Preparation: In 2033 we will drink Bavarian – Metro 2033

On the wire is the city of Tallinn (sic!), Hello. In the previous two articles concerning cyberpunk and the last two parts of Deus Ex, I quite often touched on the topic of fascism, which is an integral part of the intelligent cyberpunk universe. My attitude towards him (hint: negative) is quite clear from them. However, to my shame, I completely forgot to define fascism and went mainly through some external signs, without touching the essence. The confrontation between the Fourth Reich and the Red Line in the “Metro 2033” series of books and games based on them, it seems to me, is an excellent reason to speculate about the essence of the phenomenon, its understanding and implementation. In particular, I propose to touch on its antipode – both in life and in the world of the Metro.

In order not to be unfounded, I decided to resort to meanness, to make a move not even with a knight, but rather with a board: I decided to familiarize myself with the program documents of the main ideologists, theorists and practitioners of communism and fascism, with the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (K. Marks, F. Engels – 1848) and with the “Doctrine of Fascism” (B. Mussolini, D. Gentillet – 1932). Let’s talk, as they say, in detail.

Important note: although both documents are completely openly posted online, some laws may prohibit their publication and distribution, so I will refrain from direct quotations and links. However, you can check everything that has been said yourself if you so desire. I oppose the ban of any ideological works, because in order to build anything, or to fight it, it is necessary to know what we are building and what we are fighting against. Otherwise, the result may be sad, which is illustrated by the subject of today’s conversation – the Metro series.

By the way, I came up with an excuse for the huge time gap between the release of the games under discussion and articles about them. I’m not trying to explain my opinion to non-players before they get acquainted with the subject themselves, but I’m only offering an option for interpreting what is happening in these games. Let’s just say, I give you food for thought and possible rethinking of what you saw.

1. Communists in life
I’ll start with them, since fascism was largely created as a negation of communism, and therefore largely refers to it. As already mentioned, the program document of communist ideology is the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”. Unlike the three volumes of Capital, which is more of a theoretical and even a little philosophical work, the Manifesto is a concrete statement of the goals and principles to which anyone who calls himself a communist must adhere.

If anything, I read the Manifesto itself, and not this comic

I’ll make a reservation in advance: if among those reading there suddenly turn out to be real Marxists who have seriously studied Capital, I apologize in advance if there are any distortions in my retelling. This is not out of malice, but only because already superficial knowledge has to be simplified and coarsened so as not to stretch the article and turn a note about the game into an essay “Marx in his own words”.

Communists view history as a process of social development caused by objective prerequisites. History, according to Marx, is driven not by individuals, but by masses of people, grouping, dividing labor and pushing forward scientific and social progress. From the point of view of Marxists, a significant role in the development of society is played by the means of production and ownership of them.

I won’t go into the Marxist vision of history – it will be long, tedious, and at the moment there is no need. Let’s skip the era of the primitive communal system, slavery and feudalism and focus right on capitalism. At the moment, as the communists tell us, the whole world is divided into two main opposing classes – wage workers and capitalists.

The same one caricature

Workers are those who do not own the means of production and sell their labor. Capitalists are those who own the means of production and sell the results of other people’s labor on their means of production. There are irreconcilable contradictions between them. First of all, they lie in the desire of workers to work less and get more and in the desire of capitalists to drive more workers and pay them less.

At the same time, state power is also in the hands of capitalists, since wealth allows those around you to work in your interests. In the same States, this is completely legal and is called lobbying. Therefore, communists call the state an instrument for implementing the will of the ruling (owning the means of production) class, as well as the dictatorship of the ruling class. Therefore, among other things, communists oppose modern democracies – they say that the selection of candidates is controlled by the capitalist class, newspapers and television, where candidates are presented, are controlled by the capitalist class and the votes are also counted by the capitalist class.

Thus, communists advocate the socialization of the means of production. That is, the ruling class should be workers – the vast majority of the population of Mother Earth. Accordingly, the first communist states should be governed by the workers. For example, according to the council system. That is, when collective farmers elect a collective farm chairman, he goes to regional congresses, where other chairmen elect a congress chairman, who goes to regional congresses, the next one to republican congresses, and thus the end result is, for example, the Minister of Agriculture, who can be recalled at each step of this pyramid. That is, it is not paid candidates who get to govern the state through elections, the outcome of which is known to many in advance, but they come from the very bottom, from the workers. Moreover, communists do not cling to the state, as is attributed to them. They argue that later, when the entire Earth becomes communist, as now it is all capitalist, and once before it was feudal, slaveholding or primitive communal – and so, when the entire Earth becomes communist, states will die out on their own as unnecessary.

Of course, the qualifications of workers in public administration are questionable, but Lenin, for example, spoke about this. This is his famous quote, where he says that at the moment (at the beginning of the twentieth century) not every cook is capable of governing the state, but their (Bolsheviks) goal is that in the future she will receive this ability. That is, the population needs to be educated.

Why do communists need all this?? They themselves give the answer to this question. This is necessary to ensure the economic independence of each individual member of society and to ensure that each member of this society has the opportunity to develop in what interests him and to self-realize the way he wants. And I can’t help but notice a certain logic in this: you see, it’s much more convenient to do, for example, music when the necessary instruments are available to all of you, when you know that the studio won’t close tomorrow, when you have enough free time and energy and you know that you will always have something to pay for the rent of the premises.

2. Fascists in life
“The Doctrine of Fascism” is a much less voluminous document than the “Manifesto”, and I read it right before writing this article. He criticizes all previous regimes and ideologies, citing various reasons for their failure, but the main postulates are as follows:. Fascism is corporatism, totalitarianism as the primacy of the state, imperialism and the policy of conquest.

According to Mussolini, the https://ae88casino.co.uk/ state is a certain entity that interferes in all aspects of the lives of citizens. It is in charge of economics, politics, moral, ethical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the life of the population. There may be certain parallels with the Soviet Union, but there are significant differences.

Fascism denies the principle of class struggle on which the Bolsheviks were based. The state in fascism is supposed to resolve differences between workers and capitalists, supporting some and moderating the appetites of others. In fascism there is no talk about the destruction of private ownership of the means of production, which is the main goal of Marxists. On the contrary, workers and capitalists must cooperate in the interests of the state and seize living space for the nation, which the state forms. For people who believe that fascism and Nazism are different things, I will emphasize: for the first time it was not Hitler, but Mussolini who spoke about the seizure of living space in the interests of the nation.

There should only be two Sith

In theory, the fascist state is a kind of supra-class structure, it is the spirit of the nation. Mussolini’s "doctrine" says that the nation is the state, and that the interests of the state are the interests of the nation. The state, as it were, takes control of enterprises, and thus acts as a single corporation, where each worker no longer works for his own benefit or the benefit of the enterprise, but for the benefit of the nation, the state.

Therefore, for example, the state may well use force to disperse strikes and demonstrations, because the workers who organized them do not trust the state, the nation, which will take care of them, and harm it by disrupting the work of enterprises – rocking the boat. Therefore, it can monitor their activities, get into their heads, tell them what to read, what to watch and who to listen to. Roughly speaking, if communists say that the people form the state, then fascism says that the state forms the people.

Breaking up the strike at the Ford plant in the Citadel of Democracy

Since fascism relies quite heavily on a variety of metaphysics and spirituality, one of the tools for forming the people under fascism is religion. Mussolini suggested taking the one most suitable for the people, that is, taking into account national specifics. In Italy, for example, it was Catholicism. In Germany – Lutheranism. Russian emigrants, who professed fascist ideas, largely relied on Orthodoxy.

In general, fascism suggests thinking less and acting more. Mussolini specifically emphasized the importance of faith, which, unlike reflection, gives rise to action. When the theoretical doctrine of fascism did not yet exist, but there were only organizations involved in establishing order in Vaterland, they, as Mussolini wrote, were guided by faith, not theory. And this is another, third important difference between fascism and communism – an idealistic approach.

Communist theory is based on materialism, objective knowledge of the world, logic and a critical approach. In principle, Marxism itself is not so much a theory or ideology as a method of understanding the world. “Gunshot method,” as Mayakovsky wrote about him. Fascism focuses on the spirit, blood kinship, faith and other shamanism.

In order not to return to the topic of fascism, I would like to end this part with the same definition of Georgiy Dimitrov, given by him at the Leipzig trial, where they tried to indicatively award him the arson of the Reichstag. It didn’t work out.

Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of finance capital… Fascism is not a supra-class power and not the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of financial capital itself. This is an organization of terrorist reprisals against the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its crudest form, cultivating zoological hatred of other peoples.

Just like that. Fascism is not a radically new socio-economic formation, not an alternative to capitalism, and certainly not some special path. This is capitalism at its most brutal. Capitalism aimed at total war. Agree, even the existing form of democracy for total war is not very effective. Only if you are not the United States, fenced off from the world by two oceans and not sitting on the fence, wondering who to give Lend-Lease to now: the faithful and devoted British or the Soviet communists? And even then, by the way, fascist sprouts were present in the States before World War II. Somehow take an interest in the fate of Japanese Americans before and especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Or breaking up strikes at Ford plants during the Great Depression. In crisis situations, capitalism tends to fascism on its own, without any bright leaders, totalitarian leaders and murky doctrines.

I have the shape of a reindeer herder’s eyes, and you know, something like this kind of democracy doesn’t appeal to me

3. Communists in the Metro
In the books and games of the Metro series, communists appear in a completely different capacity. They are making plans to capture the entire Metro, infect a peaceful station with a military virus, then burn it down under the pretext of stopping the spread of the infection… In general, they are terrible people.

Sonderkommando, fuck

Residents of the Red Line walk in formation, security officers lurk around all their stations, commissars in dusty helmets stand everywhere, ready to grab you right on the spot, pronounce a sentence and personally carry it out. The absence of documents means that you are a spy, escaping outside the Line means that you are a spy, condemnation of the general line of the party says that you are a traitor, a step to the right is an attempt to escape, a step to the left is an attempt to escape, jumping on the spot is a provocation.

At the same time, Red Line stations are full of red banners, Soviet posters and banners with a recognizable font. Communists willingly use Soviet terminology, abbreviations and any other newspeak.

At the end of Last Light, another cliche about the communists flashes: the assault on D6 looks like a natural zerg rush, when crowds of simply equipped fighters try to overwhelm the defenders of the complex. I remembered the arguments of some history buffs regarding the Great Patriotic War and the victory of the Soviet Union in it. They say the USSR won due to numerical superiority. They, however, do not take into account that the lion’s share of the losses of the Soviet side were non-combatants, that is, the civilian population destroyed by the Wehrmacht and the SS, as well as the fact that not only Germany fought against the USSR on its territory, and it would not be entirely correct to compare their losses head-on, but there’s nothing to be done. There were too many different lies at one time, I can’t blame these people for ignorance.

Filled with meat

4. Fascists in the Metro
I can only say one thing about them: the authors honestly tried. The Nazis have mega-prisons with a system for supplying nutrient poisons through ventilation, and concentration camps for mutants, and measuring faces with calipers. There is the Fuhrer, and all sorts of non-commissioned officers/uber/oberst/schutrmbahnfuhrer, and bright emotional speeches of the commanders in front of the crowd, and banners with a stylized letter “R”, denoting “Reich” – all the external paraphernalia. The common view of fascism.

Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?

Panopticon, everything like Francisco Franco

They are also making plans to seize the Metro, for which, by the way, they are entering into an alliance even with the “hated bourgeoisie” from the Hansa – which, by the way, is a very interesting allusion to the cooperation of corporations like Ford or the Coca-Cola Company with Nazi Germany before the start of World War II, despite all the bans and embargoes. The only pity is that the allusion is most likely accidental.

5. What’s wrong in general
It is not very clear what gives the leaders of the Reich and the Red Line power over their citizens. And if, say, three stations of the first station standing very close can still be entirely subordinate to some bright, charismatic leader, then it is not clear why sixteen stations, stretched across the Metro virtually from edge to edge, are subordinate to one center.

To provide all Line fighters with weapons, ammunition, food and equipment, there must be weapons, food, storage and transport stations. And fighter training camps, and schools, and hospitals. And I don’t seem to ask where it all is – it’s clear without words that it exists. I’m rather interested in why not a single weapons station, for example, declared independence, enlisted the support of, for example, the Hansa, or tried to secede by force? Moreover, many are fleeing the Red Line, and such a station could seriously undermine the power resource of the communists.

You see, it’s like Kafka’s novel "Z"Amok". Now I’m not showing off in any way, but I’m just giving an example of the same understanding of power. Like, the one who rules rules. Why does he rule? He has power. What gives him this power?? And the dog knows him, he’s just in charge. Kafka, criticizing the bureaucratic apparatus in The Castle, tried to show the helplessness of man in confrontation with the state machine – but he himself did not understand and could not show the foundations of this machine on which it rules. Roughly speaking, if I now sit at the head of any state, it turns out that I cannot do very, very much – much more than I can.

6. Why don’t I swear
Yes, I’m surprisingly calm when describing the Metro. I just suddenly realized it was plausible. Indeed, the developers showed with a live example what happens when a person builds something that he does not understand.

What is the probability that out of all the fifteen million population of Moscow, among the forty thousand who survived, there will be at least one real Marxist who understands what communism is and how to do it?? And what is the likelihood that among them will be, for example, an admirer of the philosopher Ilyin, who understands the essence of fascism?? And would they really listen to them if they wanted to build the Fourth Reich or the Union of Soviet Socialist Stations?? That’s it.

And the Metro characters, having adopted the ignorance of the developers, created truly naturalistic images of post-apocalyptic ideologies. “Communists” copy the aesthetics and external attributes of the USSR, without understanding what distinguished it from other states of its time. “Fascists” are looking for mutants and measuring skulls, fighting for the racial purity of the Met. And that’s why they turned out so similar: in the world of the Metro they would really be similar, they are really related in that neither the first nor the second understand what to do, but both of them want something.

It seems to me that if we take the prescribed Metro in post-nuclear Moscow and give it another couple of decades to brew, then if we accept the exit to the surface as something impossible, we will see a kind of Lower London from Neil Gaiman’s novel “Never” – with underground feudalism, station-states united under larger overlords. With underground kings, knights and serfs. I think it’s a very possible outcome. I suggest discussing it in the comments.

7. Afterword
Heavy material. For both reading and writing. And I promise that later I will try to avoid such foot wraps and will write about something more understandable and fun. For example, I have a lot to say about Andromeda that has not yet been voiced.

Most likely, this sheet will not find a response in the audience, but it had to be written. Firstly, to pay back the favor on previous articles. Secondly, I don’t want my articles to be just something entertaining. We live in strange times, and I don’t want to suddenly find myself surrounded by zigging young people going to bring racial purity to the state. And for this it is important to know how this can happen.

The authors clearly wanted to hint that communism and fascism are phenomena of the same kind. Outside the Metro, I categorically disagree with them, and such statements of theirs only bring closer the already possible victory of fascism. But inside the Metro I’m quite ready to support them. When you don’t know what you are doing and are trying to copy only external signs, external attributes, then it doesn’t matter what you build: fascism, communism, monarchy, democracy – you still won’t get what you want. Therefore, my wish for you is: try to figure it out, see the essence and carefully filter what is put into your head.
Tallinn out. Live, die, repeat.