if you ask "What information's in the Discord that isn't here" for every single vote, the reason for having an offsite chatroom where relevant info is on the users to communicate gets stripped of any pleasant fiction.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
I mean I get he was corrupt I just enjoyed it, fun corruption, funruption perhaps
Didn't quite realize the scale, that's a lot of cronies, but I loved how he talked and wrote reports. Truly a "cybernetic" management of the economy, whatever that means
Edit: I wonder what it would have been like to get his perspective on the whole "finding out he's going to die" thing
While i completly agree that saying "If you want to know this join discord" is the completly wrong aproach it is hard to boil down 3000 messages of people saying dumb things into a few useful things that is relevant to the thread and even then some people try it is just a lot of effort
Some things just get ingrained and i am unsure if the thread knows it because things like Klim being extremly anti worker is just second nature to me at this point because that is the reaction on discord everytime he parades a new incredibly anti worker reform out but i am unsure how obvious that is to thread viewers who don't see that immediate reaction
Some things just get ingrained and i am unsure if the thread knows it because things like Klim being extremly anti worker is just second nature to me at this point because that is the reaction on discord everytime he parades a new incredibly anti worker reform out but i am unsure how obvious that is to thread viewers who don't see that immediate reaction
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