Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Deca-Dence
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cheshire1501
Posts: 51 |
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There's something inherently capitalist to the way this is carry out within Solid Quake though In the US and most other late capitalist systems those deemed "undesirable" are disposed in a completely cold, passion devoid. "just doing businesses" kind of way. Maybe that's why history books tended to be more drawn to the atrocities of non-capitalist systems. There's no "battle cry" or crazy spectacle in the crazy conditions of the US prison system, even though it runs on slave labor. There's no kristalnatch (I'm dead sure I spelled it wrong) even though police have legal inmunity when they kill someone in a "moment of panic" Deca-Dence is capitalist brutality in a nutshell "Have fun, and don't mind the mess. That's not your problem" |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3650 |
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In Deca-Dence, Solid Quake is literally inviting monsters in to murder humans to keep their numbers down. They're not indifferent or uncaring, or trying to maximize profits, or anything particularly capitalistic. They just want them dead, and found a way to use natural(ish) forces to do it, which again tracks far more closely with communist tactics.
I don't think you understand the extent to which mass murder through deliberate starvation was a primary mode of removing undesirables in the 20th century in these anti-capitalist systems. It was far colder and seen far more as "just doing business" than anything capitalism has come up with, which typically tops out at indifference. |
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cheshire1501
Posts: 51 |
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They are definetely "indifferent and uncaring" in a very capitalistic way. Just think of all the times austerity has been imposed to cut cost for the sake of "keeping expenses down" leading to disaster (Greenfell, the Rio Musseum"). They are killing humans, they don't care because "they are just humans" That's the end of capitalism. Once you "top" at indifference, there's no stoping you from leaving millions to die for the sake of productivity or cost cuting. As if the last six months haven't been proof enough |
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3650 |
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If they didn't care, they wouldn't go out of their way to kill humans. If they were cutting costs, they wouldn't go out of their way to knock a big hole in the wall, they could just stop supporting them. At this point, you're basically arguing that "anything bad that happens to anyone must be reflective of capitalism," as if you've never head of the Great Leap Forward, or the Holodomor, which were active interventions to "improve" society by starving millions. These seem far closer to what's represented in Deca-Dence than austerity measures.
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cheshire1501
Posts: 51 |
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That would take then more time, and would be more expensive in the long run than just kill a bunch in a short period of time. Like I said "they don't care". Is like when Amazon cuts down a chunk of their workforce and Bezzos still makes billionz in the middle of the pandemic. Sure they were massacres before capitalism, but capitalism is unique in that it takes a collective "shrug" attitude to the suffering it causes, not to mention its constant self-denial that it needs that suffering to exist in the first place. As Kabu's friend says "why do you care? they're just humans?" They're just part of the attraction, don't give that much thought about it. After all, Disney wants you back in the park, don't mind the underpaid staff that its putting at risk in Florida. |
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cheshire1501
Posts: 51 |
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Also, I can't believe I forgot this.
Quake Corp doesn't also treat humans like assets, it is also enforcing what it is known as "structural unemployment". Quake Corp could give humans and gears the means of subsistence (I mean they are technically the government) but, to quote Michael Kalecki: "under a regime of permanent full employment, the 'sack' would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under laissez-faire; and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the rentier interests. But 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated than profits by business leaders" |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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People noting a hole in the wall with literal monsters coming through killing people, shrugging their shoulders and saying “not my problem,” is not at all unrealistic to me (especially when working to repair the hole puts them on the front lines of risk). I brought in an example of workers dying of Covid and the meager fight to help them as an example because it’s an obvious example of “monsters killing people being met with shrugged shoulders” in real life right now. Workers getting sick in meat processing plants and other “essential” jobs *put everyone who live anywhere near them at risk*, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying, and the movement to help those on the front lines is so small it might as well be Natsume trying to convince her friends.
I framed it the way I did because others on this thread have a really hard time seeing Deca-Dence as a criticism of capitalism—it may not be specific enough, but the show has said a few times that it’s world running villains are a company seeking profit. Not a communist government, or a fascist regime. A company. And if you want an example of a company willing to risk human lives for a profit while “monsters” attack, well, we’re living it now. Don’t have to look far. The article I posted is one of many examples.
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3650 |
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It's a moral failure, where humans are seen as beneath the threshold for having moral worth, and it happens all the time, in all kinds of systems. Removing capitalism without removing the moral failure doesn't solve the problem, which is what makes it such a poor criticism of capitalism. If you replaced the evil corporation with evil aliens, would they have to change anything else about the show? Evil racists? Evil wizards? Evil tyrants? Meanwhile, the parts that could conceivably function as criticism of capitalism, like the never-ending rat race, would work just as well without the evil overlords at all. Natsume isn't really part of the system that the corporation maintains, the overlords may as well be the weather for all she and the other humans know. Natsume isn't looking for the corporation's approval, and the corporation wouldn't bother to give it. Natsume isn't looking to be useful to the corporation, and the corporation isn't expecting it from her. Natsume's system isn't built to be part of the same system that Kabu is part of, it's built in response to the stimuli imposed by it. At no point is it suggested or implied that the corporation cares what the humans are doing, aside from merely existing. They aren't potential workers, and they aren't potential consumers. They fill the same role as pets or zoo animals in the corporation's system. Are the struggles of zoo animals in capitalist systems different from those in non-capitalist zoos? Is capitalism particularly bad for pets? And even if that's the discussion, aren't we incredibly far from the first idea, that capitalist systems impose harm on their participants? At the end of the day, it feels like the show isn't saying anything more compelling than "capitalism is the bad thing here, because I say so, and in fiction, what I say goes." |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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The monsters are created, but their purpose isn’t just to kill humans—their blood powers the Deca-Dence and equipment, and the humans eat their meat. Solid Quake uses some humans alongside Gears to get the most entertainment value and product from the Gadoll. I’d argue that the humans aren’t *just* zoo animals, they’re just not valuable enough. Processing meat for profit is dangerous in real life, even without a pandemic
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Panino Manino
 Posts: 734 |
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Have you never heard about how the "urban redevelopment" sausage is made? But again, mass murder is something that happens under authoritarian regimes, no matter if is from the left or the right. How many atrocities did capitalist AND democratic leaders/committed? And why nothing of this detracts from capitalism? Worse, often defenders of those crimes justify with "necessary evil". It's ridiculous.
The humans are part of the narrative. The "Gears" are heroes that came to that world to help (the human "npc"). |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11330 |
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There are two things I think are missing in the analysis of whether this represents a critique of capitalism or of totalitarianism. First, from the humans' pov, they're living in a communist system, where they're sorted into jobs according to the needs of the system, and they're all in this together to fight the Gadoll. They're willing cogs in the machine because they believe that machine operates for the good of them all.
Second, the Tankers aren't just a drain on the economy the Corporation would just as soon eliminate. It would've done so already if that were the case. No, the Corporation needs their labor to process the Gadoll bodies primarily for their blood which powers the whole enterprise (the meat is a byproduct useful to keep the humans alive and the waste feeds the next generation of Gadoll). Think of Gadoll blood as this economy's coal and oil. Tankers also repair the Deca-Dence and armor, and do other support functions for the players. The Corporation's aim is to control human labor for the profit of the Corporation, including their numbers (it's inefficient to have more humans than they need, so they "downsize" them, permanently). When you view it that way, the situation of the human labor pool is a nearly 1:1 illustration of the vertical integration of the old coal and oil fields in West Virginia, Texas, Colorado, et al. as well as similar set-ups in industrial cities. As is the case for the humans in the Deca-Dence, miners’ and their families' entire economic output was captive: they were paid in company scrip, lived in housing that belonged to the company, in towns and barracks that were corporate private property, shopped in company stores (this may not entirely be the case for Tankers, who seem to have a somewhat independent economy - barter? Dunno), and were not allowed to leave. They were expected to provide their own equipment (bought at the company store) and if anyone left the camp, they were blacklisted and told not to come back – and their family was evicted, too (families were sometimes evicted if even their children left the camp), with company debt still hanging over their heads, and back wages left unpaid. There were private police forces like the Pinkertons and Baldwin-Felts to enforce the company rules, much like Kaburagi hunting down "bugs," except much more openly, including federal support. See also Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain for more history. It's true that capitalism doesn't have a monopoly (heh) on atrocities committed in the name of whatever is convenient to get the masses to go along with them, but this particular setup sure looks like a capitalist critique to me. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Probably not a very valuable contribution to the ongoing "is this show criticising capitalism or not" discussion, but the repeated mentions of company towns here remind me of a story from my work. My daily duties include writing brief summaries of Russian newspaper articles in Japanese. This is not meant for an audience outside the organization, so quality control isn't an issue, but my supervisor does occasionally give feedback on this work. One time a few years ago he came up to me and said "You know how there have been a lot of articles about 'the problems of monotowns' lately, and how you've been translating the Russian term 'monotown' as 'kigyō jōkamachi' [basically the Japanese for 'company town', with an added whimsical throwback to Edo period castle towns]? Could you think of a different way of phrasing it?" When I asked what was wrong he said "It's not wrong per se, but my understanding is that monotowns here in Russia generally have a negative image of industrial decay, lack of opportunities, overbearing management and corruption, whereas in Japan company towns tend to have a positive image of corporate social responsibility and prosperity in formerly underdeveloped parts of the country, so the phrase 'the problems of company towns' is a bit confusing".
Out of curiosity, I checked the Japanese Wikipedia article for "company town" just now, and it seems like even in Japan there has been scholarly interest in the problems that arise from tying the fate of a whole community to the fortunes of a single company or industry, since the decline of coal mining in the 1970s and shipbuilding and steel industries in the 1980s, but in society at large this is probably still viewed more as issues of specific industries as opposed to the concept of company towns in general (not to mention the lack of specifically post-Soviet issues, like the collapse of Soviet-era supply chains and the structural shifts following the privatization of industries). There's also an article on monotowns now, which would have been quite helpful back when I was summarizing those articles 
Last edited by vonPeterhof on Mon Aug 24, 2020 10:12 am; edited 1 time in total |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2285 |
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While it's true Deca-Dence makes use of the Tankers in this way, I think the fundamental reason the Tankers aren't a drain on the Corporation's profit margins is that, to paraphrase one of the in-universe conversations, one of the Game's primary selling points is that it lets the weird cyborg/digital-citizen Kaburagis play alongside the remnants of a dead race (humans). Although, I guess I'm assuming attracting Customeragis is a goal of and beneficial to the Corporation. That would certainly be true in a fully realized capitalist setting, dystopian or otherwise; we haven't really seen much of this in Deca-Dence, though, now that I think about it. Actually, the Kaburagis are kind of treated like a just more upscale version of slave, complete with executions and for-Gadoll-blood/profit prison labor as punishments for stepping out of line. Which makes me wonder: who is the Corporation actually selling its wares to? Is it in fact the Customeragis? If so, why does the Corporation feel so free to dispose of them as it sees fit? EDIT: Also, the role of the Gadoll is kind of unclear to me. They're easier to fit into the capitalist critique reading if they're a sort of natural resource, but I somehow got the impression that they're actually fabrications created by the Corporation (echoes of HBO's Westworld), which would make the Gadoll-blood market of Deca-Dence itself an artificial creation (a bit like the in-game marketplaces of popular videogames), and presumably a non-sustainable one (since it seems rather inefficient to create Gadoll and let them rampage until tankers/players take them down to harvest their blood, as opposed to just directly synthesizing their blood, or synthesizing but not releasing them, etc) -- unless the process of creating Gadoll is akin to raising livestock, rather than some kind of synthetic production process? From the degree of control the Corporation has exercised over individual story elements, I got the sense that Gadoll creation is more like writing software than like raising livestock, but maybe that speculation will be upended. |
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Panino Manino
Posts: 734 |
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Cities built around a particular company are a thing everywhere in the World. But I think the case in the anime that we are discussing is a bit different, more extreme. |
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5466 |
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Yeah, this is the part I'm really worried about and that's how much more heft Kaburagi got compared to Natsume lately especially for a show that's supposedly equal in our lead characters. Even this week's episode felt the same in spite of some good sequences in the avatar room. I really hope Natsume gets to know the truth soon or else all those proclamations she has made would feel kind of hollow. |
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