Alliance - Capitalist or Communist?
POSTED BY: chronicthehedgehog
UPDATED: Saturday, August 13, 2005 12:24
VIEWED: 12105
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I don't think this has been addressed before, but if the Alliance is a fusion of America and China, a capitalist and a communist nation, what is the Alliance? Is it one of these or has it developed a new economy based on the fusion of the two? If so, how would that work?
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I'd vote for capitalist, as it seems to be owned by Blue Sun.
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I would vote for facist, since they are trying to control the way people live (notice that the core planets are all spotless and clean and no one dares to step out of line)...
but this is one of the beauties of Joss' writing,
we can imagine the Alliance as any huge government/military system who oppresses people and only recognizes the 'rights' of the rich and powerful.
A conservative or libertarian would see this as Big Government taxing and giving nothing back.
A liberal would see it as Gov't/Military sold out into the hands of Special Corporate Interests
It will be interesting for me to see in sequels exactly how far Joss Whedon will go in revealing The Alliance.
Join my crew: Fairfield Fireflies
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Quote:It might could work either way, however I think I would have to go with Embers’ analysis. I don’t think the show ever ran long enough for there to be enough information to make that determination, but I have always thought of it as more of a national socialism. There does seem to be corporate enterprise, such as the Blue Sun thing. But since the Alliance seems to be in the background of everything, these corporations would seem to be heavily centralized on the government, which is a criterion of national socialism. So if I had to choose between your examples I would say Communist, since that is the only one requiring centralization of the economy.
Originally posted by chronicthehedgehog:
I don't think this has been addressed before, but if the Alliance is a fusion of America and China, a capitalist and a communist nation, what is the Alliance? Is it one of these or has it developed a new economy based on the fusion of the two? If so, how would that work?
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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I posted this in regards to some miscellaneous Blue Sun Room item I can't even remember, but here goes:
My hypothesis is that the Alliance is closer to fascism than communism for a number of reasons. First, it's clearly closer to totalitarianism than any participatory system. The government has shadowy mechanisms to keep deviants in line, and, as far as we can tell, there's no voting, free press, etc.
It's important to note that communism a la Marx has never existed. The communist systems in China, Russia, Cuba, etc. are not what Marx had in mind. Then again, it was never clear that Marx had a solid idea of what communism was supposed to be.
The difference, however is this: in communist systems, propaganda is designed to tell citizens how equal and wonderful things are. Even if the system is corrupt, and even if bureaucrats get the lion's share of resources, the govenment nevertheless emphasizes the equality of the system.
Clearly, the differences between the rim and the core are vast, which is not surprising, even in a communist system. The difference, however, is that the Alliance doesn't even pretend.
On another note, check out Finding Serenity's "Asian Objects in Space" by Leigh Adams Wright on the absence of Asians on Firefly. The fact that the Firefly-verse has Chinese influence may be entirely unrelated to its current political system. BTW, some have argued that China's current system is more fascist than communist; it has largely abandoned its command economy, and pretty much forgotten about the plight of its rural farmers (the backbone of any communist nation), while at the same time not having any individual rights.
Edit: I wanted to state my appreciation for such an insightful topic. Not that I have anything against "What's your favorite episode?" threads, but this seems to have a bit more meat to me.
Also, I definitely see where Ember is coming from. The Alliance seems to be Rorschach-like in terms of what we see.
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Given what Joss' inspiration was for FIREFLY, I thought the Alliance/core planets were kind of like the Union and the outer planets the Confederacy. But the war the Browncoats lost doesn't seem to have been a revolution or a civil war, or a rebellion, but rather a war to prevent occupation. You know, a war war.
After watching the show it seems to me that corporations influenced the government so much that they became one in the same. In other words the corporation controls the state (Corporatism) rather than the state controlling the economy (Communism).
One of the things that remains to be seen is is the Alliance the enforcement tool of the Blue Sun Corporation or is the Alliance and the Blue Sun Corporation the same thing?
Either way it seems the Alliance is Corporofascist.
Another question is does the Alliance actively control all planets or are they in the process of actively trying to control the outer planets or are they just letting them be so long as they don't get any funny ideas?
Let's look at Whitefall. Does the Alliance actively control it? Or do they just want to eventually? Or are they content to let Patience be the Mayor of Whitefall as long as she shows the proper respect towards the Alliance?
In "The Train Job" it seems that the Alliance doesn't really care what happens in that town/moon/planet (I can't remember the name of it) just so long as they cooperate when the Alliance is around. But it doesn't look like the Alliance is actively running that place.
If the Alliance isn't actively seeking to control all planets then I'd say they're Corporofascist in the core planets and only show their muscle in the rim if you don't recognize their authority.
If the Alliance is actively seeking to control all planets (or already does) then I'd say they are Corporofascists.
I guess we just don't know enough history yet. The core planets were formed first. It looks as though they decided peacefully to form an Alliance and then decided to unpeacefully expand it.
Hope we get to find out.
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China is moving further towards Capitalism and away from Quasi-Communism, so I think its not as simple as a communist nation 'fusing' with a capitalist one.
So anyway to my mind the Alliance is more sort of a corporate run dictatorship, something along the lines of the Society in Aliens, with Wayland-Yutani basically running the show, and perhaps a puppet goverment.
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Capitalist, definitly.
Although, one thing that I liked reading about in one of the essays in FINDING SERENITY was the idea that the Alliance win over the Independents was phyrric and that they've bitten off far more than they can chew, which (not to pimp my own work) I hypothesized that if the Alliance were to crash, it wouldn't be from another war, but from within. If the Alliance has a corporate mentality, then maybe it would become like Enron and it would collapse from within due to inflation, overflowing corruption and overexertion.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
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The one assumption here is that the alliance subscribes to any one governing philosophy.
The simple fact is that allies have always to a lesser or greater degree had different governing bodies or different agendas. The term alliance only signifies powers that are allied.
The breakdown here seems to actually be somewhat simple:
alliance = power for its own sake
independants = self determination
when you have power you wish to maintain power and you do not want a threat to arise that can go toe to toe with you.
the reason the alliance attacked the independants was to maintain superiority.
the reason the independants lost is that the alliance squashed them before they became a threat (even if it was not as easy of a victory as they assumed).
they do not care about the border planets yet as they are not a threat to their power,military,economic or otherwise.
when the border planets progress to the point that they can interfere with those who are in power then the alliance will attack and expand.
As all our worlds governments move further away from their own philosophies and more towards a single goal of maintain the status quo,it is not unreasonable to assume that this will be the way of the future.
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The one assumption here is that the alliance subscribes to any one governing philosophy.
The simple fact is that allies have always to a lesser or greater degree had different governing bodies or different agendas. The term alliance only signifies powers that are allied.
The breakdown here seems to actually be somewhat simple:
alliance = power for its own sake
independants = self determination
when you have power you wish to maintain power and you do not want a threat to arise that can go toe to toe with you.
the reason the alliance attacked the independants was to maintain superiority.
the reason the independants lost is that the alliance squashed them before they became a threat (even if it was not as easy of a victory as they assumed).
they do not care about the border planets yet as they are not a threat to their power,military,economic or otherwise.
when the border planets progress to the point that they can interfere with those who are in power then the alliance will attack and expand.
As all our worlds governments move further away from their own philosophies and more towards a single goal of maintain the status quo,it is not unreasonable to assume that this will be the way of the future.
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