Is a man not entitled to the grub of his hub? No says the rides share/delivery company. It belongs to the shareholders No says the fast food employee, it belongs to the workers No says the Uber eats driver picking up an extra job after a long day of acting as a taxi cab for drunk partygoers on a Saturday evening. It belongs to me! I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose…Grub Hub…a business where the hungry would not fear the risk of a delayed order, where the midnight munchies would not be bound by petty delivery fees, where those who can afford a twelve late night mcchickens will have their fill, and with the food finally delivered Grub Hub can become your business too…
>looking for a communist minecraft server >ask the host if their server is communist or soviet >They don't understand >I pull out an illustrated diagram explaining what is communist and what is soviet >They laugh and say "it's a fun server sir" >Join server >It's soviet
"Soviet" means "workers council" which follow a socialist line... and what is socialism? A well thought out plan to dismantle capitalism, and eventually enact true communism. Some education for y'all on this early Tuesday morning.
its crazy how they made life in minecraft. like ppl write & read books, vote in elections, go to war, form alliances, etc etc... is wildd!!!! the idea of an economy is like the least suprising thing abt this lmao
This is the way. Stoneworks Minecraft is lightning in a bottle, and it’s all because we started out with an incredible community of creative world builders 🙏
I've stumbled upon this randomly and it almost brought a tear to my eye. I've been wanting something like this in Minecraft for a literal decade, but always knew it would be one hell of an accomplishment to actually get the people together for it since you need people of all types to fill all the roles and to do so organically for the most part. Hats off to the people that make this happen, it's truly a work of art. Maybe someday soon I'll have the time and energy to take part myself.
Not just that, but the USSE literally had its own Boris Yeltsin moment in the form of Lethe, and actually managed to maintain itself and its democratic principles. We literally just watched a mini alternative history of how the USSR could have turned out.
I think the USSE shows how a socialist system can work well in Minecraft. They used the citizen market to share resources cheaply within their nation and give everyone access to resources to help make them be productive within their nation. This helped all players get what they needed and made the economy stronger even with internal conflicts, the USSE had the longest running democracy in Minecraft, showing strong democratic and socialist values. They used smart strategies to protect themselves from outside threats. The USSE’s long 3 year life proves that their ideology of on cooperation, unity, and shared ownership works.
Did the math. Assuming every real life day accounts for 9 Minecraft days (or 3 hour Minecraft sessions daily), exactly three 365 day years would equal 9,855 Minecraft days or 27 Minecraft years. If we assume at the maximum that each real day is 72 Minecraft days (24 hours Minecraft sessions daily), then it equates to 78,840 Minecraft days or 216 Minecraft years.
Don't play stoneworks anymore, but I was an Eldham player in the USSE's general region. Strategic Vassalization was highly common in Eldham among smaller nations, what is odd about the USSE is how large it was while enacting the same strategy. I was one of those ruling aristocrats in my nation (The Grand Duchy of Samora) and I have had to interact with the USSE on multiple occasions because of that. With the exception of Santos (though, everyone bullied the shit out of Santos), the USSE always was very competent in their foreign relations with me. I can remember participating in the Seronnan Summits in Kazkaya and other cities. Krakhov had some military guards for the in game meeting and they were very friendly and helpful with everyone (despite many of us being monarchs and the USSE hated monarchs and nobility). With all being said- the USSE was, looking back, a joy to interact with and I am grateful for being, at the end of Eldham, the local noble lord of a former USSE province. :troll:
For much of the USSE's history, it lacked a strong military. While the USSE was one of the world's largest producers by far, giving even truly gargantan nations like Ashai ample competition, we did not have the PvP-heads to defend everything that had been built. If we could export that need to our friends abroad with little or no cost at all to us, than it was a net benefit to all parties. That was the largest motivator behind strategic vassalization.
Can you tell me the commands for joinign a nation, a city, bying stuff etc, all the special commands basically, I joined the USSE to late and i want to make up for that, I‘m all ready in the Setarra discord and am a official citizen, i just forgot the commands
3 IRL years???????? That's a fourth of 2b2t's history, and almost a fourth of MINECRAFT history. That's incredibly impressive. I wish I joined before... Imagine me being the Minister of Justice or the Attorney-General handling internal affairs and discussions on the military. Lmao, is Zilatra that good too?
There's a few nations actually which are Xeroist which try and continue the political legacy of the socialists in nations like the USSE, but Zilatra is actually the largest in Abexilas! The Abexilas server just started so its kind of impossible to say what the longevity of any one of those nations will look like in the long run, but you can join if you wish to be a part of that!
To be entirely honest, i have NO idea how i ended up here. I don't watch minecraft content, i'm not a very political guy, and though i do watch people like Kaz Rowe(historians), nothing too hypothetical like strategy- smart-person stuff I'm no fit for That said, i of course barely understand anything in this video, but I'm loving it.
youtube likes recommending the occasional pro-commie video randomly to you, I'm very anti-communist and randomly get breadtubers recommended to me all the time.
@@fredrickmansav6852 the algorithm doesn't know if it's "pro" or "anti". Likely, you just watched a few anti-comunnist videos and now YT thinks you're interested in communism.
It’s crazy how despite the overwhelming success of the USSE, it wasn’t adopted more widely across Eldham or Rathnir (I mean Abexilas has a chance but c’mon). I think it’s a problem many players suffer with that they get permanently trapped out of any real sense of power, important, or presence because they are simply locked out of access to the ways there. If you don’t have connections with the rich or with pvpers or mercs, many can’t stake a claim in an environment chock full of established nations with big names. The thing that made the USSE special was that everyone felt they could share a role in its success. Stoney’s argument that an aristocratic elite emerged ignores that despite accomplishments achieved by certain individuals, these never overshadowed any opportunity for new players to make a stake in society. It was hard to get locked out as long as you tried and put at least moderate effort into contributing to the collective good. The people who succeeded in the USSE weren’t those who were out for themselves, but who had the desire to see everyone rise together. This is the beauty of the USSE, that the culture and system incentivized collective prosperity. Other nations based on more capitalist or internally competitive systems never lasted as long or successfully precisely because they pitted people against each other. These nations, who seem to resemble and adopt mercantilism over anything capitalist, never have as much of an impact because the story is never about one guy who got rich. History doesn’t remember every Roman emperor nearly as much as it does leaders such as Aurelian or Marcus Aurelius. They found a spotlight because their nation did. The prosperity of the people was the thing that stood out, not their individual wealth or power, and this is shown in the USSE. The reason communism, especially USSE communism works, is this collective aspiration for united harmony and prosperity. I haven’t seen any other nation replicate it on nearly as large and successful scale as the USSE, and I eagerly await any that can achieve the same heights (cough cough Zilatra cough cough maybe).
Hey @exultantexalted I think this is the strongest pro-USSE argument I see in the comments (although not the most holistic). If you're on my server, I'd like to give you the prize for the debate contest I set up! Let me know what your username is please
@@Stoneworks omg hi stoney!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm confused, does this server Stoneworks talked about still work? I like the idea of large SMPs in Minecraft, but I'm kinda tired of being part of mercenary groups or people not wanting to get along. Can I join this country? If not, is there a new server that has a new Socialist country? (I noticed you mentioned "Zilatra", but I don't know what that means exactly)
Democratic Socialism is not Social Democracy. Social Democracy is still capitalism, just with a lot of welfare. Democratic Socialism does not have a capitalist ruling class, even if it still has a market economy.
@@Somebodyherefornow money is just a token to exchange goods and services, if you have vouchers it is money in effect. Abolishing money is not a requisit for Communism by any stretch, it was attempted, admitedly naively, but it isn't a core tenet of communism.
Great video, Stoney, just remember "Democracy is indispensable to socialism" In the wide world of Eldham, no nation was built better than the USSE, It was skill and cooperation that perfectly designed the county to thrive and thrive it did. The biggest success factor in the USSE was its national identity, as you said here, "it attracted a particular group of people." This group of people were all commonly united under one goal, because of this, they would stick together, and work together to achieve this goal. NATIONAL UNITY THROUGH IDENTITY The USSE was one of the most united and connected nations in Stoneworks history. With the specific choice of aesthetic, the nation managed to appeal to many like-minded people. These people, who all (often) shared a view of the nation, were united to pursue this vision. Due to this strong sense of national identity, the people stayed united despite many losses against forces they had no sway over, and even managed to bounce back. This impressive amount of unity rivaled by no other nation was undoubtedly a result of the communist aesthetic and the shared vision of bringing people together. FOR THE PROLET, BY THE PROLET The unique democratic structure of the USSE allowed the average citizen to take action to see the change they wanted. The concept of democracy can work wonders when it comes to a nation's activity. By giving the people the thought that they could come to influence the policy in their nation they have effectively prevented severe internal struggle, with the way the USSE was built the government couldn't have (easily) gotten away with a bad decision, this would result in the nation never facing an eternal death spiral and would be one of the greatest contributors of its longevity. This ultimately helps show how a structured democratic system can work wonders for a nation rather than some impulsive monarch or a power-hungry warlord. A PLANNED, PLANNED ECONOMY The planned economy of the USSE is a marvel to behold, the constant stream of resources grantees that every worker can do his part to support his nation at all times. This grantees that the nation will never fail as long as the workers work, and if the workers work for the prosperity of the worker rather than the prosperity of the Bourgeoise. If the worker knows that they are working for the prosperity of their country and themselves, the worker will work harder, because then the worker knows what he is working for. The USSE mastered this as a nation, and it brought them great success. A COLLECTIVISED POOL OF INTELLIGENCE If it weren't for the expertise of the people of the USSE the nation would have undoubtedly failed to achieve its goal of utopia. The nation's success is the result of the individuals working together to construct the systems to keep their dream alive. If multiple people had not worked together to set up the economy then they would've failed, if the people exploited the economy they would've failed. If the people abandoned their theory, they would've failed. If it weren't for the intelligence and initiative of the common man, the USSE would've failed. This proves that you don't need autocrats, kings, and nobles to keep the machine running at maximum efficiency, you just need the people to be working together as one. WHAT CAN WE LEARN? The USSE was built by the skill of the people, not by circumstance. It was the genius of the people to establish their union, fuel their union, and build their union. The structure of the USSE was built for the people of the USSE, by the people of the USSE. The planned economy of the nation made them rich, the democracy of the nation made them methodical, and the unity of the Proletariat made them powerful. The USSE is the perfect example of long-term success, you can gain power and influence as a monarch, but you can gain happiness and community as a worker. "Individualism and selfishness brings a nation to ruin, but only collectivism and working together can bring it out." -TechnicallyNothingInteresting (TecNotInt)
By the way, lovely post, but there is one main issue. The USSE never claimed to be, nor did it attempt to create utopia. This is a common misconception about socialism in general though. Our socialism was based in science, not fiction and utopianism. This has been the case with real world Marxism since the creation of scientific socialism, and was the case with Stoneworks socialist movements since the creation of Xeroism.
Great video! As somebody who conducted diplomacy with the USSE in early Eldham (often as enemies), I think you did a good job of explaining some of the upsides and downsides of the USSE. With that said, I think there's more that could be added to the discussion of following their ideological principles whilst maintaining internal and external stability. You mentioned Manzland as a capitalist region within the USSE that left, but there existed another, arguably more egregious example in the region of Merconis. The Merconisan government, which came under the protection of the USSE shortly after its creation, was a region led by xPxtatoes which created a massive multi-million-dollar cactus farming operation. They supplied XP bottles to militaries all across Eldham, and would provoke their neighbors in a bid to instigate conflict. Following a dispute with the Zamotz Union, the USSE would end up defending Merconis in a border issue that xPxtatoes was found to be at fault in, fighting a war in which they ultimately lost and ceded the lands to Uraka as a vassal. I bring this up because Merconis was a sort of necessary evil the USSE took. Its affiliation as a part of the USSE seemed to violate pretty integral parts of Xeroism and communism at large - it was effectively a colony of theirs on another continent they had no other presence in, meeting even the Marxist definition of imperialism (inflicting the burden of capitalism onto other regions) when defending what can be retrospectively viewed as a terrible capitalistic war-funding machine. It would be as if China established a colony in Africa and headquartered Lockheed Martin in there. It's incredibly antithetical to the communist cause, and yet the USSE committed to its defense. They were treaty-bound to defend Merconis, but the reasons go beyond that. You mentioned how the USSE fluctuated between periods of growth and decline, and indeed, the USSE had its bad periods. The policy of "Strategic Vassalization," beyond the fact that it aligned the USSE with the richest and most imperialist of countries on Eldham, talks to a deeper problem that practical applications of Xeroism struggled to resolve throughout much of its history. The lack of consolidating itself on the national stage with its constant flip flops, alongside an inability to reach a competitive level of output relative to its international adversaries, led to sacrifices being made in how rigidly it could follow the tenets of Xeroism. Their defense of Merconis can be viewed in this light. According to Xeroise herself, Xeroism is an "incredibly broad ideology, with individuals ranging from Chelovek (part of the USSE's ruling class) to xPxtatoes" (paraphrased), the aforementioned ultra-capitalist leader of Merconis who was later outed for sympathies with a certain fascist ideology from the 30s-40s. I don't think Xeroism truly encompasses somebody like xPxtatoes, but the fact that they once had to say that it did goes to show how the USSE had to make concessions towards anti-communist ideals to continue to survive. In short, communism didn't fully work in the USSE; like many real-world examples of communism, Xeroism in practice had to coexist with more conventional and widespread ideologies for the USSE to survive as long as it did. - clumsycapy, ex-Zamotian triarch (no hate to the USSE also shoutout to Chelovek hes awesome)
Hey @clumsycapy I think this is the best critique I've seen of the ideology here. If you're on the server I'd like to give you the rewards for this cold war debate contest. I'm really interested in Merconis as a counterpoint to all this because I didn't touch on it at all.
@@Stoneworks Thank you so so much!! I’ll hop on the server now. I’m more than happy to discuss it further as well (though I also highly recommend also getting the USSE’s perspective on it, Merconis was a REALLY polarizing topic at the time and I’m not sure where they stand on it retrospectively)
@@clumsycapy I can bring some light to Merkonis if you want to speak to me about it, I was a high ranking gov offical in Merkonis from before Second Sand war to its eventual end, (and after xPxtatoes left) became Kanzler (same posotion potato was) before we got wiped out off the map for a final time. But I can defintely speak on it in retrospective. There are also a few innacuracies in your statement and argument mentioning us.
@Stoneworks unfortunately his analysis of what happened with xPxtatoes and Merconis was entirely wrong. Hi, Chelovek here. The entire reason I defended Zamotz was because we gave them our word as a protectorate. We weren't making money off of the XP, in fact the XP industry was quite in its infancy at the time. We didnt colonize Merconis. The leader or Zamotz approached me and requested protection. To which I responded with requiring a 2/3 majority vote amongst their citizens. When we were satisfied that it was the democratic will of the people, we accepted. Had Zamotz approached me, their ally, before declaring war on our protectorate. The Zamotz/U.S.S.E war would have never happened. It was entirely a matter of us keeping our word, and the disrespect Zamotz showed us by attacking our protectorate without informing us of the incident first. I did not like waking up to that. Honestly I don't know what the world would have looked like in that case. The war was my first big international move. Maybe the USSE wouldn't be put under such a microscope and maybe we wouldn't have become such a tight nit community as a result. Who knows. In regards to the vassal strategy. Honestly the empires that vassalized us simply found that we were incredibly productive workers. We found that often times empires in Eldham collapsed and the sort of "shield" gave us time to regroup and also had the benefit of exhausting our enemies will to fight. It was a concession that we weren't PVP sweats. Had nothing to do with the socialist model other than the fact that most PVPers at the time were actually children and they saw the USSE as the big scary communists their social studies teacher warned them about. Over time we were able to establish a strong army, and productive force, and we no longer needed the protection in the end. All of our enemies were squished and we survived.
This is actually one of the most interesting thought experiments I've ever seen and how well it both relates and contrasts with real life expectations is simply fantastic. For the obligatory real-world pedantic crap: "True Communism", which often comes up every single time people critique the USSR or CCP China. By pure definition, I'd agree neither of these states adhere to the actual definition of communism, but I'd also argue a society that fits that definition cannot exist: As great as anarchic (capitalist or communist) societies sound in paper, especially to myself as a strong proponent of libertarian ideals, they simply cannot function in a real world scenario. Far too many internal and external factors and pressures make such a society just, outright impossible, especially in the face of sovereign influences. For the empires success: I think both the inherent self-vetting of being a Stoneworks socialist nation and the idea of "strategic vassalization" are both incredibly integral in the nations success, but I wouldn't argue either of these are limited to the USSE itself, though I admit they played both well. Obviously, a semi-uniform group is gonna be more cooperative than a completely disconnected group, this goes without saying. Granted, there is some nuance to be had, the terms "socialist" and "capitalist" cover a wide spectrum and in the real world, there is no shortage of political infighting in either of these blocs. That said, I do think this played extremely well in ensuring anyone joining the USSE or considering joining the USSE were very self-filtering: If your entire image is a USSR-larp, you're gonna get USSR-larpers, who are inherently going to be more comfortable with the theme and ideas behind a USSR-larp. I think this is just good branding, honestly, the name is very on the nose but that serves well in their favor. Similarly, with the idea behind strategic vassalization, although actually executing it well is nowhere near as easy it's pretty obvious that picking and choosing your battles will lead to much more longevity behind your empire. It's also generally self-fulfilling, by being an "out group", they can more easily connect with eachother in defiance of the rest of the world, as pointed out in the video - this goes a tremendous way in their success. For the actual economic system: Now with that out of the way, the sort of command economy the USSE accomplished is a fairly ingenious system, and by far the most interesting part of this video to me. Capitalism is inherently a selfish economic ideology - this is not me condemning it, but fundamentally this is the kind of mindset I'd argue it promotes. The existence of profit represents market inefficiencies: In a perfectly competitive capitalist society, profit margins would be razor thin, signifying strong competition. This, of course, is an idealistic hypothetical and not practical. Similarly, in a perfect communist command economy conducted by the most intelligent, uncorrupt, and omnipotent being - there too would be perfect efficiencies, but likewise, this is also an impractical idealistic hypothetical. Thankfully - the complexities of Minecraft, and more specifically Stoneworks, economies are significantly lower than that of real world complexities. I think such a controlled environment is probably the best case for such a command economy scenario, somewhat proven by the USSE. The USSE's economic system prove a "state-driven means of production" can offer extremely strong economic growth for a nation and a fairly high standard of living for it's citizens. As obvious as this idea is: By making such highly efficient tools easily accessible to it's members, they guarantee all of their members have a highly efficient baseline; it's still inspiring to see how well it worked. Although not a picture-perfect, omnipotent command economy, it certainly is a socially-oriented, state-run economy, and a pretty succesful one at that. However, some pretty obvious asterisks on their system: Their economy, like most still do rely on a form of patronage (or rather, did for a long while) - though, this isn't inherently reliant on aristocrats* or companies, so I'd give them points for that. There will be abuse, as there would be in any social system, but evidently the results are pretty worthwhile. Granted, to some extent, this system is effectively just some very intelligent subsidies, and whether that on it's own should be categorized as a socialist economy is pretty up in the air. Though I suppose representing capitalism as laissez-faire, it fits the bill. That in mind, I do think it's a much better alternative to a more iron-fisted socialist economy, which would likely have caused significantly more friction for such a large, open, and varied nation. I think all in all the USSE economic system is an actually pretty impressive concept. I don't think it represents the goal system for every nation to enter stoneworks, let alone speaking on the real world, but I think it's a pretty successful basis to idealize should a well-organized nation with a similarly collectivist mindset seek to replicate it.
@@C-Farsene_5 Swan Lake was the music used for times of crisis in the USSR, (and most famously) for the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. That's likely why they foundd it funny.
Very cool video, my good Stoner. I would never be able to go anywhere near stinky Eldhamites so your sacrifice in researching this nation is highly respectable. Buckle your seatbelts ladies and mercs and put your blocky hands together for the single greatest system of Minecraft government: Communism if it was Good. Watching this video, there's a couple reasons that immediately stood out to me as to why this system is actually baller and honestly I'm personally going to try to get my nations to do more of this as well. So here's some points why Minecraft communism actually kind of rules: 1. Ideological Clarity. You pretty much go over this in depth in the video, but having people well-aware of what kind of a nation they're signing up to goes a hell of a long way to promote unity and loyalty. Sure it makes them absolutely insufferable to talk to if you aren't in their circle of self-aggrandizing leftists, but I'd argue that's a key part of the system to keep the capitalist heretics like myself out. Feature, not bug. Not to mention how it makes the existing population absolutely ungovernable by any would-be conquerors or separatists who aren't entirely committed to The State. 2. Democratic Socialism Actually Looks Like a Government. Too many governments are literally just some guy calling himself a Super Hyper Awesome King and having some buddies hold arbitrary titles. While I generally see democracies as extremely dangerous to implement due to the inefficiencies they create, its quite clear now that if one is executed well, it sends a very strong message that the government is actually doing something and provides incentives in its internal politics for leaders to act. Plus its actually like, fun to work about in a real internal political system and not have to just suck up to some monarchical egotist. Trust me. I know. 3. Continuous Identity. USSE capitalized heavily on the creation of a communist culture. Very little room was left for the kinds of nobles or local leaders of other governments to cultivate their own separate identities and seize territory for themselves, and when it did happen it became the bloody, ideological battles of Manzig. To rebuke the government is in itself a rebuke of the national identity cemented by the pure ideological clarity. It was a nation of such self-perpetuating repute that it was practically impossible to kill off from the outside or inside, despite its inherently polarizing thesis. It wouldn't be fair to completely ignore the weaknesses of the system's execution though. Its clear that the centralized power held by the General Secretaries and the Commissions was prone to be uniquely internally damaging if handled improperly (as seen with Lethe's secession). To say there were issues with their foreign policy, judging by how it was presented in the video, would be a huge understatement. However, I think its worthwhile to note that abuse of centralized power, reliance on merc-connected metagamers, and foreign policy failings are extremely common problems with nations regardless of the system of governance. Blaming this entirely on the socialist democratic system or the communist theming is an argument that ignores the reality of Minecraft geopolitics. In short: communism gets a pretty bad rep for being relatively ineffective as a real system of government, but in a goofy Minecraft nation? Sickles and scythes as an aesthetic go pretty hard, and if we're gonna go on a self-serving ego-trip in an MC nation, we might as well pretend we're doing it to unite the workers of the world. Seriously though, I think there's a lot to learn here about nation-building even for the libertarians in the audience.
Didn't really talk much about the economic aspects of the USSE but the fact that they had literally any system of markets and didn't just rely on their citizens to figure it out puts so many of their so-called "capitalist" neighbors to shame. Seriously, organize your economies guys, otherwise your people are just going to buy from your enemies and its going to make them rich and you poor.
This video is great at showing this nation in a politically neutral light, showing both sides of their attempt at a socialist society in the Block Game. And I agree, the system as described in this video would be SOCIALIST. Not COMMUNIST. "Communist" states, both irl and in Minecraft, are simply states which are moving towards the systems as described by Marx (regardless of HOW they try to get there). The USSE was no different. Overall, though, this nation showcases the stregths and weaknesses of a democratic* socialist system. Ive been trying to advocate for a (liberal) democratic system in my nation for a while and yet it falls on deaf ears. They seem to be too preoccupied with increasing the powers of our previously constitutional monarchy. No one mentions the flaws of monarchy and despotism: decadent leaders, personality cults, concentration of wealth within a few powerful players, secepibility to inactivity, and lack of social mobility. A mix of these systems seem to work for a time, but as I've seen in my own nation the elites fall back into an absolutist monarchy if given too much power. Thus the system used by the USSE cycles out power while giving the average player enough of a voice in politics and allowing the more active players positions. And the unintentional consequence of using socialism is that only those who are rp socialists or actual socialists would join, ensuring a mostly loyal population (of course there were exceptions, but two controverseys in 3 years is quite calm compared to the rest of the servers). Of course any democratic system has its faults, but its dishonest to mention those without also explaining the wrongs of the current dominant political system as well. The economic system too is something to behold. In a server where the fundemental trading and market systems are inherently capitalistic, some people tried to implement a command economy and while not perfect, it did far better then I thought it would. Especually when it did in fact redistribute wealth across the country (every little bit counts). Its a great blueprint for those who are trying to play in a less meta manner. Plus, the transition from capitalist to socialist is supposed to be somewhat slow. The fact that it took a year or so to get to that point is just great Role play (regardless of how unintentional it was). While Im more for a soft captialist system in Minecraft the fact that they created this at all, and that it survived for as long as it did shows that it did what it was created to do. It kept activity up, gave rewards for participation, and made the average citizen wealthier then the reat of the server. It must've been a pain to maintain and yet they did it. I applaud them for it. Overall I could see this nation as a success. It set out what it wanted to do and delivered a somewhat stable society for its citizens regardless of whatever the secret police was working on in the background. It had a very democratic structure for a Stoneworks nation and lasted longer then most do. Like already in the Abex nation I live in we've experienced a coup, treason trials, a monarch that constantly lies, an entrenched elite and a personality cult within the span of like 3 months. Having only two major controversies within its whole existence is a godsend.
The issue with Minecraft states, their success and the success of communism within Minecraft is... well Minecraft itself. You see, the issue with a nation in Minecraft, any Minecraft nation is that the terrain is generated and extends for a very, very far reach. This means, that any Minecraft state doesn't have to deal with the one very real world issue. The issue that is the defining factor for a nations success as well as its downfall. It's the reason nations go to war and become more militarized and domineering. That is scarcity. Scarcity determines success or failure for a nation state. The depletion of vital resources, fertile soil, expansion of deserts, flash floods, tornados, volcanoes, earth quakes, disease, plagues, extinction of species. Then we have building materials, too few trees/too many trees, animal population, man power, food production, slavery, religion/religious practices, human behavior, Iron, Gold, Copper, Silver, precious gems and vital building stones, as well as different environmental factors and human adaptation, climate, food abundance/scarcity there of, water abundance/scarcity there of. Yes. Limitation of a single and very limited in resources planet. All these above factors have shaped human development and civilization. Of which, Minecraft has non. Non of these factors exist because bioms aren't that vast and resources and animals are plentiful and easily obtained. Real world Civilizations gets conquered, enslaved or falls into poverty. In Minecraft, any of these factors occur, or you disagree with the political landscape, or the military dictatorship, or economic situation of your Minecraft nation. Easy. Just leave. Go to an unoccupied part of the map and start a new civilization, one free of the woes of the previous. Need resources and minerals. Plenty to be found. Minecraft does have chunk loading. While Earth, Earth cannot reload or load new chunks for human habitation. These factors are the only reason why a Minecraft Communist or Socialist state would always succeed but in the real world, these states and ideologies will always fail.
@@binbows2258 Economic Calculation Problem. Since there are no prices in a Communist society because money doesn't exist. It would be extremely hard if not almost impossible to determine how much of a resource there is or how valuable it is. Market prices are a much easier way of determining how much of something there is, the cheaper it is the more abundant. The more expensive it is, the more scarce it is. Since Communist society would not have a system like this, the abundance or scarcity of a resource would need to be manually counted and calculated, which is an extremely ineffective method of determining scarcity. The Economic Calculation Problem is proven to exist by the fact that Socialist nations throughout history such as China and the USSR have used a similar system of market prices to determine the value of certain materials and resources. They do this by looking at the scarcity of said materials and resources in the international market, and calculating a value for it from there on. If the Economic Calculation Problem didn't exist. Socialist nations wouldn't need to have a similar system of market prices. For another example, you want to build a wood house, but you don't know how much wood you have in order to build that house.
@@binbows2258Economic Calculation Problem. Since there are no prices in a Communist society because money doesn't exist. It would be extremely hard to determine how much of a resource there is or how valuable it is. Market prices are a much easier way of determining how much of something there is, the cheaper it is the more abundant. The more expensive it is, the more scarce it is. Since a Communist society would not have a system like this, the abundance or scarcity of a resource would need to be manually counted and calculated. Which is not the most efficient way of calculating value or scarcity. The Economic Calculation Problem is proven to exist by the fact that Socialist nations throughout history such as the USSR having used a similar system of market prices to determine the value of certain materials and resources. They do this by looking at the scarcity of said materials and resources in the international market, and calculating a value for it from there on. If the Economic Calculation Problem didn't exist. Socialist nations wouldn't need to have a similar system of market prices.
I'm curious. Obviously socialism and communism work in MC because there's no scarcity but do you think there are any ideologies that work better in real life than in Minecraft?
Bro, USSE is not like Russia. It's more like China. A culturally distinct and semihomogenous state at the edge of the map that never collapsed and only went through repeated waves of highs and laws that can't handle global politics well.
@@Stoneworksi know you probably won‘t see this , but if you do, could you please tell me the custom commands in the server, i failed the USSE and i want to get back on track for Setarra, but i don‘t remember any commands except for /wild
@@the_only_lonely/spawn for spawn (duh), /g for global chat, /l for local chat, /la spawn (town name) to teleport to a town (note that it costs 200) /homes to administer your homes (spawns), that’s a couple
@@the_only_lonely a bunch of the commands are on the wiki under player commands, however it is a little outdated. some basic ones are /la spawn , to go to a town. /la accept, to accept an invite to a town. /local, to enter local chat. /globalmute, to toggle off global chat. /playercards, to give info on your character. /nickname, to change your visible name.
China handles global politics very well, its approach to global economics is one of the only parts the nation has liberalised. If it couldn't handle global politics it wouldn't become the trade giant it is today. The USSR distanced itself far more from global politics then the USSE. The Soviet Bloc struggled far more with trade with non communist countries, and there relations with the majority of the non communist world was extremely poor, and countries from outside had a very limited understanding of the country. the System of Soviets seems also somewhat similar to the USSE.
People seem to forget that personal property and private property are two different things. Abolishing private property is the same as disallowing private factories, farms, and business warehouses. They would go to the state and all be managed under one entity and distributing the work as required. Personal property are things like your PC, phone, or car. Things like that are NOT abolished under Socialism or Communism.
But if the state owns the factories that produce your PCs and phones, and the stores where you buy those PCs and phones, does it really matter? Not trying to start a flame war I just want your perspective.
@@DjDeadpigyes the definition of private property is explained in Marx’s text Edit: even if he didn’t, 1 that was the definition of private property when he was writing, 2 communism is not just him, and communist read it and executed it in that way, so what difference would it make?
@@crystalcat1002it's the same under a capitalist system tho. A company that makes washing machines don't own your personal washing machine. Same with a socialist system.
I used to play stoneworks all the time and I lived in the USSE. I haven't played since the new world but this video brought back so many memories. LONG LIVE THE USSE
This was a surprisingly charitable depiction of the USSE. Cool video, I actually liked your analysis for once. As a Manzlander who was enternally loyalist to the USSE, I must say its a shame what happened to the city and region, Lethe really screwed us over bigtime. But at least we got to have a few big battles in our backyard. Back when I joined Manzig I never would have guessed that it would become the center of a global mass super deathwar.
The Quota my mom talked about was more like an incentive to work slow, as the faster you work, the higher the quota will be next month, and the less you reach of the quota, the less pay you get. So it was a collective understanding that everyone does not reach more than 100% of their quota, or the whole group will not get paid 100% of what they usually do, and you get paid once at what quota you reached, but the same amount of work is then expected of you in the next month as the new quota.
There is a book by a man named Micheal Parenti titled "Blackshirts and Reds" in chapter 4 of this book he gives a very detailed description of what you described as well as the other shortcommings of planned economies.
I never was in the USSE or played on Eldham, but when hearing about nations in that world the USSE sticks out just due to its flag. As mentioned in the video it makes it easier to recruit people nd builds up cameradery, but also its unique style gives it a voice in geopolitics. It didn't need to do large scale expansion or drama to be seen. Just it's ideology and aestetics were enough (even thoughit wasn't really "communist" and I agree that it seems like a socialist-deocratic centralised state) to make itself known! In contrary it's system seems very vunerable in first glance. The idea of this market could have easily failed for numerous of reasons (mainly the people not seeling their goods to the state but to public markets) and normally a democratic system like this is very slow to react to events and happenings! At the end I admire this nation for its complexity and how well it's socialist system lasted through the years. I hope to see many more unique nations like this one in Abexilas!
I have to say this is a really beautiful video and thank you very much for the time you spent making this video it was really fun I really liked it thank you very much
I think that the version of communism/socialism in the USSE was a good one, of course as someone who didn't live in the USSE I can't say what the conditions were like for the citizens, especially because of the "secret police" thing that gives me, as an East German, the feeling of a "Minecraft Stassi". But I can say as a loyal and proud citizen of Sentara that everyone, and I mean everyone, raves about the good old USSE days. As a social democrat, I think the USSE political system is very good because it also represents the weakest in society in the government. Also the economic system is great, that the money is distributed more to all and not just concentrated on a few could have made life easier for me in Eldham. I only joined relatively at the end of Eldham (around December 2023) and joined the city of Kythnos, which was close to the USSE, the ways to get money there were rather difficult, there were only a few things you could sell there (the only thing I got ok money with was selling fish). Most of my time on Eldham was spent in absolute poverty, usually not even enough money to use /la spawn. I wish there had been a video like this one back in my beginner days, a video that would have informed me about such an economic system, then I would have joined the USSE straight away. Join Sentara! 🙃
I don't know how many people watching this are actually Communists, but personally, as ridiculous as it sounds, I, as a Communist, believe this video is very insightful into how we can not only fix some of the issues with previous socialist systems, but completely revolutionize the ways we look at the system. Namely, the "big issue" Stoneworks describes in the video, being how, while communal, cooperative systems have been proven to work well in small, tight-knitted societies, the eventual goal of a united globe under a system like this seems very difficult. I believe that the USSE's method of counteracting the people unwilling to cooperate is perfect. Unbridled comradery, zero tolerance for those who exploit the system, and most importantly, a clear goal that the people can see and work towards. While this is definitely optimistic and frankly, incredibly unconventional as hell, I believe that these characteristics (minus the zero tolerance policy in its current form) can be used to create a system where cooperation is the norm rater than the exception. Where the people understand that what they're working for is for the benefit of not themselves, but everyone (and by extension themselves, of course). Where selflessness and empathy are so ingrained in us that not following it is seen as just a rude or indecent thing to do. Where a highly educated public polices itself based on universally accepted morals, not through force. We can knit our communities closer together, though it will be complicated. But hey, that's what planning is for. And for those who believe everyone being "programmed" to be EMPATHETIC is dystopian or evil, just ask yourself if that's not alreaey what has happened in our current society. Has the hostility and unforgivingness of our Capitalist system not planted seeds of selfishness self-interest in us? To the point where we believe it's human nature?
But communism has it in the name: It comes from the Word community. Marxism is based on the idea of small thightly knit communities that trade amongst themselfes, i havent read Marxs works myselfe, but thats what i understand communism is.
@@luciel3910 Yes, but what you need to understand is that every "Communist" country that's ever existed is not actually that. They have a Communist party striving towards Communism, but they are officially socialist (i.e., the transition state between Capitalism and Communism). This transition state serves to keep the country safe from attackers and spread Communist ideals until socialism becomes the primary economic system, at which point we will be able to lay down our arms and really be able to establish the classless, stateless society that Communism is. Another thing you need to know is that almost every socialist country in history is that they have almost always been Marxist-Leninist. The difference between traditional Marxism and Marxism-Leninism is that while Marx believed the socialist transition state could only come via revolution from an educated public in a heavily industrialized society like his own in Prussia. This was proven wrong by Lenin, however, who would not only profess the ideas, but lead a revolution himself based on the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would allow heavily agricultural countries like Russia (which was essentially feudalist before the revolution), Cuba (essentially a colony of the U.S. and Spain) and Vietnam (literally a colony of France) to have a successful revolution despite a very uneducated public due to their far less industrialized societies. The idea of this form of government is that revolutionaries would educate the public on their oppression the best they can, spreading revolutionary ideals until, eventually, there is enough class conciousness and anger at their oppression by not just the bougousie in their own country, but by those in other countries, or by literal monarchs, which is the one thing even Capitalism is better than. At this point, a revolution will take place (and forgive me for not knowing what this would look like, I am unfortunately not wholly educated on this topic) and would establish a socialist transition state. But unlike the one Marx professed, this one would be, for the first few years, be run mostly by a vanguard government, the intellectuals in society, who would focus on industrializing and educating on a larger scale, to make up for what an independent Capitalist system would've done, and be able to hand over greater control to the public after industrialization. The main criticism of this is, of course, that this form of government made for rapid industrialization could become, well, a dictatorship run by disconnected intellectuals who would sacrifice the well-being of people for their rapid industrialization. Looking at historical examples of this, the countries in which it has been done have had a mixture of success, to say the least. They have all been fairly good at good education for the people, but have definitely led to large amounts of control for the government and, well, sacrifice of people for industrialization, less in Cuba and Voetnam, but definitely in North Korea and the USSR, mainly with Stalin for the latter. However, in my opinion, this doesn't mean we should forsake Lenin's ideas. We should learn what made Cuba and Vietnam more successful in transitioning to a socialist transition state in which Marx professed. After all, we shouldn't have to wait until every nation has industriallized via the far crueler systems of Capitalism and imperialism to be able to make socialism global. This is also one of the things most anti-Communists don't understand is the form of Marxism these past countries have had to use. In already industrialized countries like those in the West, we will likely not have nearly as much of an opportunity for dictatorship to take hold. There is, of course, the other argument that any form of transition state will lead to oppression and dictatorship and will lose sight of the eventual Communist goal. This is mainly professed by Anarchists, who believe Communism doesn't have to be a global system but instead can be directly implemented community by community. Any of these philosophies are still on the table because, let's be honest, the idea of actually implementable Communism on a large scale in relatively new, and we don't really have many examples to know what works best. However, what we must not forget is that we all inevitably have the same goal and, thus, must work together. The second we lose unity is when any movement we've built falls apart and is one of the main methods of the ruling class to crush any revolution, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or Anarchist.
@@okarthegreat I will try to answer in a day, i would really like to read this and engage, but i have an Exam tomorrow, so i don't have the time to read all of that right now.
reading the comments and... god damn people have strong feeling in wither direction about this nation on a minecraft server but yeah, cool stuff. might look into joining again
0:51 It's not too late for you yet, buddy. Hakim is always waiting for you if you decide to redeem yourself. No pressure, nobody will be angry at you, just come over to Hakim and become🗿
Salute from Aboniert, lol. I started this in the lockdown when I was 13, as I was kinda bored, and a hardcore CPV-fanatic. You get the idea. The people that suceeded the leadership, Xeroise, and others, and USSE's citizens is what have made it great and immortal. What did I do? Maybe taming Doug, that one holy cow, that's it. I was kind of a shitty person then. I salute you all, who made USSE great. UA-cam recommended me this today, and it did bring back memories. Also, if you are in some anti-imperialist, or Maoist movements irl, or the anti-government movement in Vietnam (yeah, big hard anti-government and anti-CPV guy now, my articles and interviews criticizing them are out there in French, Portuguese, English and Vietnamese), chances are, you might have, and will see me again, under a diferent alias. I kind of got way more serious in these stuffs and started activism
I'm gonna make this comment before watching the video to make some predictions based on my own interests in history, then maybe I'll edit it after. I think that in practice, this is going to resemble something more like a kind of tribal society rather than communism. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a Commie rallying call, but it's not a modern or uniquely communist way of doing things. A lot of hunter-gatherer or smaller-scale farmer societies can kind of work this way as well. Communism tries to scale this up to a highly-populated, equal, necessarily specialized society, which is not needed or really all that possible in Minecraft. Outside of things like PVP skills there isn't really any specialized work possible in Minecraft, everyone can just kinda do everything, and these societies aren't really going to have many people either. On the equality front, many of these ancient societies aren't very equal at all (though some are), but the power of the elites comes from personal ties of client-patronage: "I scratch your back you scratch mine, but I give more so I'm in charge" as opposed to power that's more institutionalized. I think that there will be richer players/elites but there power will come from keeping their followers happy through gift giving or favors from top down. Edit: Turns out I was half-right about the elites and patronage, but it's "filtered" through a state-controlled market. More equal though than some other Stoneworks groups, so that's clearly something that works well enough. Kinda like Potlatch, but with guided incentives for what gets contributed.
Honestly, I don't personally think the U.S.S.E could ever be totally "communist" due to the fact that within Minecraft all goods / items are gathered individually; this is different in real life where real life regimes can just threaten you with death, in the U.S.S.E / Stoneworks as a whole, death isn't something that you can threaten with unless you're rping. However, the U.S.S.E did imo have some pretty solid basis for socialism, as in, a lot of the wealther government members sold a lot of the materials in the nation to the people of the nation (government giving out materials / equal share) but ofc it was still buying so idk. The U.S.S.E, from what I know, did decently play out its democratic part, it proved itself a tactical democratic nation that would elect a new GS, so the democratic part of the U.S.S.E is pretty true. The nation it looks like did decently hold up the whole us vs the world trope that a lot of isolated communist nations do have (DPRK as an example). From an rp perspective, the U.S.S.E was probably the only real safehaven that held up the ideas of communism for players that were interested in it, all others typically were smaller or failed earlier on.
The USSE was never a socialist state in practice, it roleplayed socialism but never held to the true ethos and structure of a socialist state. Minecraft is highly individualistic, and even then, the USSE was closer to a quasi-tribal clan based communal society than it was a socialist haven
True. Fear of death is a primary motivator for IRL people, and it almost universally is the cause for hierarchies in the first place. I guess if you want real Communism, you better start by making humans immortal.
@@Francis-qu2iu you do know that tribal clans of the past are called by socialist thinkers as "Primitive Communism". Hate it or like it, the USSE IS technically socialist lol
Hey, so as a participant of one of the few (in retrospect) MagicGum simulation events, and someone very interested in this kind of thing, I have a couple questions about your server: - How do you deal with respawns? - How do you deal with Minecraft's default global chat? - How long are the worlds? - Is there a proximity chat? (Whether a voice mod and/or chat plugin) - Do you summon events with a surviving party in mind? - Do you act as a god or participate in cheats? - Do you give any country an advantage? - Is there a society plugin? (for example towny) If you see this and respond, thank you.
This server is like towny and each world lasts for years. It is not an event like magic gum’s or Ish’s servers Many characters have “character deaths” where if they get killed in a specific story, their character dies and they have to make a new one. Up to them how / when that works. Otherwise respawns are chill. The community works more as a Minecraft community than just the immediate circumstances like in those short events. This makes nations’ rise and fall take months - years, and extremely impactful and dramatic when it happens. I and some of my staff act like “gods”, but really we’re invisible and roleplaying as the gods that the players make up for their own communities. We staff are not gods, but we fill in for the actual gods the players create and worship. We give no countries any advantages. If staff does that, we try to kick them off of staff and ban them. Hope this helps, please check out some more videos and you may see this more in action
The USSE knew this fact, Stoney just oversimplifies it extremely for his audience. The USSE called itself (as in the state and gov government) socialist (its literally in the name), and only called itself communist when referring to its ideology.
@@2plus2equals98 What do you think USSR stands for exactly? They did not call the state a communist one, they referred to it as socialist for a reason. It had a Communist Party, but the state/government cannot be described as communistic outside of informal definitions.
Communism is more than just a final state of organization.Just like capitalism , in its theoretical form, has a truly free market and no government intervention.Communism is more like an ideal where its never actually reached.Socialism is only the path that very slowly fades away into a communist mode of production that you can never completely know you have accomplished.
What we need is two councils of advisors/supervisors, guiding and advising/supervising two teams about what is a communist and what is a capitalist policy or course of action.
Alr it’s time for my part in this argument. First off, I want to give my props to the Xeroist methods from what I’ve seen in the wiki page and how it was working to a degree within Eldham however I am unsure how it works in Abexilas. However this doesn’t change my mind on why communism won’t work even in Minecraft. First I’m going to talk about my points in the U.S.S.E First off, the U.S.S.E did work to a degree, I stated that before. However it was plagued by its own success. Sure as you said it had an influx of socialist supporting people who believed in the ideals of Xeroism or socialism, however we cannot ignore the fact some people, even socialists, wouldn’t agree with the U.S.S.E’s form of socialism or communism. This is especially prevelant in the Manzland revolt. I usually take the stance that communism can work in small scale communities due to it being based off the willing cooperation of the common populous. For example, the only reason the Soviet Union was effective was because of its forceful action of making its population work for the good of “The Nation’s Survival” however it was just repression for personal gain. Another thing I would like to mention is the political system of the U.S.S.E. Though it is clear there is a good bit of democracy within the country, and I give props to them, as the video said it was clear there was a “Higher Class” at least politically within the Gen. Sec’s. political circle upon their election. It is also clear there will be a societal class system based on activity and productivity of the individual, which is usually how it goes within Minecraft nations. I always wanted to point out the lack of military prowess, due to the more Bureaucratic nature as said in the video of the U.S.S.E’s structure. Now I wish to turn to Xeroism and its policies. First off, after analyzing the video and reading the Wiki-page on Xeroism I applaud its creator for creating such a flushed out political and economic system and implementing it to an extent within their nation. However it is inherently flawed. First off, I would like to say again how a social class system would never be able to be removed due to activity and productivity, with these individual as usually being the ones elected to the assembly, General Secretary or appointed to be in the secretary’s personal circle. Another notion is the problem of an activity issue, Xeroism and socialism/communism as a whole promotes equality in equity and resources, however this comes with the issue of a lack of productivity from players. However this was partially fixed within the U.S.S.E with the Citizen’s market I’d like to shed light on another example. The Roman Empire late in its life had a policy of “Bread and Show” to prevent riots. Of which the common people would always have food and entertainment to keep them content. With this, it directly went against the Roman culture of work and expansionism, leading to the inherent complacency of the society as a whole. Along with the barbarian raids and constant fighting adding onto this complacency plus a slew of other issues led to the decline of the Roman Empire in my opinion. I also want to partially agree with the Revolutionist ideals of Xeroism. However I do believe this is also inherently flawed. This is due to violent revolutions usually leaving massive power vacuums of which are detrimental to most nations that just had their government structures overthrown. Take for example the Russian Revolution, French Revolution, 1912 Chinese Revolution, 2011 Libyan Revolution, and 2011 Syrian Revolution. All of these, although good in nature to overthrow tyrannical or failing powers led massive power vacuums of which destroyed the nation internally for years after the inherent revolution. Many nations in minecraft would suffer the same issue. This is where I bring about an actual solution to my critique. To at first advocate for a communist or Xeroist change you must at first advocate for a democratic one. And then once that is secured utilize the will of the people to bring about the change wanted. And since the U.S.S.E was a mostly democratic system, the people clearly had support for it without major change (let’s not talk about the secret police). Another part I’d like to critique is the Vanguardism supported by the Xeroist ideology. From the wiki page of what I’ve seen is that Vanguardism is the creation of a single party to represent all workers (please correct me if I’m wrong). With this, the inherent flaws are clearly shown. Even in a society where majority of the populous is in support of a socialist party or government, not everyone’s ideals would align with the party’s and thus wouldn’t be properly represented. With this, usually more political parties are needed to properly represent all people, of course in this society all would be socialist to some degree. Not all socialists have the same ideals, so it would benefit the nation to have multiple parties. Now I wish to move on to the ideology in the context of the climate of Abexilas. Most of my previous points can also be made here, however I wanted to place down one more point. Sure there would be a good portion of new players coming to Abexilas and players from Eldham or Rathnir who would agree with the socialist principles, from what I’ve seen a lot of new players coming in with enough ambition to put Napoleon to shame. To put it simple, many new players believe they’re the one who will create the next world spanning empire and probably won’t agree with or bend/break an ideology designed to make up of the cooperation of all. As I’ve stated before, I do respect the U.S.S.E for its success and its long term existence within Eldham, however it is clear its structure is inherently flawed and in my opinion, only puts up the illusion of freedom and the lack of a class system for the most part. Discord name: PanzerMarkIV/PanzerMarkIV/1945 IGN: PanzerMarkIV1945/PanzerMarkIV
I would wager that some of the reasons it worked are... 1. It was largely a culturally, socially, and politically homogenous society, with most members having largely similar goals/aspirations and intents. They all wanted essentially the same thing, and had similar beliefs. 2. Unless your server strays far from basic, vanilla Minecraft, they would have had essentially limitless resources. Items are created from nothing. Look at farmed food and breeding. You sow a field of wheat, harvest, and you get not just wheat, but seeds, more seeds than required to fill in the plot, meaning you can further expand the farm, leading to exponential growth. A similar process happens with animals, you can take the surplus crops and feed that to your farmed animals creating more. Cacti keep growing, trees, etc. Matter is created from nothing. Heck, with certain enchantments, you get more resources than you normally would. 3. Detachment of the game from real life. Relating to point 1, where people are complex creatures, people come to the game to relax, LARP, have fun. This includes roleplaying what may be your idealized political system, and everyone being unified. People are much less complex in this setting and their goals reflect this. This reduces prejudices and biases that lead to internal conflict.
5:10 the USSR was a parody of a government with the bureaucracy to end all bureaucracy: everything was a rigid structure and everyone was subcontracting subcontractors to get "x" done, and it ended up never getting done because the job kept getting sent down a bottomless chain of smaller and smaller regional managers. If it wasn't YOUR immediate problem, why should you care? Telling the skeleton crew night shift that the poorly-implemented and almost never maintained Nuclear reactor 4 was being currently stress-tested is someone else's problem. Whoops, now a large portion of Ukraine is contaminated, and the entire town of Pripyat has to be evacuated... But hey, that's not your problem. That's the job of the local commissar to orchestrate the mass evacuation and government cover-up. you are just the day-shift's Nuclear plant manager for reactor 3...
I know Stoney already kinda said what I'm about to explain but I really think it's important in order to understand what made the USSE the strong nation that it used to be. As someone who spent a lot of time reading, studying and thinking about Maoism, Stalinism, Marxism and even older communist ideologies with ties to the Commune of Paris, it's really clear that the USSE was nothing more than a nealty organized socialist democracy. And given the extremely capitalist nature of Stoneworks, it's already a big achievement to be able to do that, yet it is far from the communist ideologies that they aimed at. And I'm not mad at them, they tried to create a true communist movement, held by workers and intellectuals rather than by an oligarchy, and they mostly succeeded in that. But what made them truly big isn't all of that cultural and ideological lore, rather it is the extremely well organized direct democratic and economical system that they managed to keep running until the end of their nation. They understood the necessity of a closed economy for the good of their people, keeping wealthy comrades from gathering too much power (at least in theory). They made a system that allowed anyone to contribute to the wealth and power of their nation, directly or indirectly, by being correctly represented and by having an open government system. I know that a lot of people think that bureaucracy is a bad thing, especially for those who grew up in capitalist countries where anti-communist propaganda worked really well, but the reality is that as long as it is kept running smoothly it is the best way to ensure democracy and to avoid falling to fascism and other capitalist ideologies. To be honest, I only have a few regrets about the political system of the USSE. Mainly, I can only criticize their lack of a proper military complex, one worthy of defending a nation like the USSE, which in the long term would have really helped them ensure their autonomy. Furthermore, their governing body was very close to the people but the general secretary still had a lot of power as the decision to overthrown them was made by the people rather than (or in complement ideally) to a regulatory body, ensuring that their core principles weren't violated.
I actually think that not having a proper army help them survive for those 3 years. Since as you say most of the nations in Stoneworks where capitalist they would feel more threatened by USSE if they had a better army. I would even bet that many of the nations would team up to deal with the USSE if they where stronger.
@@wutshow577 that depends, everyone conveniently leaves out the usse’s fsb/cia that spies on the people to prevent political changes and would infiltrate and topple govt that they deemed dangerous, and also how they pretty much said how a whole region within their country with a different culture and beliefs didn’t exist.
im sorry to be the one to say it but the minecraft roleplayers did not in fact invent perhaps the most memorable slogan from karl marx's communist manifesto (1848)
Oversimplified should make an Alt channel called: "Stoneworks Oversimplified" Also, do the citizens finished products get sold at (the cost of materials + a bit of extra money)?
It's actually quite interesting that people in Minecraft servers tend to replicate capitalism with shops for trading items, when there's literally no reason to do that. Sharing everything just makes more sense.
I believe Communism inside of Minecraft is far superior to that of Democracy inside of Minecraft. Due to the short term thinking, democracy does not work very well on servers such as stoneworks when your nation could crumble at any moment. However, Communism allows the materials to be spread across the nation, increasing activity now give me items
@@Lenin_enjoyer”In summary, Marx's view of the dictatorship of the proletariat involved political experiments focused on dismantling state power and dispersing its functions among the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was viewed as a form of transitional rule in which class struggle ended and the state became extinct” Name one self proclaimed communist state from the Bolshevik era to the collapse of the USSR that adopted some kind of “democratic communism”.
@@DjDeadpigI know “dictatorship of the proletariat” kinda sounds scary but it was Marx’s way of saying what he thought was true democracy. He said that modern liberal democracy doesn’t work well because corporations usually have the power to fund the candidates that will supports them. We can see this today, think about it has anyone in America for the last 80 years been not supported by corporations. So socialist democracy includes democratic control of the economy. Where you might have a local council of neighbors who got elected to vote in new stores, and buildings to be made. Or your fellow workers might all agree your boss is a asshole and elect someone with better experience.
@@kongdragon4364 I mean when you put it that way "Dictatorship of the Prolatariat" just sounds like common democracy. The chief characteristic of common democracy is that the majority rules in tyrannical, absolute fashion, and all that matters is the number of votes. We've never seen that kind of government be successful IRL, usually because democracies end up crumbling due to minor disagreements that escalate, or just due to lack of cohesive identity.
My problem with Minecraft history simulators is that everyone uses regular combat, we learned 400 years ago the benefit of gunpowder. You can create massive tnt cannons that can fire across thousands of blocks and level cities. Why don't people? (edit) I'm not hating on this server its awesome and I wish I could join.
Calling them Communists are just a point of semantics. They would be closer to just a thigh knit shared economy community, with USSR esthetics. However, that would just be arguing over semantics, and thus i have made a circular argument and is now in a linguistical fallacy.
@@sasho_b. Communism is more then a shared economy. Its a top down shared economy mostly. these guys are a bottom up shared economy, its drastically different.
@@Fixti0n That is not how communism is defined, and the USSE did not call its government communist nor its economy. They called it socialist, their *ideology* was communist. They correctly recognized that achieving a communist society, at least by the Marxist definition, is impossible because of the way Stoneworks currently operates and that the most you can do is create socialism and hope for the way the server is operated to drastically change and for the plugins that run the server to be reformed in order to create communist society.
@@Fixti0n what the fuck are you on about. communism is a stateless society where the economy is owned in common by the people. its not some society where the the undemocratic goberment owns everything or some bullshit
Ah. This is like Civcraft, a very old political minecraft server. There were two communist groups on that group, Libertarian Socialist Republic Federation, and another group I forget about. Communism in minecraft works very well. In the LibSoc group we all just shared all our goods in a communal storage and worked independently or together on dope projects (we built The Mother Calls statue, some cool architecture, and propaganda). I used to farm and build a ton of dope shit. Loved those people and Civcraft
@@L_LGBTQ Doesn't exist anymore, as they reset the server world into Abexilas (i think that's the name). The successor states are listed in the reply above me
Is a man not entitled to the grub of his hub?
No says the rides share/delivery company. It belongs to the shareholders
No says the fast food employee, it belongs to the workers
No says the Uber eats driver picking up an extra job after a long day of acting as a taxi cab for drunk partygoers on a Saturday evening. It belongs to me!
I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose…Grub Hub…a business where the hungry would not fear the risk of a delayed order, where the midnight munchies would not be bound by petty delivery fees, where those who can afford a twelve late night mcchickens will have their fill, and with the food finally delivered Grub Hub can become your business too…
7:16 only at the ip Play.Stoneworks.GG
Deserves way more likes
It's Beautifull
Bioshock reference! I love this 😂
biohub
what do you mean it works? OBVIOUSLY it works, marx was known for his minecraft gameplays back then.
I personally loved his factions series
@@delun4 ah... Suscribe to Marx77
Lmao. If only it worked in real life.
@@LoudPelican may god never hear your plea. he will absolutely dunk ya.
@@delun4 "wait.. is that guys skin BLAC-"
-Marxcraft 1902
your Honor, in my client's defense he said: "in Minecraft"
title of next video:
sexual harassment fully works...... in Minecraft
"Arson and facism works... in minecraft" @@infocheckorg
should have said in real life
In real life too
It also works in real life
I can't believe I just watched 20 minutes of minecraft politics
Me too.
I just came for communist jokes.
Welcome to the rabbit hole; enjoy your stay.
Lol same
Welcome to the Internet 🎶
@@Tyx1d come and take a seat :-)
>looking for a communist minecraft server
>ask the host if their server is communist or soviet
>They don't understand
>I pull out an illustrated diagram explaining what is communist and what is soviet
>They laugh and say "it's a fun server sir"
>Join server
>It's soviet
God damn it
THATS WHAT IM SAYIN
show that diagram to some soviets, well see what the real communists think.
@animationstudiosa 😁
"Soviet" means "workers council" which follow a socialist line... and what is socialism? A well thought out plan to dismantle capitalism, and eventually enact true communism. Some education for y'all on this early Tuesday morning.
The great block forward 😭
stop getting so emotional
🤦♂️they arent
i undarstand you pal
The communist block
Lol
its crazy how they made life in minecraft. like ppl write & read books, vote in elections, go to war, form alliances, etc etc... is wildd!!!! the idea of an economy is like the least suprising thing abt this lmao
This is the way. Stoneworks Minecraft is lightning in a bottle, and it’s all because we started out with an incredible community of creative world builders 🙏
I've stumbled upon this randomly and it almost brought a tear to my eye. I've been wanting something like this in Minecraft for a literal decade, but always knew it would be one hell of an accomplishment to actually get the people together for it since you need people of all types to fill all the roles and to do so organically for the most part.
Hats off to the people that make this happen, it's truly a work of art. Maybe someday soon I'll have the time and energy to take part myself.
Not just that, but the USSE literally had its own Boris Yeltsin moment in the form of Lethe, and actually managed to maintain itself and its democratic principles. We literally just watched a mini alternative history of how the USSR could have turned out.
@@Stoneworksnow imagine this in real life hahaha
UTC UTC UTC
@@Proud_Knightyou should join rhodockia on the server fr fr
I think the USSE shows how a socialist system can work well in Minecraft. They used the citizen market to share resources cheaply within their nation and give everyone access to resources to help make them be productive within their nation. This helped all players get what they needed and made the economy stronger even with internal conflicts, the USSE had the longest running democracy in Minecraft, showing strong democratic and socialist values. They used smart strategies to protect themselves from outside threats. The USSE’s long 3 year life proves that their ideology of on cooperation, unity, and shared ownership works.
aint reading allat
maybe we would have done better if you didnt take two weeks to answer our war tickets xDDD /j all good man hahahahaha much love
It only works when the people want to help the nation
ChatGPT
@watermelonkingjus2677 How could it be ChatGPT? The last time I checked, ChatGPT doesn't watch and understand videos.
Did the math. Assuming every real life day accounts for 9 Minecraft days (or 3 hour Minecraft sessions daily), exactly three 365 day years would equal 9,855 Minecraft days or 27 Minecraft years.
If we assume at the maximum that each real day is 72 Minecraft days (24 hours Minecraft sessions daily), then it equates to 78,840 Minecraft days or 216 Minecraft years.
IIRC a year in game is 4 days irl
It’s easy to survive for 200 years when food grows in 40 minutes and not over months 😂
@@LonzoZotyof course no one starves in capitalist countries… except the millions of food insecure Americans but shhh that’s left wing propaganda!!!
Don't play stoneworks anymore, but I was an Eldham player in the USSE's general region. Strategic Vassalization was highly common in Eldham among smaller nations, what is odd about the USSE is how large it was while enacting the same strategy.
I was one of those ruling aristocrats in my nation (The Grand Duchy of Samora) and I have had to interact with the USSE on multiple occasions because of that. With the exception of Santos (though, everyone bullied the shit out of Santos), the USSE always was very competent in their foreign relations with me. I can remember participating in the Seronnan Summits in Kazkaya and other cities. Krakhov had some military guards for the in game meeting and they were very friendly and helpful with everyone (despite many of us being monarchs and the USSE hated monarchs and nobility).
With all being said- the USSE was, looking back, a joy to interact with and I am grateful for being, at the end of Eldham, the local noble lord of a former USSE province. :troll:
For much of the USSE's history, it lacked a strong military. While the USSE was one of the world's largest producers by far, giving even truly gargantan nations like Ashai ample competition, we did not have the PvP-heads to defend everything that had been built. If we could export that need to our friends abroad with little or no cost at all to us, than it was a net benefit to all parties.
That was the largest motivator behind strategic vassalization.
Wonderful comrade! Now please get against the wall. ❤
What happened to it?
salutations from the united collectivist republics of krasnoi!
the USSE was a glorious part of ratham history
Question. Am I high or are they using the 8 ray sun of the Philippines.
Can you tell me the commands for joinign a nation, a city, bying stuff etc, all the special commands basically, I joined the USSE to late and i want to make up for that, I‘m all ready in the Setarra discord and am a official citizen, i just forgot the commands
@@nitesy381 They are.
@@the_only_lonelyjust dm a mayor and he will add you to a town
learn history
3 IRL years???????? That's a fourth of 2b2t's history, and almost a fourth of MINECRAFT history. That's incredibly impressive. I wish I joined before... Imagine me being the Minister of Justice or the Attorney-General handling internal affairs and discussions on the military. Lmao, is Zilatra that good too?
There's a few nations actually which are Xeroist which try and continue the political legacy of the socialists in nations like the USSE, but Zilatra is actually the largest in Abexilas! The Abexilas server just started so its kind of impossible to say what the longevity of any one of those nations will look like in the long run, but you can join if you wish to be a part of that!
I joined like 5 months ago, no diamonds to buy and get to work, had no time for one week, forgot about the server and never joined again
@the_only_lonely but the world ended 2 months ago
@@CherryStoneworks Is Abexilas part of the server Stoneworks advertised in this video?
If I would join I would like wanna be a reporter on all the affairs and have like a library of information (I know that’s oddly specific)
To be entirely honest, i have NO idea how i ended up here. I don't watch minecraft content, i'm not a very political guy, and though i do watch people like Kaz Rowe(historians), nothing too hypothetical like strategy- smart-person stuff I'm no fit for
That said, i of course barely understand anything in this video, but I'm loving it.
youtube likes recommending the occasional pro-commie video randomly to you, I'm very anti-communist and randomly get breadtubers recommended to me all the time.
@@fredrickmansav6852 You must be just anti-communist enough for the site to think your interaction means you're engaged with it
@@fredrickmansav6852 the algorithm doesn't know if it's "pro" or "anti". Likely, you just watched a few anti-comunnist videos and now YT thinks you're interested in communism.
@@fredrickmansav6852Just like how I am an atheist but get bombarded by Christian and Muslim videos
I don’t think Stalin saw the “In Minecraft” part
Mao be like:🍷🗿
It was Lenin that founded USSR.🗿
@@atlas_19any of the figures count
@@trueluscaoTbf it was not just lenin. Every revolutionary took part in its establishment. Even Trotsky.
@@magmati55 yeah that's what i meant with any figure
Quite funny to create this, but even funnier to create this on July 4th.
It’s crazy how despite the overwhelming success of the USSE, it wasn’t adopted more widely across Eldham or Rathnir (I mean Abexilas has a chance but c’mon). I think it’s a problem many players suffer with that they get permanently trapped out of any real sense of power, important, or presence because they are simply locked out of access to the ways there. If you don’t have connections with the rich or with pvpers or mercs, many can’t stake a claim in an environment chock full of established nations with big names. The thing that made the USSE special was that everyone felt they could share a role in its success.
Stoney’s argument that an aristocratic elite emerged ignores that despite accomplishments achieved by certain individuals, these never overshadowed any opportunity for new players to make a stake in society. It was hard to get locked out as long as you tried and put at least moderate effort into contributing to the collective good. The people who succeeded in the USSE weren’t those who were out for themselves, but who had the desire to see everyone rise together.
This is the beauty of the USSE, that the culture and system incentivized collective prosperity. Other nations based on more capitalist or internally competitive systems never lasted as long or successfully precisely because they pitted people against each other. These nations, who seem to resemble and adopt mercantilism over anything capitalist, never have as much of an impact because the story is never about one guy who got rich. History doesn’t remember every Roman emperor nearly as much as it does leaders such as Aurelian or Marcus Aurelius. They found a spotlight because their nation did. The prosperity of the people was the thing that stood out, not their individual wealth or power, and this is shown in the USSE.
The reason communism, especially USSE communism works, is this collective aspiration for united harmony and prosperity. I haven’t seen any other nation replicate it on nearly as large and successful scale as the USSE, and I eagerly await any that can achieve the same heights (cough cough Zilatra cough cough maybe).
So basically, just like real life.
Hey @exultantexalted I think this is the strongest pro-USSE argument I see in the comments (although not the most holistic). If you're on my server, I'd like to give you the prize for the debate contest I set up! Let me know what your username is please
yo same profile pic
@@Stoneworks omg hi stoney!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm confused, does this server Stoneworks talked about still work? I like the idea of large SMPs in Minecraft, but I'm kinda tired of being part of mercenary groups or people not wanting to get along. Can I join this country? If not, is there a new server that has a new Socialist country? (I noticed you mentioned "Zilatra", but I don't know what that means exactly)
Its 3:23 AM rn, what have i stumbled upon
Fr
Welcome to the internet
@@wetzel4806have a look around
>communist nation state
>communist market
>social democracy
welcome back, Sir Ferdinand Lassalle!
Democratic Socialism is not Social Democracy. Social Democracy is still capitalism, just with a lot of welfare. Democratic Socialism does not have a capitalist ruling class, even if it still has a market economy.
Market socialism* exists
Market “socialism” exists
Not the same
*it’s not communism, cuz it got money
@@Somebodyherefornow money is just a token to exchange goods and services, if you have vouchers it is money in effect. Abolishing money is not a requisit for Communism by any stretch, it was attempted, admitedly naively, but it isn't a core tenet of communism.
@@shorgoth "classless moneyless society" ???
Great video, Stoney, just remember "Democracy is indispensable to socialism"
In the wide world of Eldham, no nation was built better than the USSE, It was skill and cooperation that perfectly designed the county to thrive and thrive it did. The biggest success factor in the USSE was its national identity, as you said here, "it attracted a particular group of people." This group of people were all commonly united under one goal, because of this, they would stick together, and work together to achieve this goal.
NATIONAL UNITY THROUGH IDENTITY
The USSE was one of the most united and connected nations in Stoneworks history. With the specific choice of aesthetic, the nation managed to appeal to many like-minded people. These people, who all (often) shared a view of the nation, were united to pursue this vision. Due to this strong sense of national identity, the people stayed united despite many losses against forces they had no sway over, and even managed to bounce back. This impressive amount of unity rivaled by no other nation was undoubtedly a result of the communist aesthetic and the shared vision of bringing people together.
FOR THE PROLET, BY THE PROLET
The unique democratic structure of the USSE allowed the average citizen to take action to see the change they wanted. The concept of democracy can work wonders when it comes to a nation's activity. By giving the people the thought that they could come to influence the policy in their nation they have effectively prevented severe internal struggle, with the way the USSE was built the government couldn't have (easily) gotten away with a bad decision, this would result in the nation never facing an eternal death spiral and would be one of the greatest contributors of its longevity. This ultimately helps show how a structured democratic system can work wonders for a nation rather than some impulsive monarch or a power-hungry warlord.
A PLANNED, PLANNED ECONOMY
The planned economy of the USSE is a marvel to behold, the constant stream of resources grantees that every worker can do his part to support his nation at all times. This grantees that the nation will never fail as long as the workers work, and if the workers work for the prosperity of the worker rather than the prosperity of the Bourgeoise. If the worker knows that they are working for the prosperity of their country and themselves, the worker will work harder, because then the worker knows what he is working for. The USSE mastered this as a nation, and it brought them great success.
A COLLECTIVISED POOL OF INTELLIGENCE
If it weren't for the expertise of the people of the USSE the nation would have undoubtedly failed to achieve its goal of utopia. The nation's success is the result of the individuals working together to construct the systems to keep their dream alive. If multiple people had not worked together to set up the economy then they would've failed, if the people exploited the economy they would've failed. If the people abandoned their theory, they would've failed. If it weren't for the intelligence and initiative of the common man, the USSE would've failed. This proves that you don't need autocrats, kings, and nobles to keep the machine running at maximum efficiency, you just need the people to be working together as one.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN?
The USSE was built by the skill of the people, not by circumstance. It was the genius of the people to establish their union, fuel their union, and build their union. The structure of the USSE was built for the people of the USSE, by the people of the USSE. The planned economy of the nation made them rich, the democracy of the nation made them methodical, and the unity of the Proletariat made them powerful. The USSE is the perfect example of long-term success, you can gain power and influence as a monarch, but you can gain happiness and community as a worker.
"Individualism and selfishness brings a nation to ruin, but only collectivism and working together can bring it out." -TechnicallyNothingInteresting (TecNotInt)
your points are really greats ! congrat on defending the USSE comrade
By the way, lovely post, but there is one main issue. The USSE never claimed to be, nor did it attempt to create utopia. This is a common misconception about socialism in general though. Our socialism was based in science, not fiction and utopianism. This has been the case with real world Marxism since the creation of scientific socialism, and was the case with Stoneworks socialist movements since the creation of Xeroism.
@@CherryStoneworks oh yeah ofc, it was never meant to be an utopia
Great video! As somebody who conducted diplomacy with the USSE in early Eldham (often as enemies), I think you did a good job of explaining some of the upsides and downsides of the USSE. With that said, I think there's more that could be added to the discussion of following their ideological principles whilst maintaining internal and external stability.
You mentioned Manzland as a capitalist region within the USSE that left, but there existed another, arguably more egregious example in the region of Merconis. The Merconisan government, which came under the protection of the USSE shortly after its creation, was a region led by xPxtatoes which created a massive multi-million-dollar cactus farming operation. They supplied XP bottles to militaries all across Eldham, and would provoke their neighbors in a bid to instigate conflict. Following a dispute with the Zamotz Union, the USSE would end up defending Merconis in a border issue that xPxtatoes was found to be at fault in, fighting a war in which they ultimately lost and ceded the lands to Uraka as a vassal.
I bring this up because Merconis was a sort of necessary evil the USSE took. Its affiliation as a part of the USSE seemed to violate pretty integral parts of Xeroism and communism at large - it was effectively a colony of theirs on another continent they had no other presence in, meeting even the Marxist definition of imperialism (inflicting the burden of capitalism onto other regions) when defending what can be retrospectively viewed as a terrible capitalistic war-funding machine. It would be as if China established a colony in Africa and headquartered Lockheed Martin in there. It's incredibly antithetical to the communist cause, and yet the USSE committed to its defense. They were treaty-bound to defend Merconis, but the reasons go beyond that.
You mentioned how the USSE fluctuated between periods of growth and decline, and indeed, the USSE had its bad periods. The policy of "Strategic Vassalization," beyond the fact that it aligned the USSE with the richest and most imperialist of countries on Eldham, talks to a deeper problem that practical applications of Xeroism struggled to resolve throughout much of its history. The lack of consolidating itself on the national stage with its constant flip flops, alongside an inability to reach a competitive level of output relative to its international adversaries, led to sacrifices being made in how rigidly it could follow the tenets of Xeroism. Their defense of Merconis can be viewed in this light. According to Xeroise herself, Xeroism is an "incredibly broad ideology, with individuals ranging from Chelovek (part of the USSE's ruling class) to xPxtatoes" (paraphrased), the aforementioned ultra-capitalist leader of Merconis who was later outed for sympathies with a certain fascist ideology from the 30s-40s. I don't think Xeroism truly encompasses somebody like xPxtatoes, but the fact that they once had to say that it did goes to show how the USSE had to make concessions towards anti-communist ideals to continue to survive. In short, communism didn't fully work in the USSE; like many real-world examples of communism, Xeroism in practice had to coexist with more conventional and widespread ideologies for the USSE to survive as long as it did.
- clumsycapy, ex-Zamotian triarch (no hate to the USSE also shoutout to Chelovek hes awesome)
Hey @clumsycapy I think this is the best critique I've seen of the ideology here. If you're on the server I'd like to give you the rewards for this cold war debate contest. I'm really interested in Merconis as a counterpoint to all this because I didn't touch on it at all.
@@Stoneworks Thank you so so much!! I’ll hop on the server now. I’m more than happy to discuss it further as well (though I also highly recommend also getting the USSE’s perspective on it, Merconis was a REALLY polarizing topic at the time and I’m not sure where they stand on it retrospectively)
@@clumsycapy I can bring some light to Merkonis if you want to speak to me about it, I was a high ranking gov offical in Merkonis from before Second Sand war to its eventual end, (and after xPxtatoes left) became Kanzler (same posotion potato was) before we got wiped out off the map for a final time. But I can defintely speak on it in retrospective. There are also a few innacuracies in your statement and argument mentioning us.
@Stoneworks unfortunately his analysis of what happened with xPxtatoes and Merconis was entirely wrong.
Hi, Chelovek here. The entire reason I defended Zamotz was because we gave them our word as a protectorate. We weren't making money off of the XP, in fact the XP industry was quite in its infancy at the time. We didnt colonize Merconis. The leader or Zamotz approached me and requested protection. To which I responded with requiring a 2/3 majority vote amongst their citizens. When we were satisfied that it was the democratic will of the people, we accepted.
Had Zamotz approached me, their ally, before declaring war on our protectorate. The Zamotz/U.S.S.E war would have never happened. It was entirely a matter of us keeping our word, and the disrespect Zamotz showed us by attacking our protectorate without informing us of the incident first. I did not like waking up to that.
Honestly I don't know what the world would have looked like in that case. The war was my first big international move. Maybe the USSE wouldn't be put under such a microscope and maybe we wouldn't have become such a tight nit community as a result. Who knows.
In regards to the vassal strategy. Honestly the empires that vassalized us simply found that we were incredibly productive workers. We found that often times empires in Eldham collapsed and the sort of "shield" gave us time to regroup and also had the benefit of exhausting our enemies will to fight. It was a concession that we weren't PVP sweats. Had nothing to do with the socialist model other than the fact that most PVPers at the time were actually children and they saw the USSE as the big scary communists their social studies teacher warned them about. Over time we were able to establish a strong army, and productive force, and we no longer needed the protection in the end. All of our enemies were squished and we survived.
This is actually one of the most interesting thought experiments I've ever seen and how well it both relates and contrasts with real life expectations is simply fantastic.
For the obligatory real-world pedantic crap:
"True Communism", which often comes up every single time people critique the USSR or CCP China. By pure definition, I'd agree neither of these states adhere to the actual definition of communism, but I'd also argue a society that fits that definition cannot exist:
As great as anarchic (capitalist or communist) societies sound in paper, especially to myself as a strong proponent of libertarian ideals, they simply cannot function in a real world scenario.
Far too many internal and external factors and pressures make such a society just, outright impossible, especially in the face of sovereign influences.
For the empires success:
I think both the inherent self-vetting of being a Stoneworks socialist nation and the idea of "strategic vassalization" are both incredibly integral in the nations success, but I wouldn't argue either of these are limited to the USSE itself, though I admit they played both well.
Obviously, a semi-uniform group is gonna be more cooperative than a completely disconnected group, this goes without saying. Granted, there is some nuance to be had, the terms "socialist" and "capitalist" cover a wide spectrum and in the real world, there is no shortage of political infighting in either of these blocs.
That said, I do think this played extremely well in ensuring anyone joining the USSE or considering joining the USSE were very self-filtering: If your entire image is a USSR-larp, you're gonna get USSR-larpers, who are inherently going to be more comfortable with the theme and ideas behind a USSR-larp.
I think this is just good branding, honestly, the name is very on the nose but that serves well in their favor.
Similarly, with the idea behind strategic vassalization, although actually executing it well is nowhere near as easy it's pretty obvious that picking and choosing your battles will lead to much more longevity behind your empire.
It's also generally self-fulfilling, by being an "out group", they can more easily connect with eachother in defiance of the rest of the world, as pointed out in the video - this goes a tremendous way in their success.
For the actual economic system:
Now with that out of the way, the sort of command economy the USSE accomplished is a fairly ingenious system, and by far the most interesting part of this video to me.
Capitalism is inherently a selfish economic ideology - this is not me condemning it, but fundamentally this is the kind of mindset I'd argue it promotes.
The existence of profit represents market inefficiencies: In a perfectly competitive capitalist society, profit margins would be razor thin, signifying strong competition. This, of course, is an idealistic hypothetical and not practical.
Similarly, in a perfect communist command economy conducted by the most intelligent, uncorrupt, and omnipotent being - there too would be perfect efficiencies, but likewise, this is also an impractical idealistic hypothetical.
Thankfully - the complexities of Minecraft, and more specifically Stoneworks, economies are significantly lower than that of real world complexities.
I think such a controlled environment is probably the best case for such a command economy scenario, somewhat proven by the USSE.
The USSE's economic system prove a "state-driven means of production" can offer extremely strong economic growth for a nation and a fairly high standard of living for it's citizens.
As obvious as this idea is: By making such highly efficient tools easily accessible to it's members, they guarantee all of their members have a highly efficient baseline; it's still inspiring to see how well it worked.
Although not a picture-perfect, omnipotent command economy, it certainly is a socially-oriented, state-run economy, and a pretty succesful one at that.
However, some pretty obvious asterisks on their system:
Their economy, like most still do rely on a form of patronage (or rather, did for a long while) - though, this isn't inherently reliant on aristocrats* or companies, so I'd give them points for that.
There will be abuse, as there would be in any social system, but evidently the results are pretty worthwhile.
Granted, to some extent, this system is effectively just some very intelligent subsidies, and whether that on it's own should be categorized as a socialist economy is pretty up in the air. Though I suppose representing capitalism as laissez-faire, it fits the bill.
That in mind, I do think it's a much better alternative to a more iron-fisted socialist economy, which would likely have caused significantly more friction for such a large, open, and varied nation.
I think all in all the USSE economic system is an actually pretty impressive concept.
I don't think it represents the goal system for every nation to enter stoneworks, let alone speaking on the real world, but I think it's a pretty successful basis to idealize should a well-organized nation with a similarly collectivist mindset seek to replicate it.
Damn, I've looked through a lot of the comments here but this one is probably the best overall structured and worded one I found so props to ya.
ya the comunist extetic tho did help with the entire tite nit comunity thing
>Video about USSE starts with Swan Lake
Absolute cinema
Also Lobster Gang on top
Waltz No. 2 woulda been good too
@@C-Farsene_5 Swan Lake was the music used for times of crisis in the USSR, (and most famously) for the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. That's likely why they foundd it funny.
@@C-Farsene_5 shostakovich plays at 22:13
Just stumbled across this channel and this server
LOOKS SICK
URA
See you soon gamer
Very cool video, my good Stoner. I would never be able to go anywhere near stinky Eldhamites so your sacrifice in researching this nation is highly respectable.
Buckle your seatbelts ladies and mercs and put your blocky hands together for the single greatest system of Minecraft government: Communism if it was Good. Watching this video, there's a couple reasons that immediately stood out to me as to why this system is actually baller and honestly I'm personally going to try to get my nations to do more of this as well. So here's some points why Minecraft communism actually kind of rules:
1. Ideological Clarity. You pretty much go over this in depth in the video, but having people well-aware of what kind of a nation they're signing up to goes a hell of a long way to promote unity and loyalty. Sure it makes them absolutely insufferable to talk to if you aren't in their circle of self-aggrandizing leftists, but I'd argue that's a key part of the system to keep the capitalist heretics like myself out. Feature, not bug. Not to mention how it makes the existing population absolutely ungovernable by any would-be conquerors or separatists who aren't entirely committed to The State.
2. Democratic Socialism Actually Looks Like a Government. Too many governments are literally just some guy calling himself a Super Hyper Awesome King and having some buddies hold arbitrary titles. While I generally see democracies as extremely dangerous to implement due to the inefficiencies they create, its quite clear now that if one is executed well, it sends a very strong message that the government is actually doing something and provides incentives in its internal politics for leaders to act. Plus its actually like, fun to work about in a real internal political system and not have to just suck up to some monarchical egotist. Trust me. I know.
3. Continuous Identity. USSE capitalized heavily on the creation of a communist culture. Very little room was left for the kinds of nobles or local leaders of other governments to cultivate their own separate identities and seize territory for themselves, and when it did happen it became the bloody, ideological battles of Manzig. To rebuke the government is in itself a rebuke of the national identity cemented by the pure ideological clarity. It was a nation of such self-perpetuating repute that it was practically impossible to kill off from the outside or inside, despite its inherently polarizing thesis.
It wouldn't be fair to completely ignore the weaknesses of the system's execution though. Its clear that the centralized power held by the General Secretaries and the Commissions was prone to be uniquely internally damaging if handled improperly (as seen with Lethe's secession). To say there were issues with their foreign policy, judging by how it was presented in the video, would be a huge understatement. However, I think its worthwhile to note that abuse of centralized power, reliance on merc-connected metagamers, and foreign policy failings are extremely common problems with nations regardless of the system of governance. Blaming this entirely on the socialist democratic system or the communist theming is an argument that ignores the reality of Minecraft geopolitics.
In short: communism gets a pretty bad rep for being relatively ineffective as a real system of government, but in a goofy Minecraft nation? Sickles and scythes as an aesthetic go pretty hard, and if we're gonna go on a self-serving ego-trip in an MC nation, we might as well pretend we're doing it to unite the workers of the world. Seriously though, I think there's a lot to learn here about nation-building even for the libertarians in the audience.
Didn't really talk much about the economic aspects of the USSE but the fact that they had literally any system of markets and didn't just rely on their citizens to figure it out puts so many of their so-called "capitalist" neighbors to shame. Seriously, organize your economies guys, otherwise your people are just going to buy from your enemies and its going to make them rich and you poor.
That feeling when you make a Minecraft video and you somehow end up starting an ideological war in the comments
13:44 oh, basic intelligence agency. Y'know, the thing basically every nation has?
This video gave me an idea to come up with a new economic system and I'm gonna try it on Stoneworks and hope i figure out how to actually play
k lol
This video is great at showing this nation in a politically neutral light, showing both sides of their attempt at a socialist society in the Block Game. And I agree, the system as described in this video would be SOCIALIST. Not COMMUNIST.
"Communist" states, both irl and in Minecraft, are simply states which are moving towards the systems as described by Marx (regardless of HOW they try to get there). The USSE was no different.
Overall, though, this nation showcases the stregths and weaknesses of a democratic* socialist system. Ive been trying to advocate for a (liberal) democratic system in my nation for a while and yet it falls on deaf ears. They seem to be too preoccupied with increasing the powers of our previously constitutional monarchy. No one mentions the flaws of monarchy and despotism: decadent leaders, personality cults, concentration of wealth within a few powerful players, secepibility to inactivity, and lack of social mobility. A mix of these systems seem to work for a time, but as I've seen in my own nation the elites fall back into an absolutist monarchy if given too much power. Thus the system used by the USSE cycles out power while giving the average player enough of a voice in politics and allowing the more active players positions. And the unintentional consequence of using socialism is that only those who are rp socialists or actual socialists would join, ensuring a mostly loyal population (of course there were exceptions, but two controverseys in 3 years is quite calm compared to the rest of the servers). Of course any democratic system has its faults, but its dishonest to mention those without also explaining the wrongs of the current dominant political system as well.
The economic system too is something to behold. In a server where the fundemental trading and market systems are inherently capitalistic, some people tried to implement a command economy and while not perfect, it did far better then I thought it would. Especually when it did in fact redistribute wealth across the country (every little bit counts). Its a great blueprint for those who are trying to play in a less meta manner. Plus, the transition from capitalist to socialist is supposed to be somewhat slow. The fact that it took a year or so to get to that point is just great Role play (regardless of how unintentional it was). While Im more for a soft captialist system in Minecraft the fact that they created this at all, and that it survived for as long as it did shows that it did what it was created to do. It kept activity up, gave rewards for participation, and made the average citizen wealthier then the reat of the server. It must've been a pain to maintain and yet they did it. I applaud them for it.
Overall I could see this nation as a success. It set out what it wanted to do and delivered a somewhat stable society for its citizens regardless of whatever the secret police was working on in the background. It had a very democratic structure for a Stoneworks nation and lasted longer then most do. Like already in the Abex nation I live in we've experienced a coup, treason trials, a monarch that constantly lies, an entrenched elite and a personality cult within the span of like 3 months. Having only two major controversies within its whole existence is a godsend.
The issue with Minecraft states, their success and the success of communism within Minecraft is... well Minecraft itself.
You see, the issue with a nation in Minecraft, any Minecraft nation is that the terrain is generated and extends for a very, very far reach.
This means, that any Minecraft state doesn't have to deal with the one very real world issue.
The issue that is the defining factor for a nations success as well as its downfall.
It's the reason nations go to war and become more militarized and domineering.
That is scarcity.
Scarcity determines success or failure for a nation state.
The depletion of vital resources, fertile soil, expansion of deserts, flash floods, tornados, volcanoes, earth quakes, disease, plagues, extinction of species.
Then we have building materials, too few trees/too many trees, animal population, man power, food production, slavery, religion/religious practices, human behavior, Iron, Gold, Copper, Silver, precious gems and vital building stones, as well as different environmental factors and human adaptation, climate, food abundance/scarcity there of, water abundance/scarcity there of.
Yes. Limitation of a single and very limited in resources planet. All these above factors have shaped human development and civilization.
Of which, Minecraft has non. Non of these factors exist because bioms aren't that vast and resources and animals are plentiful and easily obtained.
Real world Civilizations gets conquered, enslaved or falls into poverty.
In Minecraft, any of these factors occur, or you disagree with the political landscape, or the military dictatorship, or economic situation of your Minecraft nation.
Easy. Just leave. Go to an unoccupied part of the map and start a new civilization, one free of the woes of the previous.
Need resources and minerals. Plenty to be found. Minecraft does have chunk loading. While Earth, Earth cannot reload or load new chunks for human habitation.
These factors are the only reason why a Minecraft Communist or Socialist state would always succeed but in the real world, these states and ideologies will always fail.
All correct and well said!
how does the existence of scarcity guarantee the failure of a socialist system of resource and economic management?
@@binbows2258 Economic Calculation Problem. Since there are no prices in a Communist society because money doesn't exist. It would be extremely hard if not almost impossible to determine how much of a resource there is or how valuable it is.
Market prices are a much easier way of determining how much of something there is, the cheaper it is the more abundant. The more expensive it is, the more scarce it is.
Since Communist society would not have a system like this, the abundance or scarcity of a resource would need to be manually counted and calculated, which is an extremely ineffective method of determining scarcity.
The Economic Calculation Problem is proven to exist by the fact that Socialist nations throughout history such as China and the USSR have used a similar system of market prices to determine the value of certain materials and resources. They do this by looking at the scarcity of said materials and resources in the international market, and calculating a value for it from there on.
If the Economic Calculation Problem didn't exist. Socialist nations wouldn't need to have a similar system of market prices.
For another example, you want to build a wood house, but you don't know how much wood you have in order to build that house.
@@binbows2258Economic Calculation Problem. Since there are no prices in a Communist society because money doesn't exist. It would be extremely hard to determine how much of a resource there is or how valuable it is.
Market prices are a much easier way of determining how much of something there is, the cheaper it is the more abundant. The more expensive it is, the more scarce it is.
Since a Communist society would not have a system like this, the abundance or scarcity of a resource would need to be manually counted and calculated. Which is not the most efficient way of calculating value or scarcity.
The Economic Calculation Problem is proven to exist by the fact that Socialist nations throughout history such as the USSR having used a similar system of market prices to determine the value of certain materials and resources. They do this by looking at the scarcity of said materials and resources in the international market, and calculating a value for it from there on.
If the Economic Calculation Problem didn't exist. Socialist nations wouldn't need to have a similar system of market prices.
I'm curious. Obviously socialism and communism work in MC because there's no scarcity but do you think there are any ideologies that work better in real life than in Minecraft?
That (in minecraft) is doing a lot of work
or is it
Really really well edited video and I am amazing what some Minecraft roleplayers have accomplished, really good !
Bro, USSE is not like Russia. It's more like China. A culturally distinct and semihomogenous state at the edge of the map that never collapsed and only went through repeated waves of highs and laws that can't handle global politics well.
I think you might've misinterpreted my comparison of the USSE to Soviet Russia
@@Stoneworksi know you probably won‘t see this , but if you do, could you please tell me the custom commands in the server, i failed the USSE and i want to get back on track for Setarra, but i don‘t remember any commands except for /wild
@@the_only_lonely/spawn for spawn (duh), /g for global chat, /l for local chat, /la spawn (town name) to teleport to a town (note that it costs 200) /homes to administer your homes (spawns), that’s a couple
@@the_only_lonely a bunch of the commands are on the wiki under player commands, however it is a little outdated. some basic ones are
/la spawn , to go to a town.
/la accept, to accept an invite to a town.
/local, to enter local chat.
/globalmute, to toggle off global chat.
/playercards, to give info on your character.
/nickname, to change your visible name.
China handles global politics very well, its approach to global economics is one of the only parts the nation has liberalised. If it couldn't handle global politics it wouldn't become the trade giant it is today. The USSR distanced itself far more from global politics then the USSE. The Soviet Bloc struggled far more with trade with non communist countries, and there relations with the majority of the non communist world was extremely poor, and countries from outside had a very limited understanding of the country. the System of Soviets seems also somewhat similar to the USSE.
People seem to forget that personal property and private property are two different things. Abolishing private property is the same as disallowing private factories, farms, and business warehouses. They would go to the state and all be managed under one entity and distributing the work as required.
Personal property are things like your PC, phone, or car. Things like that are NOT abolished under Socialism or Communism.
Is that clarified in Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto or not though?
But if the state owns the factories that produce your PCs and phones, and the stores where you buy those PCs and phones, does it really matter?
Not trying to start a flame war I just want your perspective.
@@DjDeadpigyes the definition of private property is explained in Marx’s text
Edit: even if he didn’t, 1 that was the definition of private property when he was writing, 2 communism is not just him, and communist read it and executed it in that way, so what difference would it make?
@@crystalcat1002it's the same under a capitalist system tho. A company that makes washing machines don't own your personal washing machine. Same with a socialist system.
@@vaarkajjunrrato147No, the part about personal property. Is that mentioned in Marx’s definition or not?
now THAT is the server i've always been looking for
Good then join my nation fr fr
i really watched 22 minutes and 35 seconds of minecraft politics and i don't regret a single second
I’ve been waiting for this
I used to play stoneworks all the time and I lived in the USSE. I haven't played since the new world but this video brought back so many memories. LONG LIVE THE USSE
Just reminded me that i basically own the entire blaze spawner supply for tavern mc, and i decide the prices
🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑
This was a surprisingly charitable depiction of the USSE. Cool video, I actually liked your analysis for once. As a Manzlander who was enternally loyalist to the USSE, I must say its a shame what happened to the city and region, Lethe really screwed us over bigtime. But at least we got to have a few big battles in our backyard. Back when I joined Manzig I never would have guessed that it would become the center of a global mass super deathwar.
In video games, any form of government except democracy can work
I love community chests, where people put items for others to free grab. They help others by providing what I have too much of.
The Quota my mom talked about was more like an incentive to work slow, as the faster you work, the higher the quota will be next month, and the less you reach of the quota, the less pay you get.
So it was a collective understanding that everyone does not reach more than 100% of their quota, or the whole group will not get paid 100% of what they usually do, and you get paid once at what quota you reached, but the same amount of work is then expected of you in the next month as the new quota.
There is a book by a man named Micheal Parenti titled "Blackshirts and Reds" in chapter 4 of this book he gives a very detailed description of what you described as well as the other shortcommings of planned economies.
I never was in the USSE or played on Eldham, but when hearing about nations in that world the USSE sticks out just due to its flag. As mentioned in the video it makes it easier to recruit people nd builds up cameradery, but also its unique style gives it a voice in geopolitics. It didn't need to do large scale expansion or drama to be seen. Just it's ideology and aestetics were enough (even thoughit wasn't really "communist" and I agree that it seems like a socialist-deocratic centralised state) to make itself known!
In contrary it's system seems very vunerable in first glance. The idea of this market could have easily failed for numerous of reasons (mainly the people not seeling their goods to the state but to public markets) and normally a democratic system like this is very slow to react to events and happenings!
At the end I admire this nation for its complexity and how well it's socialist system lasted through the years. I hope to see many more unique nations like this one in Abexilas!
21:49 I MADE THAT SCREENSHOT AAAAAAAAAA
Nice
I have to say this is a really beautiful video and thank you very much for the time you spent making this video it was really fun I really liked it thank you very much
I think that the version of communism/socialism in the USSE was a good one, of course as someone who didn't live in the USSE I can't say what the conditions were like for the citizens, especially because of the "secret police" thing that gives me, as an East German, the feeling of a "Minecraft Stassi". But I can say as a loyal and proud citizen of Sentara that everyone, and I mean everyone, raves about the good old USSE days. As a social democrat, I think the USSE political system is very good because it also represents the weakest in society in the government. Also the economic system is great, that the money is distributed more to all and not just concentrated on a few could have made life easier for me in Eldham. I only joined relatively at the end of Eldham (around December 2023) and joined the city of Kythnos, which was close to the USSE, the ways to get money there were rather difficult, there were only a few things you could sell there (the only thing I got ok money with was selling fish). Most of my time on Eldham was spent in absolute poverty, usually not even enough money to use /la spawn. I wish there had been a video like this one back in my beginner days, a video that would have informed me about such an economic system, then I would have joined the USSE straight away.
Join Sentara! 🙃
lol ya
I don't know how many people watching this are actually Communists, but personally, as ridiculous as it sounds, I, as a Communist, believe this video is very insightful into how we can not only fix some of the issues with previous socialist systems, but completely revolutionize the ways we look at the system. Namely, the "big issue" Stoneworks describes in the video, being how, while communal, cooperative systems have been proven to work well in small, tight-knitted societies, the eventual goal of a united globe under a system like this seems very difficult. I believe that the USSE's method of counteracting the people unwilling to cooperate is perfect. Unbridled comradery, zero tolerance for those who exploit the system, and most importantly, a clear goal that the people can see and work towards. While this is definitely optimistic and frankly, incredibly unconventional as hell, I believe that these characteristics (minus the zero tolerance policy in its current form) can be used to create a system where cooperation is the norm rater than the exception. Where the people understand that what they're working for is for the benefit of not themselves, but everyone (and by extension themselves, of course). Where selflessness and empathy are so ingrained in us that not following it is seen as just a rude or indecent thing to do. Where a highly educated public polices itself based on universally accepted morals, not through force. We can knit our communities closer together, though it will be complicated. But hey, that's what planning is for.
And for those who believe everyone being "programmed" to be EMPATHETIC is dystopian or evil, just ask yourself if that's not alreaey what has happened in our current society. Has the hostility and unforgivingness of our Capitalist system not planted seeds of selfishness self-interest in us? To the point where we believe it's human nature?
Agreed, society shapes its members, humans adapt to the circumstances.
@@Bookslayer10 Beautifully spoken, comrade.
But communism has it in the name: It comes from the Word community. Marxism is based on the idea of small thightly knit communities that trade amongst themselfes, i havent read Marxs works myselfe, but thats what i understand communism is.
@@luciel3910 Yes, but what you need to understand is that every "Communist" country that's ever existed is not actually that. They have a Communist party striving towards Communism, but they are officially socialist (i.e., the transition state between Capitalism and Communism). This transition state serves to keep the country safe from attackers and spread Communist ideals until socialism becomes the primary economic system, at which point we will be able to lay down our arms and really be able to establish the classless, stateless society that Communism is. Another thing you need to know is that almost every socialist country in history is that they have almost always been Marxist-Leninist. The difference between traditional Marxism and Marxism-Leninism is that while Marx believed the socialist transition state could only come via revolution from an educated public in a heavily industrialized society like his own in Prussia. This was proven wrong by Lenin, however, who would not only profess the ideas, but lead a revolution himself based on the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would allow heavily agricultural countries like Russia (which was essentially feudalist before the revolution), Cuba (essentially a colony of the U.S. and Spain) and Vietnam (literally a colony of France) to have a successful revolution despite a very uneducated public due to their far less industrialized societies. The idea of this form of government is that revolutionaries would educate the public on their oppression the best they can, spreading revolutionary ideals until, eventually, there is enough class conciousness and anger at their oppression by not just the bougousie in their own country, but by those in other countries, or by literal monarchs, which is the one thing even Capitalism is better than. At this point, a revolution will take place (and forgive me for not knowing what this would look like, I am unfortunately not wholly educated on this topic) and would establish a socialist transition state. But unlike the one Marx professed, this one would be, for the first few years, be run mostly by a vanguard government, the intellectuals in society, who would focus on industrializing and educating on a larger scale, to make up for what an independent Capitalist system would've done, and be able to hand over greater control to the public after industrialization. The main criticism of this is, of course, that this form of government made for rapid industrialization could become, well, a dictatorship run by disconnected intellectuals who would sacrifice the well-being of people for their rapid industrialization. Looking at historical examples of this, the countries in which it has been done have had a mixture of success, to say the least. They have all been fairly good at good education for the people, but have definitely led to large amounts of control for the government and, well, sacrifice of people for industrialization, less in Cuba and Voetnam, but definitely in North Korea and the USSR, mainly with Stalin for the latter. However, in my opinion, this doesn't mean we should forsake Lenin's ideas. We should learn what made Cuba and Vietnam more successful in transitioning to a socialist transition state in which Marx professed. After all, we shouldn't have to wait until every nation has industriallized via the far crueler systems of Capitalism and imperialism to be able to make socialism global. This is also one of the things most anti-Communists don't understand is the form of Marxism these past countries have had to use. In already industrialized countries like those in the West, we will likely not have nearly as much of an opportunity for dictatorship to take hold. There is, of course, the other argument that any form of transition state will lead to oppression and dictatorship and will lose sight of the eventual Communist goal. This is mainly professed by Anarchists, who believe Communism doesn't have to be a global system but instead can be directly implemented community by community. Any of these philosophies are still on the table because, let's be honest, the idea of actually implementable Communism on a large scale in relatively new, and we don't really have many examples to know what works best. However, what we must not forget is that we all inevitably have the same goal and, thus, must work together. The second we lose unity is when any movement we've built falls apart and is one of the main methods of the ruling class to crush any revolution, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or Anarchist.
@@okarthegreat I will try to answer in a day, i would really like to read this and engage, but i have an Exam tomorrow, so i don't have the time to read all of that right now.
3:58am, im watching this while worried because i have to work in half an hour and didnt sleep a shit. Very responsible of me
you good, man??
reading the comments and...
god damn people have strong feeling in wither direction about this nation on a minecraft server
but yeah, cool stuff. might look into joining again
This server sounds really fun and I feel like I would make a great addition to it. Im coming for this place :>>
Good then join my nationa fr fr😊
@@zwolf1291 uhhhh
@@syroos9417 Yeah do it fr fr
Damn stoney this video popping off
0:51 It's not too late for you yet, buddy. Hakim is always waiting for you if you decide to redeem yourself. No pressure, nobody will be angry at you, just come over to Hakim and become🗿
13:21 HASAN NOOO THEYRE STRAWMANNING YOU HASAN THEYRE MAKING YOU THE SOYJAK LOOK OUT NOOOOO
Should check out my UDSR next… comrade
I just read that as Union der Sozialistischen Republiken or in English as Union of the Socialist Republics.
@@omeganichtdieuhrsondernder6906 lmao, close, it’s democratic socialist republics. But yea very close
@@OwenWissner well then, I know what to ruin through the entire next month
Seeing a video about a nation I was a part of kinda makes me miss playing on the server
Bro really pulled the “in Minecraft” trick on us
Salute from Aboniert, lol. I started this in the lockdown when I was 13, as I was kinda bored, and a hardcore CPV-fanatic. You get the idea. The people that suceeded the leadership, Xeroise, and others, and USSE's citizens is what have made it great and immortal. What did I do? Maybe taming Doug, that one holy cow, that's it. I was kind of a shitty person then.
I salute you all, who made USSE great. UA-cam recommended me this today, and it did bring back memories.
Also, if you are in some anti-imperialist, or Maoist movements irl, or the anti-government movement in Vietnam (yeah, big hard anti-government and anti-CPV guy now, my articles and interviews criticizing them are out there in French, Portuguese, English and Vietnamese), chances are, you might have, and will see me again, under a diferent alias. I kind of got way more serious in these stuffs and started activism
I'm gonna make this comment before watching the video to make some predictions based on my own interests in history, then maybe I'll edit it after.
I think that in practice, this is going to resemble something more like a kind of tribal society rather than communism. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a Commie rallying call, but it's not a modern or uniquely communist way of doing things. A lot of hunter-gatherer or smaller-scale farmer societies can kind of work this way as well. Communism tries to scale this up to a highly-populated, equal, necessarily specialized society, which is not needed or really all that possible in Minecraft. Outside of things like PVP skills there isn't really any specialized work possible in Minecraft, everyone can just kinda do everything, and these societies aren't really going to have many people either. On the equality front, many of these ancient societies aren't very equal at all (though some are), but the power of the elites comes from personal ties of client-patronage: "I scratch your back you scratch mine, but I give more so I'm in charge" as opposed to power that's more institutionalized. I think that there will be richer players/elites but there power will come from keeping their followers happy through gift giving or favors from top down.
Edit: Turns out I was half-right about the elites and patronage, but it's "filtered" through a state-controlled market. More equal though than some other Stoneworks groups, so that's clearly something that works well enough. Kinda like Potlatch, but with guided incentives for what gets contributed.
How the hell did this guy document all of this, this is really damn cool.
Honestly, I don't personally think the U.S.S.E could ever be totally "communist" due to the fact that within Minecraft all goods / items are gathered individually; this is different in real life where real life regimes can just threaten you with death, in the U.S.S.E / Stoneworks as a whole, death isn't something that you can threaten with unless you're rping. However, the U.S.S.E did imo have some pretty solid basis for socialism, as in, a lot of the wealther government members sold a lot of the materials in the nation to the people of the nation (government giving out materials / equal share) but ofc it was still buying so idk.
The U.S.S.E, from what I know, did decently play out its democratic part, it proved itself a tactical democratic nation that would elect a new GS, so the democratic part of the U.S.S.E is pretty true. The nation it looks like did decently hold up the whole us vs the world trope that a lot of isolated communist nations do have (DPRK as an example). From an rp perspective, the U.S.S.E was probably the only real safehaven that held up the ideas of communism for players that were interested in it, all others typically were smaller or failed earlier on.
The USSE was never a socialist state in practice, it roleplayed socialism but never held to the true ethos and structure of a socialist state. Minecraft is highly individualistic, and even then, the USSE was closer to a quasi-tribal clan based communal society than it was a socialist haven
True. Fear of death is a primary motivator for IRL people, and it almost universally is the cause for hierarchies in the first place.
I guess if you want real Communism, you better start by making humans immortal.
absolutely agree. the USSE wanted the aesthetics and forgot that minecraft necessarily lacks a proletariat
@@Francis-qu2iu primitive communism achieved, ted K might be proud.
@@Francis-qu2iu you do know that tribal clans of the past are called by socialist thinkers as "Primitive Communism". Hate it or like it, the USSE IS technically socialist lol
Hey, so as a participant of one of the few (in retrospect) MagicGum simulation events, and someone very interested in this kind of thing, I have a couple questions about your server:
- How do you deal with respawns?
- How do you deal with Minecraft's default global chat?
- How long are the worlds?
- Is there a proximity chat? (Whether a voice mod and/or chat plugin)
- Do you summon events with a surviving party in mind?
- Do you act as a god or participate in cheats?
- Do you give any country an advantage?
- Is there a society plugin? (for example towny)
If you see this and respond, thank you.
This server is like towny and each world lasts for years. It is not an event like magic gum’s or Ish’s servers
Many characters have “character deaths” where if they get killed in a specific story, their character dies and they have to make a new one. Up to them how / when that works. Otherwise respawns are chill.
The community works more as a Minecraft community than just the immediate circumstances like in those short events. This makes nations’ rise and fall take months - years, and extremely impactful and dramatic when it happens.
I and some of my staff act like “gods”, but really we’re invisible and roleplaying as the gods that the players make up for their own communities. We staff are not gods, but we fill in for the actual gods the players create and worship.
We give no countries any advantages. If staff does that, we try to kick them off of staff and ban them.
Hope this helps, please check out some more videos and you may see this more in action
@@Stoneworks Thanks so much. I will!
You should join my nation on the server
It's not communist, it's socialist.
In communism, there exists no state, while socialist countries still have one.
The USSR was communist without a doubt
The USSE knew this fact, Stoney just oversimplifies it extremely for his audience. The USSE called itself (as in the state and gov government) socialist (its literally in the name), and only called itself communist when referring to its ideology.
@@2plus2equals98 What do you think USSR stands for exactly? They did not call the state a communist one, they referred to it as socialist for a reason. It had a Communist Party, but the state/government cannot be described as communistic outside of informal definitions.
National Socialism worked...
Not the rest though.
Communism is more than just a final state of organization.Just like capitalism , in its theoretical form, has a truly free market and no government intervention.Communism is more like an ideal where its never actually reached.Socialism is only the path that very slowly fades away into a communist mode of production that you can never completely know you have accomplished.
I watched the entire video! that's something considering I'm an old man and I've never played minecraft
You should buy Minecraft and join the server you could join my nation
2:14 can someone explain wtf is this:
What we need is two councils of advisors/supervisors, guiding and advising/supervising two teams about what is a communist and what is a capitalist policy or course of action.
Alr it’s time for my part in this argument.
First off, I want to give my props to the Xeroist methods from what I’ve seen in the wiki page and how it was working to a degree within Eldham however I am unsure how it works in Abexilas. However this doesn’t change my mind on why communism won’t work even in Minecraft.
First I’m going to talk about my points in the U.S.S.E
First off, the U.S.S.E did work to a degree, I stated that before. However it was plagued by its own success. Sure as you said it had an influx of socialist supporting people who believed in the ideals of Xeroism or socialism, however we cannot ignore the fact some people, even socialists, wouldn’t agree with the U.S.S.E’s form of socialism or communism. This is especially prevelant in the Manzland revolt. I usually take the stance that communism can work in small scale communities due to it being based off the willing cooperation of the common populous. For example, the only reason the Soviet Union was effective was because of its forceful action of making its population work for the good of “The Nation’s Survival” however it was just repression for personal gain. Another thing I would like to mention is the political system of the U.S.S.E. Though it is clear there is a good bit of democracy within the country, and I give props to them, as the video said it was clear there was a “Higher Class” at least politically within the Gen. Sec’s. political circle upon their election. It is also clear there will be a societal class system based on activity and productivity of the individual, which is usually how it goes within Minecraft nations. I always wanted to point out the lack of military prowess, due to the more Bureaucratic nature as said in the video of the U.S.S.E’s structure.
Now I wish to turn to Xeroism and its policies.
First off, after analyzing the video and reading the Wiki-page on Xeroism I applaud its creator for creating such a flushed out political and economic system and implementing it to an extent within their nation. However it is inherently flawed.
First off, I would like to say again how a social class system would never be able to be removed due to activity and productivity, with these individual as usually being the ones elected to the assembly, General Secretary or appointed to be in the secretary’s personal circle. Another notion is the problem of an activity issue, Xeroism and socialism/communism as a whole promotes equality in equity and resources, however this comes with the issue of a lack of productivity from players. However this was partially fixed within the U.S.S.E with the Citizen’s market I’d like to shed light on another example. The Roman Empire late in its life had a policy of “Bread and Show” to prevent riots. Of which the common people would always have food and entertainment to keep them content. With this, it directly went against the Roman culture of work and expansionism, leading to the inherent complacency of the society as a whole. Along with the barbarian raids and constant fighting adding onto this complacency plus a slew of other issues led to the decline of the Roman Empire in my opinion. I also want to partially agree with the Revolutionist ideals of Xeroism. However I do believe this is also inherently flawed. This is due to violent revolutions usually leaving massive power vacuums of which are detrimental to most nations that just had their government structures overthrown. Take for example the Russian Revolution, French Revolution, 1912 Chinese Revolution, 2011 Libyan Revolution, and 2011 Syrian Revolution. All of these, although good in nature to overthrow tyrannical or failing powers led massive power vacuums of which destroyed the nation internally for years after the inherent revolution. Many nations in minecraft would suffer the same issue. This is where I bring about an actual solution to my critique. To at first advocate for a communist or Xeroist change you must at first advocate for a democratic one. And then once that is secured utilize the will of the people to bring about the change wanted. And since the U.S.S.E was a mostly democratic system, the people clearly had support for it without major change (let’s not talk about the secret police). Another part I’d like to critique is the Vanguardism supported by the Xeroist ideology. From the wiki page of what I’ve seen is that Vanguardism is the creation of a single party to represent all workers (please correct me if I’m wrong). With this, the inherent flaws are clearly shown. Even in a society where majority of the populous is in support of a socialist party or government, not everyone’s ideals would align with the party’s and thus wouldn’t be properly represented. With this, usually more political parties are needed to properly represent all people, of course in this society all would be socialist to some degree. Not all socialists have the same ideals, so it would benefit the nation to have multiple parties.
Now I wish to move on to the ideology in the context of the climate of Abexilas.
Most of my previous points can also be made here, however I wanted to place down one more point. Sure there would be a good portion of new players coming to Abexilas and players from Eldham or Rathnir who would agree with the socialist principles, from what I’ve seen a lot of new players coming in with enough ambition to put Napoleon to shame. To put it simple, many new players believe they’re the one who will create the next world spanning empire and probably won’t agree with or bend/break an ideology designed to make up of the cooperation of all.
As I’ve stated before, I do respect the U.S.S.E for its success and its long term existence within Eldham, however it is clear its structure is inherently flawed and in my opinion, only puts up the illusion of freedom and the lack of a class system for the most part.
Discord name: PanzerMarkIV/PanzerMarkIV/1945
IGN: PanzerMarkIV1945/PanzerMarkIV
bro cooked
@@FrozenReborn Thanks
yeah Vanguardism is bad which is why I'm a Libertarian Socialist who believes in decentralization
I would wager that some of the reasons it worked are...
1. It was largely a culturally, socially, and politically homogenous society, with most members having largely similar goals/aspirations and intents. They all wanted essentially the same thing, and had similar beliefs.
2. Unless your server strays far from basic, vanilla Minecraft, they would have had essentially limitless resources. Items are created from nothing. Look at farmed food and breeding. You sow a field of wheat, harvest, and you get not just wheat, but seeds, more seeds than required to fill in the plot, meaning you can further expand the farm, leading to exponential growth. A similar process happens with animals, you can take the surplus crops and feed that to your farmed animals creating more. Cacti keep growing, trees, etc. Matter is created from nothing. Heck, with certain enchantments, you get more resources than you normally would.
3. Detachment of the game from real life. Relating to point 1, where people are complex creatures, people come to the game to relax, LARP, have fun. This includes roleplaying what may be your idealized political system, and everyone being unified. People are much less complex in this setting and their goals reflect this. This reduces prejudices and biases that lead to internal conflict.
Also this seems less communist and more... market socialst-y
@@FrixworksAka China's Socialism
5:10 the USSR was a parody of a government with the bureaucracy to end all bureaucracy: everything was a rigid structure and everyone was subcontracting subcontractors to get "x" done, and it ended up never getting done because the job kept getting sent down a bottomless chain of smaller and smaller regional managers.
If it wasn't YOUR immediate problem, why should you care? Telling the skeleton crew night shift that the poorly-implemented and almost never maintained Nuclear reactor 4 was being currently stress-tested is someone else's problem.
Whoops, now a large portion of Ukraine is contaminated, and the entire town of Pripyat has to be evacuated... But hey, that's not your problem. That's the job of the local commissar to orchestrate the mass evacuation and government cover-up. you are just the day-shift's Nuclear plant manager for reactor 3...
if you enjoy role-playing as a regional manager who's sole job is to shift responsibility to anyone and everyone else, then the USSE is for you!
This is the only time I will be mentioned in a Stoney video and I’m proud to be in it, god I love the USSE
I know Stoney already kinda said what I'm about to explain but I really think it's important in order to understand what made the USSE the strong nation that it used to be.
As someone who spent a lot of time reading, studying and thinking about Maoism, Stalinism, Marxism and even older communist ideologies with ties to the Commune of Paris, it's really clear that the USSE was nothing more than a nealty organized socialist democracy. And given the extremely capitalist nature of Stoneworks, it's already a big achievement to be able to do that, yet it is far from the communist ideologies that they aimed at. And I'm not mad at them, they tried to create a true communist movement, held by workers and intellectuals rather than by an oligarchy, and they mostly succeeded in that. But what made them truly big isn't all of that cultural and ideological lore, rather it is the extremely well organized direct democratic and economical system that they managed to keep running until the end of their nation. They understood the necessity of a closed economy for the good of their people, keeping wealthy comrades from gathering too much power (at least in theory). They made a system that allowed anyone to contribute to the wealth and power of their nation, directly or indirectly, by being correctly represented and by having an open government system. I know that a lot of people think that bureaucracy is a bad thing, especially for those who grew up in capitalist countries where anti-communist propaganda worked really well, but the reality is that as long as it is kept running smoothly it is the best way to ensure democracy and to avoid falling to fascism and other capitalist ideologies.
To be honest, I only have a few regrets about the political system of the USSE. Mainly, I can only criticize their lack of a proper military complex, one worthy of defending a nation like the USSE, which in the long term would have really helped them ensure their autonomy. Furthermore, their governing body was very close to the people but the general secretary still had a lot of power as the decision to overthrown them was made by the people rather than (or in complement ideally) to a regulatory body, ensuring that their core principles weren't violated.
get back to wiki modding...
@@itzastralz1030 o7
I actually think that not having a proper army help them survive for those 3 years. Since as you say most of the nations in Stoneworks where capitalist they would feel more threatened by USSE if they had a better army. I would even bet that many of the nations would team up to deal with the USSE if they where stronger.
Capitalism isn’t fascist, in fact capitalism is about as far from fascism as you could get.
@@wutshow577 that depends, everyone conveniently leaves out the usse’s fsb/cia that spies on the people to prevent political changes and would infiltrate and topple govt that they deemed dangerous, and also how they pretty much said how a whole region within their country with a different culture and beliefs didn’t exist.
This faction was the most interesting to me when i was looking into the wiki
Well it's time for the keyboard warrior
you have to make a full lore of this server as a recap
I definitely will eventually
bro ngl those propaganda posters HIT HARD my god "you have nothing to lose but your chains" is an actual good slogan
im sorry to be the one to say it but the minecraft roleplayers did not in fact invent perhaps the most memorable slogan from karl marx's communist manifesto (1848)
@@enricobianchi4499 ah didn't know that. Funny timing because i'm receiving a copy of the Communist manifesto tomorrow LOL
@@enricobianchi4499actually the most memorable one is "Seize the means of production". But this one is a good second.
@@enricobianchi4499 finally finished reading the manifesto, still a line that hits hard at the end of the book
Oversimplified should make an Alt channel called: "Stoneworks Oversimplified"
Also, do the citizens finished products get sold at (the cost of materials + a bit of extra money)?
he had really the balls to do it at the 4rd of july💀
the 4st
the 4nd not 4rd
@@hellothere-dc4juit’s obviously the 4vd (your comment was satire right?)
The update nobody asked for but NEEDED
Minecraft: The communist update
We are going to gulag with this one!
0:02 What is the Philippine sun doing there!?!?
New People's Army moment??????
Hello comrade
I wish you'd make a Stoneworks for Vintage Story, I think that game fits what you wanna do even more!
22:10 It's Socialist at maximum
For those wondering, the music playing in the background of the intro part is called From Russia With Love by Huma Huma
we got politics in minecraft before gta 6
Damn, this kinda server with create and a few addons like trackwork would be epic.
It's actually quite interesting that people in Minecraft servers tend to replicate capitalism with shops for trading items, when there's literally no reason to do that. Sharing everything just makes more sense.
Gods, I remember being part of the USSE a long time ago... Wonder if the lab is still there
I believe Communism inside of Minecraft is far superior to that of Democracy inside of Minecraft. Due to the short term thinking, democracy does not work very well on servers such as stoneworks when your nation could crumble at any moment. However, Communism allows the materials to be spread across the nation, increasing activity
now give me items
Guess you make that argument for the bad Italian man ideology to.
Communism does not mean no democracy.
@@Lenin_enjoyer”In summary, Marx's view of the dictatorship of the proletariat involved political experiments focused on dismantling state power and dispersing its functions among the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was viewed as a form of transitional rule in which class struggle ended and the state became extinct”
Name one self proclaimed communist state from the Bolshevik era to the collapse of the USSR that adopted some kind of “democratic communism”.
@@DjDeadpigI know “dictatorship of the proletariat” kinda sounds scary but it was Marx’s way of saying what he thought was true democracy.
He said that modern liberal democracy doesn’t work well because corporations usually have the power to fund the candidates that will supports them. We can see this today, think about it has anyone in America for the last 80 years been not supported by corporations.
So socialist democracy includes democratic control of the economy. Where you might have a local council of neighbors who got elected to vote in new stores, and buildings to be made. Or your fellow workers might all agree your boss is a asshole and elect someone with better experience.
@@kongdragon4364 I mean when you put it that way "Dictatorship of the Prolatariat" just sounds like common democracy. The chief characteristic of common democracy is that the majority rules in tyrannical, absolute fashion, and all that matters is the number of votes. We've never seen that kind of government be successful IRL, usually because democracies end up crumbling due to minor disagreements that escalate, or just due to lack of cohesive identity.
My problem with Minecraft history simulators is that everyone uses regular combat, we learned 400 years ago the benefit of gunpowder. You can create massive tnt cannons that can fire across thousands of blocks and level cities. Why don't people? (edit) I'm not hating on this server its awesome and I wish I could join.
oh god usa now going to invade minecraft
I would love to join this server. It's too bad my laptop and PC can barely even run vanilla Minecraft.
Calling them Communists are just a point of semantics.
They would be closer to just a thigh knit shared economy community, with USSR esthetics.
However, that would just be arguing over semantics, and thus i have made a circular argument and is now in a linguistical fallacy.
"shared economy" tf do you think communism is?
@@sasho_b. Communism is more then a shared economy. Its a top down shared economy mostly.
these guys are a bottom up shared economy, its drastically different.
@@Fixti0n That is not how communism is defined, and the USSE did not call its government communist nor its economy. They called it socialist, their *ideology* was communist.
They correctly recognized that achieving a communist society, at least by the Marxist definition, is impossible because of the way Stoneworks currently operates and that the most you can do is create socialism and hope for the way the server is operated to drastically change and for the plugins that run the server to be reformed in order to create communist society.
@@Fixti0n what the fuck are you on about.
communism is a stateless society where the economy is owned in common by the people.
its not some society where the the undemocratic goberment owns everything or some bullshit
Stoney, you should do a video on sironia next. Trust me, it’s gonna be crazy
Can you do a video on the new server
Its actually insane he could summerize 50 of theory in a 20 minute video about minecraft
When your population can respawn anything can work.
chill
Ah. This is like Civcraft, a very old political minecraft server. There were two communist groups on that group, Libertarian Socialist Republic Federation, and another group I forget about.
Communism in minecraft works very well. In the LibSoc group we all just shared all our goods in a communal storage and worked independently or together on dope projects (we built The Mother Calls statue, some cool architecture, and propaganda). I used to farm and build a ton of dope shit. Loved those people and Civcraft
I’ve been on a U.S.S.E Island and rn live in Sentara
How to join the U.S.S.E.?
@@L_LGBTQThe U.S.S.E was in Eldham now it’s split into Sentara and Zilatra in Abexilas and Eldham doesn’t exist anymore
@@L_LGBTQ Doesn't exist anymore, as they reset the server world into Abexilas (i think that's the name). The successor states are listed in the reply above me
0:30 The one on the left is an aircraft carrier, not a battleship.
OURCRAFT