Overview of Malaszec Ideologies

This is an overview of ideologies which originated in Malaszec or were influential in Malaszec’s history.

Philosophy of Order

The Philosophy of Order (or simply, Order) is an ancient philosophy originating around modern day Opel, Sevorod. It likely originated as a reaction to primitive elf societies which lived in anarchy. The core tenets are:

Pursuit of a perfectly harmonious society, the Utopia, through enforcing organizational structure, or Order, on society and nature.
Order is in opposition to Chaos, which is the root of evil and crime.
In the beginning, everything contains a mix of Chaos and Order.
Nature is necessary for service to the Utopia, and it desires Order. However, it cannot achieve perfect Order on its own, so nature can and should be reformed and improved by sapients.
The capacity to cultivate Order is what separates sapients from beasts and flora.

Some topics about Order that are under debate include:

Whether Order and Chaos are inherently good or bad, or whether they simply create conditions conducive to morally good or bad actions.
Whether sapients are a part of nature, or are a separate entity.
Whether creating Chaos is justifiable if it leads to greater Order.

Imperial Order

Under the Final Malaszec Empire, the Emperor was seen as the supreme authority on Order. It was the responsibility of the Emperor and the empire to spread Order across the world. Societies that were considered Chaotic were reformed through Colonialism. Resources from the empire’s fiefs and colonies ultimately served the Malaszec homeland, the seat of global Order.

Fellowship of the Forest

The Fellowship of the Forest is an ancient ideology originating around modern day eastern Esterlod. While smaller than Order there is a significant minority following and is not mutually exclusive with Order. The core tenets are:

Societies are organisms living in the ecosystem of a worldwide forest that sapients must contribute to the survival of.
Sapience imbues people with the responsibility and power to reform and guide nature for the sake of the survival of the Universal Forest.
Sapients need the forest, and the forest needs the sapients.
Distaste for violence and prefering gradual and organic reform.
Vegetarianism as a way to minimise disruption to the ecosystem.
The bodies of the dead must be purified and returned to the ground so the Forest can reincarnate them.

Baobabism

Baobabism is the traditional social structure of agrarian faeries who farmed along the Andeijan River. It is named after the Baobab tree where the extended family of matrilineal clans called Baobabs lived. The core tenets are:

The farmland is the collective ownership and responsibility of the Baobab.
Duty to the Baobab is central to functioning society, and the weakening of this sense of duty leads to chaos and degeneracy.
A strict gender dichotomy with females as fonts of ambition and leadership and males as grounded advisers and enforcers.
Free trade between Baobabs as necessary and desired.
Skepticism of Bigs, initially humans and elves but later other Bigs as well.

Eastern Animism

Eastern Animism originated around modern day Serszec, likely to explain natural phenomena as well as to understand the content of dreams. Its core tenets are:

Belief in spirits which govern over various domains, such as day, night, water, air, etc.
Oracles who divine the future with truth stones in divination rituals.
Sending Dreamtalkers who sleep in pools of dream water to induce coherent dreams, called Dreams of Inspiration.
Belief that the afterlives are in the dream world, and that people in dreams are the ancestors of those in the real world.
The dead must be honoured so that they inspire Dreamtalkers across the dream barrier.
Belief that humans are the prototypical sapient capable of infinite possibilities

Malaszec Socialism

Modern socialism originated from Ertizec’s Essays on Labour written during the Final Malaszec Empire as a reaction to the inequality and poverty experienced under imperial rule. He was influenced by the collective ownership and responsibility of agrarian laborers in Baobabism. Broadly speaking, socialism describes systems where production and exchange are owned and managed by society at large.

Ertizec Communism

The ideology of the Malaszec Communist Revolution known as Ertizec Communism, or simply Communism, is based on Ertizec’s works since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The core tenets are:

Classless and egalitarian Communist society abolishing hierarchical systems of government and decision making.
Creation of the Communist society through abolition of private property and the collectivisation of the means of production.
Proletariat revolution as necessary to depose the feudal structure of Imperial Malaszec.

Early Kregir Communism

After the establishment of the Malaszec People’s Republic (MPR), Arekos Kregir rose to power and became the dictator of an authoritarian regime. Kregir’s policies changed significantly over the course of his rule until his death but remained nominally communist, so MPR policy is typically divided into eras. Early Kregir Communism is the idology of the first decades of the MPR regime. Its core tenets are:

Movement towards the Ertizec Communist ideal using the state as the creation mechanism.
Centrally-planned national economy divided into self-sufficient wards that give surplus to the state for redistribution.
Strict control over flow of goods and labour in order to force wards to become self-sufficient.
Suppression of dissidents through control over the media and flow of information.
Creation of a pan-Malaszec identity to unite the people of Malaszec

Algocrats

A post-MPR ideology that gained a following during the popularisation of neural networks that were practical to deploy. The core tenets are:

Goal of total automation of government and production to free up time for creative pursuits.
Centrally-planned economy run entirely by an algorithm.
From a software engineering standpoint, the algorithm should start running from a decentralised cluster of people’s computing devices to remove the need for trust in a system administrator.

Fellowship Communism

A return-to-basics agrarian ideology under collective land ownership in order to service the Universal Forest ideal from the Fellowship of the Forest.

Malaszec Corporatism

The death of the MPR dictator Arekos Kregir and the resulting power vacuum led to the formation of the Malaszec Federation. The privatization of Malaszec’s wards in the hands of the political elite of the former MPR gave rise to corporatism. The formerly communist wards, known as Zloije, were reformed into conglomerate corporations also known as Zloije. Each Zloije has its own brand of corporatism, but corporatism as it existed at the start of the Federation has the following tenets:

Laissez-faire economics with the federal government deriving power from the union of Zloije.
The federal government is primarily an arbitrator for the Zloije and an entity with which traditional states internationally can negotiate treaties.
Federal action is done through “projects” which are optional for Zloije. Zloije may choose to contribute funds to participate in these projects.
Globalization and export of the Malaszec cultural image as necessary for prosperity at home.

Corporate Baobabism

A reinterpretation of traditional Baobabist ideals, where corporate subsidiaries are the new Baobab structure. The Zloije which each subsidiary is subordinate to represents a kind of super-Baobab whose values are expected to be followed by all the workers in the corporate structure.

Corporate Federalists

Corporate Federalism became popular after the 23SR Crisis, when espionage between Serzec-Nordarijn Frontier Joint Venture and Alvos Heartworks in the Western Malaszec Frontier Heartland led to the deployment of a weapon of mass destruction that threatened Malaszec proper. Following this incident, it became evident that the federal government was to weak to keep inter-Zloije disputes from endangering Malaszec as a whole. The core tenets of Corporate Federalism are:

The federal government needs sufficient power to keep cohesion in Malaszec.
The federal government should unify the Zloije and represent its trade interests as a bloc internationally.
The federal government should have the power to levy taxes and keep a permanent peacetime army to enforce cohesion and defend against foreign invasion.