Folket/Manifesto
Many have wondered if socialism is applicable to eRepublik and most don’t believe it actually is. It’s perhaps too easy to make this conclusion; there’s no suffering or “real” death in eRepublik and everyone is, de facto, born as equals into The New World. But this is only where the game starts and as it progresses we see that a rift in society is created. This rift is not unlike the one that exists between classes in the real world, between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, the oppressors and the oppressed.
Despite whatever you might think, this rift exists in eRepublik as well. To fully understand this we must reflect upon our own content. Are you content with your situation? Do you get a share that’s proportionate to the work you carry out? Before we can answer these questions we need to know what they actually mean. But first, we will have to explore what the class struggle in eRepublik looks like and what factors are involved in it.
Primarily, we have the following classes:
- The Capitalists (the bourgeoisie. eRepublik example: Company Owners and Share Holders.) are those who get their income by the surplus value they acquire from the workers who create wealth through labour.
- The Workers (the proletariat. eRepublik example: Players who work for capitalists.) are those who earn their living by selling their labour and receive a salary for the work done.
These two stands in opposition to each other, they have opposite interests, higher wages, lower wages etc. Even though The Workers are generating the wealth it is not they who have the ability to influence their work and what they get out of it but rather The Capitalists who profit from the labour and manoeuvre the resources for individual gain. If you could see in plain numbers what your labour is actually worth, what kind of profits it generates and then how much of that goes to The Capitalist you would understand that there are some major issues in e-society today. This is the main source from where all major injustice in eRepublik comes from.
Ask yourself again. Are you content?
See the Exploitation Rate Calculator to see for yourself [1].
Most of us have a normal job at a company where we carry out our work, Click by click, and for every time we press that “work” button we create wealth. Some of that value is returned to us in form of salary, the rest goes to the owner as profit. If it wasn’t for the fact that we generate more value than what we get in return they wouldn’t have hired us in the first place. Okay then. What if the capitalist dream came true, if everyone became a millionaire? What will then happen to the profits? Well, as soon as everyone tries to stop working society would collapse. The companies would no longer be making any money. Waged labour is, therefore, a basic condition which allows profit to be made by simply owning.
Thus, capital is something relative between people, where a few people own and the others work for wages. Wealth does not create itself, it’s not written in the laws of nature. It’s our society that works that way, which also means that it doesn’t have to be so; you can change it, click by click...
What if you lower the amount of profit and raised the wages, or perhaps the opposite? That’s what most of the economical debate is all about; a little adjustment here and there. It affects so many people, owners as well as workers, both directly and indirectly. The main concern amongst company owners is to speed up the work and at the same time keep wage costs as low as possible. If you fail to do this you’ll be overrun by your competitors, so a capitalist who stops to force workers against each other will not be a capitalist for very long. Can you now see that this capitalist world stretches out far further than the single company?
The Capitalists also puts a lot of effort into conducting policies to safeguard their own interests. They have an interest in keeping this society unfair. That’s a fact and they will never change regarding this, no matter how obviously clear it is that a more just and fair society would be beneficial for all of us. At the same time, the left-wing movement is striving for the interests of the people, but the difference is that most people actually lose with right-wing politics opposed to the left-wing politics, where the people actually win. This is why democracy never has been one of The Capitalists' main qualities.
