Fantastic video, but I feel like something is lost by not mentioning the two factions that largely reject the premise of neoliberal capitalism, "The Followers of the Apocalypse" and "The Railroad". The Followers are a pretty solid representation of practical anarchism (at least in my admittedly limited understanding), and are a unilateral force for good in the Mojave. I think this is pretty heavily informed by Josh Sawyer's involvement, as he seems to lean pretty heavily left, and likely actually understands the underpinnings of the ideology being portrayed. This is a pretty stark contrast to the Railroad, who are written pretty vapidly (like most things in 4), have very little actual designs or convictions beyond "help synths, synths good", and cause no real positive change, which I think speaks to both the skill and ideology of the writers at Bethesda. One problem I do see with the Followers is that the player is still forced to interact with them transactionally, but I think that dissonance can be chalked up to simply the way that games, in general, are structured and for purposes of balance. (It is a gameplay focused experience, rather than an ideology focused on, after all)
True of the Followers who have unsurprisingly been missing from Bethesda's games but I'd argue the Railroad aren't necessarily anti-capitalist, they're a single issue activist group as you say. If they achieved their goal of ending the enslavement and endangerment of synths there isn't much reason to believe they wouldn't then capitulate to the neoliberal status quo, see how liberation movements have historically been assimilated into capitalism with a couple of concessions.
I sort of agree except for The Railroad. Honestly feel like they are genuinely the dumbest thing in Fallout 4 (which is saying a lot). To put my disdain in perspective, I am making a very long series on the Fallout franchise, on Bethesda, and on how modern games tackle overtly political themes. The Railroad will constitute it's own episode by itself.
tbh I felt that rebuilding the Minutemen were better. Creating a network of communities that for no cost protected each other from raiders and shared resources, seems like a good move
@@KayAndSkittles i call the railroad liberals and the Institute fascist along with the military complex called the brother hood. They both want to rid the waste land of mutated individuals. The Institute is more like the ends justify the means and the brother hood is just fascism but instead of eugenics in the human race its about ghouls and mutants. Kinda like Star ship troopers.
@@nikoincroatia one of my buddies installed a mod that implemented a rent on settlements and i was like thats evil and a boring way to make caps. I rather shoot up the Brotherhood and sell their gear lol.
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish capitalists would realise it's a satirical critique, and not actually promoting capitalism. They fell for the propaganda, ironically.
That's the thing with anti-capitalist messages. They're a dime a dozen, yet you never see a game making a case for communism, it's either an unachievable utopia like in Startrek or a totalitarian nightmare. Where are the pro-communist media?
@@boianko oh and Starfleet is more like, socialist because it actually has people with more access to resources than others, making it so not everyone owns an equal amounts of resources/property, or owning everything, depending on how you see communism.
@@alibouk227 Well it's a post-scarcety society so it doesn't really matter that much, right? Haven't watched Star Trek, but from what I know they can pretty much create matter and complex items from nothing with one of their machines, right?
@@boianko correct, it's a post scarcity society, though for plot reasons I remember the process of creating food required some sort of cards or cells which were rationed in one episode, forgot in which series though.
Wow, a terrific takedown of Neoliberalism, the "inevitability" of capitalism, and how it even permeates into visions of the future without human society. Subbed!
When I'm playing Fallout 4, I like to pretend that the minutemen are basically a proto-anarchist mutual aid defence-pact that has appropriated US symbology because they only know what old propeganda says. They just think it means "freedom".
Honestly that sounds most likely considering the Commonwealth Provisional Government, and how it was formed (sorta similar to Democratic Confederalism.
Not only do I think this is true, this is how I build and run all the settlements. He says you can make no difference in the world, but through this path, with enough time and effort, you can dramatically change the wasteland. it just might take you like, 300 in game hours of plonking down houses to make those changes.
I like to pretend that they are a morally corrupt militia with a power hungry leader that just happens to help settlements because it increases their geopolitical position and gets rid of competition from raiders. My minuteman character has Finch Farm as a camp for political dissidents
@@jandammrasmussen3699 One of my characters is a raider boss, institute leader who also leads the minutemen. He uses the raiders like cannon fodder to keep other raiders out of the area, uses the minutemen like a police force, while secretly controlling the entire wasteland from a giant underground bunker.
I remember the thing that struck me as the most wrong and out of character in Fallout 4 was that while there weren't enough capitalist scumbags There were raiders, but I didn't see enough businesses greedily exploiting people in a world without laws and workers rights. The Crimson Caravan in FNV or the situation in the Pitt in F3 were signs of people trying to survive and others taking advantage of them. Every larger community in F4 just felt like a set with everyone standing/walking around playing their parts.
I can’t fucking believe that no one understood that it was mocking neoliberalism/capitalism, and everytime I tried to google this to see if I was alone in seeing this obviousness I found almost nothing. Every interaction online I have had discussing this resulted in them being really confused and angry. Lol.
Because the fallout players are incompetent and gullible at deciphering the fallout world were caused by a monopolist capitalist who wanted Vault Tec to dominate the post nuclear world so his corporation creates it.
@@freelanceart1019 well... that's not canon but we also see many economic/idealogical systems in fallout, with varying amounts of real world influences. Fallout is a criticism of cold war consumerism as well as a cutting critique on communism. Overall the Bethesda Fallouts are utterly deficient in actually presenting a realistic criticism of organized society. We see the classical plutacratic states in the Hub but also collectivist organizations in the boneyard as well as many forms of governance not really seen since the early modern period such as knightly masonic theocracies and non ideological absolute autocracies.
@@freelanceart1019 Man, I'm a Fallout player and I gotta say... you're right but you also forgot about how the average Fallout player can't really come up with anything new and just resort to whatever faction aligns with their political views they learnt from Reddit
Socialists want socialism to become communism Capitalists want capitalism to become corporatism Capitalism defenders say capitalism will work as long as no one bad gets in charge and makes it corporatism.
@@DarkAdonisVyersmotherfucker I am running a Pathfinder campaign. For my friends. Because it is fun. I am operating at a material loss in excess of a hundred dollars. I am more motivated about this than anything that has ever paid me money.
And the creator is just fucking wrong, if I made a series about how people will kill each other when they are put in a pit and forced to and claimed it was about how people are evil and will kill each other immediately, my view is still as wrong
I think funniest part of the Kurt Corbain quote you brought up is the fact that it's a sentiment that exactly echoes the ideas of Simon and Garfunkel expressed some thirty-odd years before.
I came from the Deprogram and you calling out this video is why this my first. Also, I have ferrets and Skittles is the best. Great video, keep up the great work comrade.
This is really great, if somewhat depressing, commentary on my favourite video game series. Great job! I also feel like capitalist realism of Fallout is much more pronounced in the Bethesda-era games, but that's probably because older ones painted their political pictures in much broader strokes.
Broader strokes with sharp edges that cut deep, to those willing to brace themselves. But Bethesda saw it profitable to sand down the edges and delegate pleasure to a wider audience with each release, disregarding the older fans in the vain belief of having outgrown them, all while staking their success on the shaky foundations of stop-n-pop consumers, who play for a while and discard for the next distraction
@Amanda Archer American Libertarian economics, since it's such a bastardized word. Elsewhere when you mention Libertarian, they are referencing Libertarian Socialists. When you are in the US, it usually refers to LibRight chuds.
I plan on making a very long series (already written, not recorded) that touches on some of these ideas and links them to game design philosophies, and I will be sure to reference this video!
Fallout taught me that raiders are based and if you don't have at least 6 impaled bodies on your porch then you have no wasteland bitches And you're gonna get your liver stolen
You know Fallout is also critical of communism and fundamentally opposes it right? It goes out of it's way to outright show the ineffectual nature of voluntary collectivism in the followers and the outright callousness and inefficiency of bureaucracy along with its corruption when enforced. Now it show inhumanity of exploitation of the pursuit material wealth as well but fallout is making fun of more than one ideology.
hot damn and many thanks to peter coffin for the recommendations you and skittles are doing some GREAT work over here (marvelous editing, skittles. just marvelous!)
Damn, I really liked this video, I also invite everyone to read the lyrics to "You know you'r right" by Nirvana, because I think it's one of there best songs and also it really captures the existential angst that any oppression brings both when you are oppressed or hepping the oppression, directly or indirectly. That includs of course neoliberalism, fascism etc. When ever I hear it it always brings me close to tears.
While I am interested in Fisher's book and agree many people view capitalism as "fact" or more accurately "natural" (which I find nonsense), I feel like Fallout's politics are far more than just "capitalism bad." I would go so far as to say that Fallout, just the first two games really, are a complex mesh of ideas without a strong moral narrative. It's more about telling a post-apocalyptic story with political/cultural themes that let's the audience determine what is right, wrong, or otherwise.
I honestly can't get over how good the Fallout universe is. No game has really made me think quite like it. Sure you have other games that touch on post-apocalyptic scenarios, like the Metro series for example, but they often feel more like a love note towards the genre, rather than ecaptulating the complexities like Fallout does. I truely love it, and I don't think there will ever be another game in my time that can actually make a wasteland feel like it is full of life.
New Vegas handles this so much better. There's a theme that lies not so deep below the surface of the game's world which is about letting go of outdated beliefs and moving on, and how the three major factions are only trying to relive and rebuild some ficticious glorious past without realizing that the nuclear apocalypse happened because those systems existed. The Followers are also portrayed extremely sympathetically, and are basically AnComs. The independent New Vegas ending is portrayed as the best possible outcome you can choose, because it allows the space for a truly new beginning and the creation of something actually new. The end of the Old World is also the start of the New World - by wiping the slate clean the bombs allowed for something different, something better to arise eventually, a system that acknowledges the mistakes of the past and moves on. Shit I guess I'm a posadist now lol
@@hawkins347 true however they did not help and if I had a Time Machine do go back and correct issue they are near the top of the list of mystery cases of people falling from really tall buildings
The Soviet Union went on a downward trajectory from Khrushchev’s secret speech onward (not that there weren’t problems before and good things they did after). I feel like not going all in on cybernetically planning the economy was the last nail. They had the tech but the bureaucracy had become too ossified and eventually sold out the entire socialist project. Gorbachev pulled the trigger and certainly has a lot of blood on his hands.
It's so clear that most of this video only Bethesda's part of the series and it's shitty worldbuilding like the parts about society not progressing and not creating infrastructure/cleaning the skeletons and the parts about your actions not having consequences in the wasteland. Like I get some of the criticism that's in the seies as a whole but dont put the spolight on the misrepresentation of the setting by Bethesda, Fallout used to be much more than the oblivion with guns.
Genuinely the best video I’ve ever watched on RU-vid. Thank you, you really manage to succinctly represent the criticisms of neo liberalism through analysis of different mediums and it’s just perfect.
My only nitpick is at 3:10, where your wording kind of makes it sound like the bombs dropped at or around the 50s. They actually dropped in 2077, meaning society was stuck in 50s mode for _120 years._ Which kind of sounds... insane? When you think about it? Also I've always wondered how they didn't run out of fossil fuels earlier, with their excessive usage. Anyway, that's *literally* the only flaw I found with this video. Great work!
Honestly, I feel like while capitalist realism is an important realization people miss out on the other half of it. Anti capitalism might not threaten capitalism but socialism certainly does. Good things are happening in the world, just not in the West. Hundreds of millions are being lifted out of poverty in China. Living standards are going up in most socialist countries and the ability of the US to destroy these countries with sanctions and coups is declining. History is far from over and we should remember that the capitalist west is only 13% of the worlds population.
A very powerful video. I just discovered it, and showed it to my fiance (who is a huge Fallout fan). We both enjoyed it very much. But more importantly, it made us both think.
I feel like fallout critiques everything pre-war times where seen as nice on the surface but corrupt but fallout 1 dealt with the communism of the master and fallout 2 and the enclave dealt with the issues that you ascribed to the brotherhood.
Came here via Smudboy, he used to make good plot analysis videos years ago but had more recently made nearly 3h video trying to "debunk" this one. Naturally I unsubscribed him and came here where the sense´and rationality is :D
@JohnnyTheWolf Well to begin with, brotherhood of stell wasn't an expantionist fraction, but an isolationist one with sole goal of hoarding technology because they made a conclusion that lastest tech is too dangerous for people to use (idea not this much far off considering game takes place in post-nuclear future). Comparing them to pro-trump nationalists makes sence almost exclusively for fallouts made by bethesda. And there are mutch more small details like this (for example originaly caps weren't only symbolic currency, becuase bethesda tought of them as cool, but had real value since certain merchant faction would exchange them for water they had extracted, hell they even got rid of caps in second instalment because other faction got more powerfull and they enforced their own currency), that efectively make this essay aplicable mostly to fallouts made by bethesda. Whether you consider writing choices made by Howard and friends as stylistic choices that fit into anrachist narrative, or just poor and worldbuilding is your own choice. (Also I'm not native in english, so that's why so many grammar errors)
@JohnnyTheWolf I mean yeah they do show off different ideologies whith their upsides nad downsides (fallout 1 did very little of this, but I guess it also somewhat had it). But I don't get how it invalidates thesis of this vide-essay mostly applying to single entity in the franchise, which trough agruably poor worldbuilding created caricature of modern society.
@JohnnyTheWolf Unless of course any game that doesn't show implementation of anarchist society without any downsides whatsowever is a part of neoliberal propaganda. Then I guess this video would apply to entire series.
@JohnnyTheWolf The reason why is that Master (guy responsible for it all) mannaged to change humans into spiecies with supperior abilities, more suitable to surviving in the wastelands, and he intends to change everyone into supermutants to push human race forward. But of course most people volountarly wouldn't follow him so he uses force which corresponds with how extremist branches of certain ideologies act. I would say more people we deem evil belive in their cause rather then are born psycho/sociopaths, I personaly would call it more beliviable worldbuling. I mean for christ sake even many nazis wouldn't say "lol we are murdering those guys because we are evil". Also still doesn't go aginst my argument, unless justificatin is that "well since they try to explain motivations of other factions, they are litteraly showing neoliberal world" (which also makes me think that considering all other ideologies and their followers inherently evil is how extremism and worst acts of atrocity are most ussualy getting born).
it’s a shame that the followers of the apocalypse, one of the few overtly anticapitalist groups, are only seen playing minor roles in Fallout 1 and Fallout New Vegas
Yes, that is the politics of the wasteland. However, realistically tho, in the wasteland world, where no one can agree on who should govern the US, what kind of political system do you think would be "realistic" (given the story's background) or even more "natural"? I am genuinely confounded at how this thing you called "neoliberalism" is different from John Locke's classic liberalism. For example, a big and even core part of neoliberalism is about how government should be "small," but seriously no one in the wasteland really had real government (lol NCR?) so like.... what are you saying? if anything, I would argue NCR is big government and Mr. House is so-called a corrupted globalist. Respectfully, this video is not a very compelling critic.
Favorited. For the moment, I'm liberated. I look at my time peice, and we're back to domination. When will we realize that our bodies would not function if our organs competed for blood and oxygen. Capitalism is an autoimmune disorder.
Guess what? Humans aren't single celled organisms. This is the same Antman 3 bullshit saying how good ant society is. Guess what? Humans aren't part of a hive mind. Heck, FO3 straight up as an ant woman as a villain.
Can you please discuss Fallout: New Vegas specifically? I think you were right on the money with this video and I would love to see your critique of New Vegas. Fallout as a series is really dear to my heart and I'm glad there are people who are critiquing it.
@@thatringinginyourears3955Tankies and fascists are the same thing my dude, they just dyed their shirts a different colour and appropriated leftist terminology.
they also fuck around with AI science without the guiding moral philosophy needed to keep them from building a permanent deep state in a box or a grey matter assimilation machine solely dedicated to producing paperclips. The existential threat posed by that sin alone justifies their annihilation.
I've added communist mods to my build of Fallout 4 which help - all my settlements display portraits of Marx prominently. However the revolution is still very much in progress... Another excellent video. Been waiting so long for exactly this critique of one of my favourite game series.
@@patrickholt2270 The one I was referring to is called Commie Starter Pack. Not sure if it's still on the Nexus, but it's pretty dope & includes Soviet-style armor (included Pioneers outfits for kids) a 'legendary' AK with red stars on mag & butt, 'Historical Dialectics' bobblehead & 'Marx's Capital' book perks, & a load of other commie-friendly stuff including vodka of course (& a vodka bottle melee weapon) red flags & the aforementioned Marx portraits. Oh and a Communist Manifesto magazine perk which increases intimidation & persuasion stats. Pretty funny & well designed but unfortunately not changing the underlying neoliberal capitalist mechanics of the game...
Becouse Capitalism can't die,capitalism can't be defeated in front, capitalism don't want to change....no one can fight it. The only way to fighy it, is using capitalism to destroy capitalism, i don't mean war, i mean using em as tools till we are the capitalist
Great video! I'm working myself on an in-depth analysis of ALL the Fallout games, creating a dialectic between the Bethesda-authored games and the original/Obsidian games (which will, uhhh, take a while). OK if I use your video as one of my references?
Good video, but regarding 4:58 it was confirmed by Tim Cain that China launched first. The Fallout Bible also mentioned they were the first to use biological weapons, prompting the US to develop FEV.
It's that question at the end of the FNV Expansion... "Old World Blues, or New World Hope". The games force us to consider that, just maybe, we can move past our obsession with the past and perpetuating it, and maybe take advantage of what has been lying in front of us this whole time. The games may not let us truly revolutionize the wasteland, but they (some more than others) let us imagine a world in which it could be, which is what I love about it.
You missed one very important detail. Vault-tec was a state-backed corporation. Without the government helping them they wouldn’t be able to reach that level of power. So I’d say the state is just as much at fault here as capitalism. Without so much state power capitalism isn’t nearly as harmful.
Capitalism literally cannot exist without the entity that enforces property rights in the first place, the state. In a capitalist country the state is a fundamental part of the capitalist system, not some kind of outside force. Every corporation that has ever existed has done so with the support of the state. This is why ancaps are wrong about absolutely everything.
Kay And Skittles I never claimed I was an ancap but that isn’t a good argument. Celtic Ireland didn’t have a state to enforce property rights, yet all the disputes were resolved by private courts. But that’s beside the point. What I’m arguing is that there should be less state control, not that the state should be totally abolished.
@@ept3228 Not saying you're an ancap that was a separate point. Main point here is that capitalism and the state are married so it's not a significant thing that vault-tec was state supported. It took out state contracts if I remember correctly which is true of many, many companies today. Also if you mean the pre-christian Ireland of like 2000 years ago, they were not capitalist
Kay And Skittles And my point is that if the state doesn’t have as much power, it can’t give vault-tec and similar corporations so many privileges. And I was talking about the 7th-17th century Ireland (before it was conquered by England).
Well... there was one place outside of the Mojave that became something new, something good, something free from the ruins of the old world. Buuuuut unfortunately it was at a crucial tactical intersection for the NCR and the Legion, so it got nuked by a hapless mailman 😐 Damn. I really understand why Ulysses was so angry.
Interesting take, but I don't think it should be that surprising nothing has changed. We see that most people even 200+ years after the great war are still struggling with basic survival. People are more concerned with immediate survival post-war, with some exceptions, most of which are these very factions. Your average NCR citizen or BoS paladin won't be very quick to question a system that has given them a much better quality of life than most others. Especially not when the alternative is struggling to survive in a dangerours and unforgiving wasteland.
Sounds good. How do you suppose to institute solutions beyond the individual without state violence exactly? How do you suggest we prevent that state violence from being abused by those who control it. I grant that in that we have those problems now, but I fail to see how breaking away from neoliberalism will solve them/not make them even worse.
As fun as it may be to analyze the wasteland we have to remember that the material conditions are fundamentally different from ours to the point it becomes hard to apply modern labels and concepts without stretching the definitions. Rather than imposing the struggles of the modern age onto the wasteland I think it makes more sense to think from the perspective of a wastelander. The wastelander who struggles to defend themselves from raiders or get themselves food and water aren't struggling against capitalism as much as they're struggling against statelessness. The wastelanders need a centralized state to protect them and facilitate easy access to food and water. Once society has rebuilt to the point where more people live under the protection of a centralized state than under the brutal lawlessness of the wastes, then they should start worrying about the mode of production.
Except the whole putting it of until later mentality is exactly why the Great war happened, why capitalism will continue to propagate itself and why ultimately nothing meaningfully changes. I will agree material conditions are very different for most people living out in the wastes but trading barely surviving for thorough exploitation is a slippery slope, one ripe for complacency and a fear of losing the status quo that shackles people.
So, just a few things, with the projects such as the Fallout film which was cancelled, the treatment was written by someone who had no real connection with the franchise . The other thing is that, the Fallout universe and backstory has changed hands, retconned and changed the way different factions have been represented. For example, the whole Vault experiment that started in Fallout 2 did not exist til then, 2's plot which was alluded to in the first Fallout was eventually scrapped. The Brotherhood of Steel has gone through various revisions from Interplay's, Black Isle's and Obsidian's version of archivists of technology which are a bit more morally grey to Bethesda's default good guys in 3 and a wannabe space marine chapter in 4. My main complaint is that you're using lore with various levels of canon and examples of faction in order to make your point, since it's intellectually dishonest to make these distinctions and treat all sources as valid. Why aren't you then referencing projects like Van Buren where there were design documents and an end game all ready to go out. Also, if you play more than just 3 and 4, the player's agency is shown to have a greater effect shown by the ending slides. By the way, your ferret does some pretty good editing ;)
Fair point, but I don’t think those little points refute the main point of the video. That the real dystopia is even the bombs didn’t fully stop neoliberal Capitalism
