Leaving Afghanistan

[giblets]

They keep mistaking the results of historical forces for the causes. Absolutism and the nation-state were the culmination of the factors that led to the decline in feudalism, not the cause of the decline of feudalism!

I don't see what you mean here. Russia would be an example of a strong state developing without getting rid of feudalism. Or maybe imperial China depending on how you're defining feudalism.

[Al B. Sure!]

What? Victoria has a tech tree too.

I'm referring to the interaction with the POPs

[giblets]

I'm referring to the interaction with the POPs

How exactly do the POPs cause your society to change? Other than plurality having an impact on whether democracy or monarchy is tenable?

[Al B. Sure!]

Russia would be an example of a strong state developing without getting rid of feudalism. Or maybe imperial China depending on how you're defining feudalism.

Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were the biggest 'centralizers' so to speak of the Russian state and they both significantly curtailed the power of the landed nobility (the boyars).

A title alone may hold symbolic power, but Ivan's political revolution went further, in the process significantly altering Russia's political structure. The creation of the Oprichnina marked something completely new, a break from the past that served to diminish the power of the boyars and create a more centralized government. "...the revolution of Tsar Ivan was an attempt to transform an absolutist political structure into a despotism... the Oprichnina proved to be not only the starting point, but also the nucleus of autocracy which determined... the entire subsequent historical process in Russia."[20] Ivan created a way to bypass the Mestnichestvo system and elevate the men among the gentry to positions of power, thus suppressing the aristocracy that failed to support him.[21] Part of this revolution included altering the structure of local governments to include, "a combination of centrally appointed and locally elected officials. Despite later modifications, this form of local administration proved to be functional and durable." [22]

[giblets]

Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were the biggest 'centralizers' so to speak of the Russian state and they both significantly curtailed the power of the landed nobility (the boyars).

And? They upheld serfdom so it's not like the state didn't act in the interest of the aristocracy. If you're just defining feudalism as "decentralization with power devolved to landed elites" then by definition centralization is a decrease in feudalism and you're not really making an argument.

[Al B. Sure!]

How exactly do the POPs cause your society to change? Other than plurality having an impact on whether democracy or monarchy is tenable?

I said I didn't want to turn this into a video game discussion. The fact that, in Victoria, certain forms of government are less 'tenable' depending on the circumstances of your country and its population is a significant difference from the Civilization model. Obviously, both are games and not political simulations so control is still given to the player in Victoria.

[giblets]

I said I didn't want to turn this into a video game discussion. The fact that, in Victoria, certain forms of government are less 'tenable' depending on the circumstances of your country and its population is a significant difference from the Civilization model. Obviously, both are games and not political simulations so control is still given to the player in Victoria.

In Civilization, a democracy is less tenable if you're constantly at war. In fact circumstances are very important for choosing a government. You're right about neither of them being political simulations.

[Al B. Sure!]

In Civilization, a democracy is less tenable if you're constantly at war.

Do you not comprehend how that is different than a system of government not being tenable based on the consciousness, militancy, desires, and beliefs of dozens of different individual segments of your population? That has far more relation to how the world actually works than 'oh, you don't get all your bonuses if you are at war a lot' or whatever Civilization has

[Al B. Sure!]

And you always CHOOSE your government in Civilization. In Victoria, it can be imposed on the player through a revolution or, to a lesser extent, an election. That's another HUGE difference between the games' approaches.

[giblets]

Do you not comprehend how that is different than a system of government not being tenable based on the consciousness, militancy, desires, and beliefs of dozens of different individual segments of your population? That has far more relation to how the world actually works than 'oh, you don't get all your bonuses if you are at war a lot' or whatever Civilization has

Except the desires and beliefs of your population doesn't really matter all that much in Victoria. Keeping them under control is pretty easy as long as your form of government is appropriate for your level of plurality. Maybe it would be nice if there was a game where those things actually mattered.

[giblets]

And you always CHOOSE your government in Civilization. In Victoria, it can be imposed on the player through a revolution or, to a lesser extent, an election. That's another HUGE difference between the games' approaches.

I've never had a revolution except when I decided I wanted to make one happen by switching parties ten times in a row. Elections are not that hard to rig either.

[dannubis]

Here we go...






Hmm... So I only made a statement about de-emphasis on agriculture then you came up with this productivity increase business... Hmm... then I countered saying I don't mean increased productivity, and repeating my previous statement in different words, clarified "reorganization of the economy".

So someone corrects your erroneous attribution and it's backtracking?


I win. **** you *******.

Dude, causality seems to be really challenging for you so let me spell it out.

To have a significant reorganization of a workforce away from agriculture you need a notable increase in agricultural productivity. Otherwise everybody dies of hunger (yes even the ones in the ghetto to make it more tangible for you). This only hapened in the aftermath of the industrial revolution (you know, big steam engines and stuff).

The end of feudalism came with the establishment of absolute monarchies which in their turn lead to the modern concept of nation states. I gave you the example of Spain. The King had more power than his nobles because he had (part of) the gold coming in from the New World. He also had subjects that could identify themselves under the Spanish banner because 50 years prior they were still kicking moorish butt out together. Spain could become an absolute monarchy because the King was able to take out the nobility as an important power factor. Not because the Spanish people were the most industrious people in the world.

Regarding inane comment about knights: the role of the knight ended early 1300's. This was marked by defeats in Flanders and Scotland centuries before feudal sociaty unraveled.

And in general, yes technological advancement combined with larger populations made social advances possible. I am quite impressed that this knowledge actually made it to downtown philly.

[Al B. Sure!]

To have a significant reorganization of a workforce away from agriculture you need a notable increase in agricultural productivity. Otherwise everybody dies of hunger (yes even the ones in the ghetto to make it more tangible for you). This only hapened in the aftermath of the industrial revolution (you know, big steam engines and stuff).

Increase in agricultural productivity in the Middle Ages? You mean like the "3-field system"? You mean like the plow and the horse collar? Gee, I wasn't aware that towns didn't exist until the industrial revolution I wonder what Venice, Genoa, Milan, Rome, Paris, the cities of the Hanseatic League... I wonder what those were then?

Regarding inane comment about knights: the role of the knight ended early 1300's. This was marked by defeats in Flanders and Scotland centuries before feudal sociaty unraveled.

Halbreds and then gunpowder allowed commoners to challenge the authority of militaries (make that more like warbands) organized by nobles. This was well-demonstrated in the Italian city-states in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Along with rising economic power, this popularization of the means of waging war gave the burghers power that had not been available to them during the height of feudalism. They became a group which monarchs could ally with in power struggles with the feudal nobility.

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm going to get more Marxist comments but here's Engels:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/decline/index.htm

While the chaotic battles among the dominant feudal nobility were filling the Middle Ages with sound and fury, the quiet labours of the oppressed classes all over Western Europe were undermining the feudal system and creating a state of affairs in which there was less and less room for the feudal lords. True, in the countryside, the feudality might still assert itself, torturing the serfs, flourishing on their sweat, riding down their crops, ravishing their wives and daughters. But cities were rising everywhere: in Italy, in Southern France, and on the Rhine, the old Roman municipalities were emerging from their ashes; elsewhere, and particularly in central Germany, they were new creations. In all cases, they were ringed by protective walls and moats, fortresses far stronger than the castles of the nobility because they could be taken only by large armies. Behind these walls and moats, medieval craft production, guild-bound and petty though it was, developed; capital accumulation began; the need for trade with other cities and with the rest of the world arose; and, gradually, with the need there also arose the means of protecting this trade.

As early as the fifteenth century, the townspeople played a more crucial role in society than the feudality. To be sure, it was still true that agriculture occupied the largest proportion of the population and thus remained the chief mode of production. Nevertheless, the few isolated free peasants, who had managed to hold out here and there against the rapaciousness of the nobles were adequate proof that it was the work of the peasants and not the sloth and oppression of the nobles which made the crops grow.

At the same time, the needs of the nobility itself had so increased and changed that even they could not do without the cities: after all, it was in the cities that the noble obtained his own special "tools" – armour and weapons. Domestic textiles, furniture and ornament, Italian silk, the laces of Brabant, furs from the North, the perfumes of Araby, fruits from the Levant, and spices from India: everything but soap he had to buy from the townspeople. A certain degree of international trade had already developed: the Italians sailed the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic Coast as far north as Flanders; in the face of increasing English and Dutch competition, the Hanseatic League continued to dominate the North Sea and the Baltic Sea; the connection between the trade centres of the South and those of the North was overland, on roads which passed through Germany. Thus while the nobility was becoming increasingly superfluous and more and more obstructive to progress, the townspeople were coming to form the class which embodied the further development of production and commerce, of education, and of social and political institutions.

Judged by today's standards, all these advances in production and exchange were of a very limited scope. Production remained confined within the pattern of guild craftsmanship, and thus itself retained feudal characteristics; trade continued to be restricted to European waters and did not venture farther than the coastal cities of the Levant where the products of the Far East were taken aboard. Yet, petty though industry and the businessman remained, they were adequate to overturn feudal society; and they at least remained in motion, while the nobility stagnated.

How deeply the foundations of the feudality had been weakened and its structure corroded by money around the end of the fifteenth century, is strikingly evident in the lust for gold which possessed Western Europe at this time. It was gold that the Portuguese sought on the African coast, in India and the whole Far East; gold was the magic word which lured the Spaniards over the ocean to America; gold was the first thing the whites asked for when they set foot on a newly discovered coast. But this compulsion to embark on distant adventures in search of gold, however feudal were the forms which it took at first, was nonetheless basically incompatible with feudalism, the foundation of which was agriculture and the conquests of which were directed at the acquisition of land. To this it must be added that shipping was definitely a bourgeois business, a fact which has stamped every modern navy with an anti-feudal character.

It is obvious that the monarchy was the progressive element in this general confusion. It represented order in chaos, the developing nation as against fragmentation into rebellious vassal-states. All the revolutionary elements which were coming into being under the feudal surface were as inclined to dependence on the monarchy as the monarchy was inclined to dependence on them. The alliance between monarchy and bourgeoisie dates from the tenth century; often disrupted by conflicts – for during the Middle Ages no movement was free of zigs and zags – the alliance was always renewed, stronger and more potent, until it enabled the monarchy to attain final victory; whereupon, the monarchy, in gratitude, turned on its allies to oppress and plunder them.

And so forth. Engels pretty much describes my entire position on this as he discusses the rise of national identities, the popularization of weapons of war, etc.

[giblets]

Well yeah. You commie rat. It's amusing that you can quote Engels on demand.