Here’s something kind of intriguing.  For all the work we’ve done together, I don’t really know a whole lot about your past!

Not hugely surprising, people tend to not open up all that much around their colleagues these days.  There’s some camaraderie lost there, sure, but I do think it’s important for people to maintain that work-life delineation if they’re inclined.  There’s also the Bowling Alone effect, but more than enough ink has been spilled on that.  If you’re curious about my life, shoot!

… I mean, I dunno how you even start a conversation like that.  “Tell me about yourself”, “What was your childhood like?”, “Were you a nerd or a jock in high school?”, it just feels very awkward and canned.

That’s the late-stage pandemic kicking in but don’t worry, I’m in the same boat.  To your last question, I was a fairly typical high schooler.  I straddled the theatre and jock circles, not quite fully one or the other.  I appreciated the mix later on in life, kept me from indulging the worst impulses of either group.  So I basically did what any high schooler did: during the week I went to school, followed by rehearsal or practice, and finally came home to do homework until I conked out.  And then I’d spend the weekend playing video games until my brains were leaking out of my ears.  You know, typical high school boy stuff.

You know, I can definitely see you having been into video games.  Did you have a particular game or series that you particularly liked?

Oh that’s an easy one, my go-to was the Borderlands series.  Whether I was with friends or alone, the various installations of Borderlands were a constant companion from late middle school through high school.  In fact, because of all the time I’ve been forced to spend indoors (curse you COVID-19!), I recently started picking it up again!

So it’s fresh in the memory then?  Something you could expound upon?  Dare I say it, in the format of a long-form essay utilising media as a jumping-off point for a more academic discussion?

Almost like you read my mind, yeah, I think I can do that.

Within the world of fiction, it is often the case that media prefigures or reflects theoretical concepts (and sometimes, real-world developments).  One such piece of fiction, reflective both of theory and reality, is the popular video game series Borderlands.  Within this work we see reflected the ideas of the absolute titan of theory, Karl Marx.  Specifically, we see a reflection (and arguably, a validation in concept) of Marx’s understanding of capitalism, socialism and historical materialism.  By analysing the Borderlands series, we can demonstrate the strength of Marx’s thinking and even address some of his leftist critics.

Ladies, gentlemen, and those who lieth betwixt, the author is finally going to address Marx!  But before we can get to all that excitement, tell me a little more about this Borderlands game.

The Borderlands series is a series of video games following a number of adventurers (vault hunters) as they (and the numerous mega-corporations that feature prominently) seek out stores of treasure called vaults on the dangerous planet of Pandora.  The series pulls very much from the Space Western genre, one that resituates the tropes of Westerns (a dangerous, untamed land, the lone adventurer/gunslinger, lack of effective political governance, etc) into the Wild West of space.  As to the genre, the Borderlands series was one of the early (and successful) examples of the Looter-Shooter genre, which mixes elements of RPGs with classical action shooters.  Its tone is very tongue-in-cheek, always funny and never taking itself too seriously (a factor that had appealed to me greatly).

You keep saying “series”, are there multiple Borderlands games?

Yep, there are four core games: Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Borderlands 3.  There’s also another series, Tales from the Borderlands, which is a different genre.  I hear it’s excellent but I’ve not played it (and so it won’t feature in this analysis).  Here is a (very brief) summary of the four core games (spoilers, of course):

• Borderlands: Enticed by rumours of obscene wealth, the four original vault hunters (Brick, Roland, Mordecai, and Lilith) arrive on Pandora to hunt for the legendary vault.  While initially motivated by greed, the vault hunters begin to hear the voice of a woman named Angel in their heads.  She explains that opening the vault can be extremely dangerous, and so they need to reach the vault before the Atlas Corporation (and its military wing, the Crimson Lance).  The vault hunters race to assemble the vault key (necessary to open the Vault), only to have it stolen by the Crimson Lance.  The leader of the Crimson Lance, Commandant Steele, is a siren, a figure with a mystical connection to the vaults (and the only ones that can open them).  The vault hunters arrive at the vault just as Commandant Steele is opening the vault, unleashing The Destroyer (like I said, tongue-in-cheek).  The Destroyer kills Commandant Steele and much of the Crimson Lance before being taken down by the vault hunters.
  • While not directly relevant to this instalment, Lilith is also a siren.
  • This is generally considered to be as a successful proof-of-concept, if not perfectly polished.  Its numerous follow-up DLCs are suggestive of its somewhat unexpected success/popularity.

• Borderlands 2: Since the events of the previous instalment, two factions have risen.  On the protagonist’s side, you have the Crimson Raiders, a faction consisting of the former Crimson Lance soldiers as led by the previous vault hunters.  The antagonist faction is the Hyperion Corporation and its CEO, the cruel, megalomaniacal Handsome Jack.  Hyperion is trying to take direct military control of Pandora following the discovery of deposits of a rare mineral called eridium.  As we soon discover, Handsome Jack intends to open a newly discovered vault (using his Siren daughter from the previous game, Angel) in order to harness its content’s power to conquer Pandora.  This is, unsurprisingly, opposed by the Crimson Raiders and the new vault hunters who join them (Maya, Salvador, Axton, Zer0, Gaige, and Krieg).  Ultimately, Handsome Jack does open the new vault, releasing The Warrior (again, tongue-in-cheek naming), which is ultimately defeated by the vault hunters.  The defeat of The Warrior also triggers the display of an ancient map detailing the location of other vaults both on Pandora and other planets, setting the scene for Borderlands 3.
  • This is widely accepted to be the best instalment in the series, due in large part to the excellently written antagonist, Handsome Jack.  Through the course of the action, he mocks your efforts relentlessly, imprisons his daughter and uses her as a bio-battery, torments much-beloved characters, and even kills Roland!

• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: This is canonically after Borderlands but before Borderlands 2, detailing how Handsome Jack came to be the (read: evil) character he is.  As it would turn out, he became CEO of Hyperion mostly by happenstance, and it is through the events of this game that he becomes the monster he is in Borderlands 2.  As it would turn out, he also had a personal vendetta against Lilith and the Crimson Raiders after they stop him from creating a superweapon (and in his mind, betraying him, as they’d been working together up to that point).
  • Interestingly, this series marks a change in tone for the Borderlands series.  While the humour had always been irreverent, this marks the first time that more progressive or ‘woke’ humour is incorporated.

• Borderlands 3: Finally, this instalment follows a very similar narrative arc to Borderlands 2.  Instead of one of the numerous corporations, the Crimson Raiders and the vault hunters face off with the Calypso Twins, the sirens Troy and Tyreen Calypso.  They lead the Children of the Vault cult, one dedicated to worshipping them as the “Twin Gods”.  The Calypsos effectively lead this cult through their live-stream.  So, yes, the antagonists are basically an E-girl and E-boy.  They wield the force of this cult against the Crimson Raiders, as well as to help the Calypso Twins locate more vaults.  The Crimson Raiders are pushed to the brink until the arrival of the new vault hunters (Amara, FL4K, Moze, and Zane), which helps swing the balance of power in the Crimson Raider’s favour.  Ultimately, Tyreen Calypso manages to re-release and merge with The Destroyer before being defeated the vault hunters.
  • This is generally seen as the best instalment from a gameplay perspective, but weaker from a story perspective.  The argument goes that it follows a lot of the same plot points as Borderlands 2: a charismatic, Machiavellian antagonist, the death of a former vault hunter (in this case, Maya), among others.  There’s some merit to this charge, in my opinion, but I don’t think it’s quite as much of a re-hash as sometimes claimed.

I see why you chose this series to talk about Marx; most of the antagonists are corporations!  That’s not exactly a novel opinion though, “Corporations bad”, even the right-libertarians could agree with you on that!

True!  But if I were simply going for a “corporations bad” take, there’s a wealth of other, more fit media I could use for analysis.  But, there’s something particular to the Borderlands series that I think does a good job of demonstrating some of Marx’s thinking.  So let’s start with the man himself, Karl Heinrich Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, a city in what would become Germany.  Philosopher, economist, historian, journalist, revolutionary, all these and more were parts of Marx’s illustrious career.  He is perhaps most famous for two works: The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital (Capital in English), the latter of which is most relevant to our discussion.  He was also the owner of a most magnificent beard.

Okay, what of Capital then, what’s it about?

Capital was and is one of the most thorough examinations of the mechanisms of capitalist production to date!  Much of my understanding of the text comes from David Harvey, one of the foremost scholars of Marx today, and his book A Companion to Marx’s Capital: The Complete Edition.  In Capital, Marx outlines some of his most significant analyses of capitalist production, of which we’ll be looking at the mechanics of wage labour and capitalist production, the primary contradiction of capitalism, and historical materialism.

And then you promise to bring it back to video games?

Pinky swear!  Let’s start with capitalist production and wage labour.  So, what do you need to produce things?  Well, you need raw materials, someone to work on them, and (here’s the key part) the tools to actually do that work.  Those tools (be they farming equipment, industrial machines, or computers) are called the means of production, the means by which you produce things.

Makes enough sense.

In Marxist terms, class refers to your relationship to production (rather than just a measure of your wealth).  Per Marx, there are two major classes under capitalism: the capitalist and the proletariat.  The capitalist’s relation to production is that they own the means of production.  On the other hand, the proletarian (a member of the proletariat) doesn’t own the means of production but works for the capitalist in exchange for a wage.

Now, few people are either purely a capitalist or purely a proletarian.  Many capitalists make decisions on how to improve the company’s profitability or efficiency (a form of intellectual labour).  By the same token, many proletarians either own or are given a share of company stock (making them partial capitalists).  But most people fall primarily within one camp, so we can still speak about the two classes coherently while recognizing the fuzziness around the edges.

Struggling to envision what that looks like…

Fear not, for my … excellent … skills in PowerPoint will help make this clear.  Let’s imagine a business that takes Widgets (W) and turns them into Zidgets (Z).  A Widget is worth 1 currency ($) while a Zidget is worth 3 currency.

Obviously, Widgets don’t simply turn into Zidgets by magic.  They require someone to actually turn the Widget into a Zidget.  To use Marxist terms, labour (L) needs be done to convert a Widget to a Zidget.  But such a conversion also requires the necessary tools to do so, it needs the means of production (MOP).

The conversion from Widget into Zidget represents an increase in value from 1 currency to 3 currency, where is the source of that increase?  The means of production cannot be the reason, as they cannot do any labour on their own.  That is, a saw will not cut anything on its own, it needs someone to use it.  Labour, then, is what converts a Widget into a Zidget.  And since turning a Widget into a Zidget is an increase in value (from 1 currency to 3 currency), the labour done is worth that difference in value (in this case, 2 currency).  You can check my math below:

Okay, I buy it.  But what does this have to do with anything?

Well, let’s return to capitalist production.  So as I noted before, the capitalist owns the means of production while the proletarian provides their labour in return for a wage.  In this case, the capitalist provides the proletarian with a Widget and access to the means of production.  The proletarian, through their labour, converts the Widget into a Zidget.  The Zidget is then sold by the capitalist for 3 currency.

Hmm, well I understand the proletarian’s role in production, but what’s the function of the capitalist in production?

Strictly speaking, with regards to production, they do nothing.  Within capitalism, their responsibility is to provide the money (or *capital*, hence the title of Marx’s work) to acquire the means of production and employ proletarians/workers.  This also means the capitalist (theoretically) shoulders the risk, should the company go bankrupt (leaving aside the whole issue of government bailouts).  The capitalist is, essentially, gambling; they’re risking their own money in hopes of gaining more money.  Granted, it is a form of gambling that is necessary under capitalism (spurring capital formation, etc), but gambling nonetheless.  Consequently, capitalists don’t have a direct role in the production of goods and services, only a contingent role under capitalism.

Alright, makes enough sense.  Let’s get back to capitalist production, they’ve sold the Zidget, now what?

Well, one unit of currency has to be used to buy another Widget (so that production can continue).  The proletariat is given one unit of currency as wage in return for their labour.  Meanwhile the capitalist makes a profit of one currency which they can keep for themselves or reinvest.  The cycle continues and augments over time; the capitalist mode of production!

Often, the profit accrued by the capitalist will be invested in more efficient means of production (e.g. newer machinery), as it is incentivized by the profit-motive.  Investing in more efficient means of production increases the capitalist’s profits by decreasing labour costs (as they can cut hours or fire employees without decreasing production).  In this way, capitalism is a self-augmenting system; profits from production are used to increase production which in turn leads to greater profits, ad infinitum.

Okay, I must have some misunderstanding here… why is the proletariat only paid one currency?  Isn’t the labour worth two currency?

Therein is the crux of the issue.  Yes, the proletariat’s labour is worth two currency but is only given a wage of one currency.  If they were paid for the full value of their labour, the capitalist wouldn’t make any profit!

Couldn’t the capitalist raise the price to four currency per Zidget?  Then the capitalist could pay the proletariat the 2 currency they deserve while still making a profit!

If they do that, one of two situations occur.  On the one hand, if they raise the Zidget’s price above what it’s worth, they simply won’t sell any Zidgets (as another business would undercut them).  On the other hand, if people are willing to pay 4 currency for a Zidget, then that suggests the proletariat’s labour is actually worth 3 currency, making a wage of 2 currency still inadequate.

This is what is meant when Marxists say wage labour is exploitative.  The proletarian is being exploited by the capitalist as they are not receiving the full value of their labour.  That doesn’t mean the proletarian is poor necessarily, but that they’re exploited.  Some wage labourers make a very good living (for example, doctors or famous actors), but they are exploited all the same. 

But that seems like a major flaw in the system, built-in exploitation!  Why would such a system come into place?  Is there a better way?

You could write a whole dissertation on how just one factor influenced the development of capitalism, but we don’t have time for that in this essay.  Let us just say for now that it came into existence for a host of historical reasons (read: often violent ones). 

As to this being a major flaw, yes, I agree!  And so would Marx!  What we’ve come to is referred to as the primary contradiction of capitalism.  The capitalist wants to pay the proletarian as little as possible in order to maximize profit.  Meanwhile, the proletarian wants to receive as high a wage as possible for as little work as possible.  This contradiction, the clashing interests of the capitalists and the proletariat, is what’s called class struggle.

Hold on… contradiction?  Wasn’t Marx a student of Hegel?

Someone’s memory is working, yes he is!  Marx was one of the Young Hegelians, a number of Hegel stans who took a more progressive reading of Hegel’s work.  Marx was a student of Hegel’s brand of dialectics, the philosophy of how systems change via a logic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.  The thesis and antithesis are two mutually-opposing forces, two contradicting forces, that are ultimately resolved in the synthesis.  The synthesis is the settling of the contradiction in a logically consistent manner (not some midpoint between thesis and antithesis). 

For Marx, the thesis and antithesis of capitalism are represented by the contradicting aims of the capitalist and the proletariat.  The synthesis, per Marx, would be a system in which the means of production are owned by those that labour with them.  In other words, collective ownership of the means of production.  In other other words, socialism!

Had a feeling that was coming … Alright, lay it on me, how does socialist production differ from capitalist production?

It’s similar to capitalist production, save for a few factors.  First off, it is the working people themselves that determine the nature of their work, that’s workplace democracy!  Secondly, as profits accrued through labour go directly to workers (as opposed to their higher-ups), workers have motivation to work harder or increase the efficiency of production.  What’s more, you no longer have a class of people, the capitalists, who are not engaged in productive activity (i.e. producing goods and services).  And finally (and perhaps most importantly), workers are not exploited and receive the full value of their labour (in this case, two currency for their labour).

This has all been … fascinating, but you promised you’d bring it back to Borderlands eventually.

Keeping me honest, what would I do without you?

Continue rambling about Marx, probably.

Fair.  So, returning to the Borderlands universe, the numerous corporations that you interact with are primarily gun manufacturers, each with their own specialty.  To name a few, Vladof produces guns with high rates of fire, Torgue makes guns that fire rockets, and Maliwan manufactures guns that inflict elemental damage.  But when we say they “make” these guns, I’m referring to a very specific in-game process.  Before the events of the game, there was a civilization called the Eridians, an ancient aliens-style civilization and original architects of the Vaults.  Before they disappeared for unknown causes, the Eridians had developed advanced technology that can still be found scattered throughout the universe. 

The Atlas Corporation was the first to harness this Eridian technology, most notably in the form of the digistruct system.  This technology allows you to create (or “digistruct”) any item as long as it has been uploaded into the digistruct system at least once.  You can think of it as a 3D printer with no need for materials, just the original source code.  The major corporations in the Borderlands universe used this technology to make absolute oodles of money.

To be totally honest, the function of the digistruct system from a narrative perspective is mostly to explain gaming mechanics in canon.  Why can the player carry over 50 guns on their person?  They digistruct the gun they want to use and de-digistruct the gun they’re not.  How can the player destroy a seemingly endless number of vehicles and still get another one?  Again, digistruct.  How can the player respawn after death?  “The Hyperion Corporation wishes to clarify that the bright light you saw after death was our digistruct technology, and not a higher power. Not higher than Hyperion, anyway.”

Oh that’s excellent!

The respawn messages always crack me up.  Now, more importantly, the corporations in the Borderlands series own the digistruct systems and the digistruct-able products (guns among them) and are attempting to run each other out of business.  This inter-corporation manoeuvring and warfare is often framed as ridiculous, at least partly because of the ridiculous personas of the various CEOs.

But there’s another aspect to this ridiculousness.  When they’re not accidentally awakening ancient entities, these corporations are in an essentially pointless competition.  I mean, they have more money than they could ever possibly spend, is all the blood and carnage worth it for having infinit-ier dollars than the other corporation with infinity dollars?  And even more importantly than that, what does wealth even mean in this universe, a universe where technology can reproduce infinite copies of anything and even conquered death?  Isn’t it, you know, all kind of pointless? 

Well, yeah, but presumably that’s part of the comedy of it all.

I agree and it does add immensely to the comedy!  But the question of such technology has interesting implications and is a useful tool for connecting our previous discussion with another principle of Marx’s thought, Historical materialism.  So Marx believed that the mode of production was the primary determiner of a society’s socio-political structure, rather than culture, geography, or whatever other factor.  At the end of the day after all, he argues, we are material, biological beings with material, biological needs and it is the mode of production through which we meet those needs.  All other factors that help keep this socio-political structure together (culture, institutions, etc) is called the super-structure.  Marx doesn’t say super-structure is unimportant, but secondary to the mode of production.   Historical materialism, then, is the belief that changes in modes of production are the primary drivers of history.  A historical materialist might argue, for example, that the liberal revolutions of 18^th and 19^th century Europe were ultimately due to the increasing power of capitalist production in comparison to feudal production.

Marx also views the movement from capitalism to socialism through a historical materialist lens.  As discussed earlier, the profit-motive causes capitalists to invest in more efficient means of production.  This increased productivity in turn decreases the need of the capitalist for labour, as fewer and fewer proletarians are needed to work the increasingly efficient means of production.  While such a process increases the overall productive capacity of a society, it also increases disparity between the capitalists and proletariat.  Such a process eventually leads to such deprivation of the proletariat that they can no longer afford to purchase the products they themselves made!  This is referred to as a crisis of overproduction, Marx’s explanation of the perpetual crises of capitalism (e.g. the Great Depression, the Great Recession).

Eventually, per Marx, the absurdity of the situation will become unbearable for the proletariat, due to either abject material lack or righteous indignity.  “How?” they will ask, “How can it be that there is so much wealth produced and yet we are forced to fight for scraps?  How can it be that 3 men own considerably more wealth than half of America?”  Whatever the case and in whatever form, proletarians will not go gentle into that good night and will simply take control of the means of production, the places they already work at.  This explains the quite famous leftist cry, “Seize the means of production”!  After their seizure, the immense and developed productive capacity of society will be used to meet human needs, not pursue profit for profit’s sake.  Thus is a socialist revolution made manifest.

Really letting your lefty colours fly there, huh.

Hard not to when speaking of Marx, but these are also his positions.  Now of course, the capitalists will protest that it is their property and that they are being deprived of it.  Not that there’s much they can do about that of course.  Capitalists are necessarily a tiny fraction of the population, a minority of a minority.  But Marx isn’t advocating leaving former capitalists in the cold after a socialist revolution, they simply will have to work like any other person (rather than make money by sheer virtue of owning wealth/capital)  Socialism is about restorative justice, not retributive justice.

Now of course, some capitalists may try to violently resist this, physically preventing the seizure of the means of production.  They would accomplish this by jackboot and club, using the violence of the police and military to maintain this particular class structure.  And the use of violence to maintain class structure is, well, a teensy bit fascist.  After all, it’s the fascists who came up with the term class collaboration, a highly euphemistic term about as far from ‘collaboration’ as can be imagined.  This is why a particular Russian argued that “fascism is capitalism in decay”.

And this is related to Borderlands … how?

When something, a gun for example, is produced in the digistruct system, it requires no labour to produce (beyond its initial creation and uploading to the digistruct system).  More than that, once uploaded to the digistruct system, this gun can then be reproduced an infinite number of times.  If you’ve attended even one economics lecture in your life, alarm bells should be ringing in your head.

Infinite supply?  Wouldn’t that drop the price to zero per supply-and-demand?

Yes, infinite supply would drop the price to zero, regardless of demand!  And yet, the corporations of the Borderlands universe are able to sell guns for profit despite this.  Now, of course there are justifications for this from a gameplay perspective; it wouldn’t be very fun if you could just buy the best guns for free!  But from a theoretical perspective, this doesn’t make much sense.  That is, unless you consider one other factor; who owns the digistruct system?

… The corporations?

That’s right, and because they hold onto this technology for themselves, nobody else can use the digistruct system.  This allows the corporations to theoretically charge whatever they wish for the guns because, after all, where else would you go to buy guns?  And if somebody were to try and sell guns made by hand, the corporations could immediately undercut them (as production costs via digistruct are zero) and drive them out of business.  All things considered, it’s a pretty good deal for the corporations.  Now, what event could upset such a dynamic?

Well, if everybody had access to the digistruct system, nobody would buy guns from the corporations.

Exactly, why would they spend money buying a gun (or any other product) from one of the corporations if they could make it themselves for free?  All it would require is for people to have access to the digistruct system, currently owned by the corporations.  If there was collective ownership of the digistruct system (as opposed to private ownership by the corporations), all people could live in relative luxury.  All it would require is for people to take control of the digistruct system, that is, to seize the means of digistruction.  That is, the inevitable outcome of the digistruct system is socialism on Pandora, its logical endpoint as predicted by historical materialism. 

And in the case of the Borderlands universe, who loses if all have access to the digistruct system?  You could say the corporations lose out, but in what way?  Sure, they’re no longer making money, but the digistruct system can produce all the material goods anyone could possibly need!  There would be a significant increase in the material conditions of life for most people and no loss to those who are already at the top!  Most everyone would see their lives improve and the former CEOs of these corporations could still have their diamond pony statue named Butt Stallion.

In this way, the Borderlands universe makes an incredible anti-capitalist critique.  By showing us how absurd capitalism is when technology makes labour entirely unnecessary, it highlights how our ever-increasing productive capability makes capitalism an increasingly illogical system.

Now, as you might imagine, I bring this up because there is a real-life analogy for this.  Today’s multibillionaires have more wealth than they could ever possibly use in their lifetimes.  Jeff Bezos is worth 180 billion USD, Elon Musk is worth 162 billion USD, and Gates is 126 billion USD; these are larger than the net wealth of entire countries!  How many bottles of champagne would need be drunk, how many cigars smoked, luxury cars bought, for these people to use up their wealth within their lifetimes?  Those levels of wealth could be used to alleviate the suffering of millions (if not billions) of people without altering the standard of living of these billionaires at all!  Their vast, productive empires could provide the material needs of the vast majority of people on earth if directed to, again without impacting the quality of life of the multibillionaires.  And yet, they do not, all due to the profit-motive of capitalism.  Does this seem like a logical, desired outcome?  Perhaps from the point of view of profit, but certainly not from the perspective of human happiness and betterment!

To be clear, our productive technology is not on par with Eridian technology, with the digistruct system.  But we can produce vast sums of material wealth with far less labour than we could even ten years ago (let alone when Marx was writing in the 19^th century).  And as our technology continues to catch up with the Borderlands universe, private ownership of the means of production (i.e. capitalism) will appear more and more illogical.  Or more accurately, more illogical than it currently appears.  We can improve the standards of living for everyone if production is not made subservient to the profit-motive of capitalism.  We need not wait for our technology to reach that of the Eridians to make such a change.

Workers of the world, unite … I guess.  But one thing is still bothering me.  I don’t disagree with what you’re saying in theory, but when I think of “socialism”, I think of the USSR and gulags.  Isn’t that Marxism?

As with any system of beliefs, be they religious or political or whatever else, there are always going to be different interpretations.  Much like how Christianity has numerous branches (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, etc), so too does Marxism have numerous branches.  From Marxism-Leninism to Maoism to De Leonism, there have been countless different schools of Marxism (not to mention numerous philosophies influenced by Marx while not being explicitly Marxist).  To say any one of these interpretations is Marxism would be like saying Episcopalianism is Christianity, that is, reductive and incorrect.

To demonstrate this point, let’s consider the historical trajectory and content of just one school of Marxism, Western Marxism.  Here I will be citing Perry Anderson’s work Considerations on Western Marxism.  Following the death of Marx, the immediate heirs of Marxism were generally southern or eastern European who received direct tutelage from Marx’s partner, Engels.  This included figures such as Plekhanov, Labriola, and Kautsky.  The second generation of Marxists shifts northwards, coming from central and eastern Europe.  These are much more recognizable figures: Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky (to name a few).  Up to this point, you can accurately speak of a single Marxist tradition.  However, following the failure of the revolutions in the post-WWI era, with the notable exception of the Russian Revolution, we see the first splits in the Marxist tradition.  Marxism in the USSR (and others inspired by it) would follow in the Marxist-Leninist tradition and could be practiced/theorized about more-or-less openly.  On the other hand, due in part to government suppression, Marxism in western and central Europe begins to develop its own traditions and beliefs, often in opposition to Marxism-Leninism.  It is here that we can point to the school we now call Western Marxism.  This school is characterized by incorporation of pre-Marxist revolutionary thinkers (like Proudhon, of “Property is theft” fame), greater emphasis on philosophy (often incorporating existentialist thought), and the belief of equivalence between theory and praxis.  Western Marxism claims such figures as Sartre, Adorno, Althusser and Colletti.  However, Anderson even argues that the term “Western Marxism” is reductive, citing significant internal theoretical disputes.  For example, Colletti and Adorno fought constantly while Althusser ruthlessly criticized Sartre.

All this ramble is to say that one cannot simply say that “The USSR is Marxism”, or other similar reductive statements.  Those that do insist on such equivalences are, intentionally or otherwise, misrepresenting a diverse tradition as a monolith.

Now I’d like to address more of Marx’s thought through a rather unexpected subject.

And what subject would that be?

Disability, and specifically how disability demonstrates the superiority of communism as compared to socialism.   To do this, I’m going to return to Borderlands and its portrayal of mental illness.

Interesting choice, let’s hear it.

I mentioned in my brief summaries of the instalments in the Borderlands series that there is a tonal change between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.  For the first two games, Borderlands had a sometimes Bro-y sense of humour, for lack of a better term.  That is, it had humour that was crass (nothing wrong with that) but occasionally punched-down (e.g. jokes about unattractive women, etc).  One example relevant to this discussion is the usage of a slur aimed at people with mental disability.  But with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, we begin to see the appearance of more progressive-minded humour, punching-up or punching-sideways. 

This change in tone wasn’t always handled perfectly in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, like with the “Torgue-o!  Torgue-o!” mission.  The details of the mission are unimportant, but at the end Mr. Torgue (a parody of Mr. T who yells every line) asks out a woman named Janey Springs, only to be rebuffed.  Mr. Torgue then cries out “FRIENDZOOONED” and exits the in-game communication system.  He returns a few minutes later and explains “I’D LIKE TO JUST POINT OUT THAT I WAS IN A DARK PLACE BACK THEN AND I KNOW NOW THAT ‘FRIENDZONING’ IS AN IMAGINARY MISOGYNISTIC WAY OF LOOKING AT RELATIONSHIPS!  YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT I MEAN?”  The message is nice, but it’s one of those comedic bits that’s probably funnier on paper, less so in execution.  The more progressive humour is handled much more successfully in Borderlands 3.

But returning to the question at hand, the Borderlands series features a series of enemies called psychos, featuring on the cover art of all the Borderlands games.  The psychos are based on the well-known stereotype of people with mental illness as violent psychopaths, especially with bipolar disorder.  The psychos carry buzzaxes (a combination buzz saw and hand-axe) and spend their time shouting threats like “Strip the flesh, salt the wounds!” or “I’m gonna make a hammock from your eyelids!”  In Borderlands 2, the vault hunter Krieg is actually a Psycho who, in his introduction, shouts “I’ve got the shiniest meat bicycle” before saving fellow vault hunter Maya from an unseen bandit.

Now, using people with mental illness as enemies is not novel to the Borderlands series, many video games feature psycho-like characters.  This is, of course, despite the fact that people with mental illness (including the oft misunderstood bipolar disorder) are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.  And it is these portrayals of people with mental illness as dangerous that leads to stigmatization of and violence towards people with mental illness.  Not very poggers, to say the least.

Interesting, so how did this change with the more progressive tone taken in later instalments in the Borderlands series?

The first major DLC for Borderlands 3 is Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck, in which the vault hunters travel into Krieg’s mind to aid a character’s research into the psychos.  The term retcon, short for retroactive continuity, refers to altering the canon of a work after the fact.  It is usually a term with negative implications, suggesting the author did a poor job in the original storytelling which had to be fixed via retcon.  However, Borderlands 3 shows what I’d call a very positive example of retconning, specifically by retconning the psycho characters.

In Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck, we travel through Krieg’s memories and learn his origin story.  As you travel through Krieg’s memories, you are accompanied by “Sane Krieg” and “Psycho Krieg”, two aspects of his psyche.  As it would turn out, Krieg was one of many victims of human experimentation conducted on prisoners in hopes of creating super soldiers (which ultimately created the psychos seen throughout the Borderlands universe).  This retcons the psychos not as dangerous animals, but as tragic victims to unscrupulous actors.  And as you travel through Krieg’s memories, you are provided commentary by both Sane and Psycho Krieg as they explain their history with the rest of the vault hunters.

What follows is an honest and genuine portrayal of the struggle of living with mental illness.  We see numerous heart-wrenching scenes where Sane Krieg wants desperately to express something to Maya, the first person to not dismiss him as just another psycho, but just can’t.  To his frustration, his words always comes out in psycho-speak, for example when his wish to thank her came out as “I powdered my cockatiel for the ribcage slaughter”.  Or later, you fight Psycho Krieg’s memory of some of the original vault hunters (Lilith, Brick and Mordecai) who taunt and mock him throughout the fight.  Afterwards, Sane Krieg corrects Psycho Krieg, saying that Psycho Krieg was wrong and his fellow vault hunters didn’t think of him this way; alluding to how mental illness can distort your perceptions of reality.  And finally, at the end of this set of missions, you end up fighting a literal manifestation of Krieg’s mental illness, the Psychoreaver.  Once defeated, Krieg says that “something tells me that thing [Psychoreaver] is gonna keep coming back”, before musing “we never truly defeat our demons, do we?  We have to keep fighting them.  They may not get weaker, but we do get stronger”.  It’s a very poetic description of how the struggle with mental illness is not a battle fought and won, but one constantly engaged in (and one you can become better at).

Wow, that’s surprisingly touching!

You’re telling me, it’s no surprise it’s widely praised as some of the best writing in the whole Borderlands series!  I also think it displays a rare example of effective retconning.  In Borderlands 2, Krieg is just a psycho played straight, a pure comedic relief character based on his absurdity.  But with this backstory (i.e. retconning), the ridiculous things Krieg says maintain their humour, while also having emotional depth to them that wasn’t present originally.

Agreed.  And I hate to ask you to move on, but you did say this was relevant to Marx!

Right, I lose myself.  Now, Marx believed that socialism (again, collective ownership of the means of production) was but one step in the general progression of human history.  In fact, due to his dialectical views, Marx believed society would never cease changing as long as the mode of production continued to change.  Because socialism, for all its advantages over capitalism, also has its drawbacks.

Now that’s a spicy take, better justify that one before you get a bunch of leftists clogging up your comments with “Well ackchyually…”

While almost all socialists believe in providing for those who can’t support themselves, there’s nothing inherent to socialism that suggests this.  Socialism refers to a particular ownership arrangement with regards to production, but doesn’t strictly say anything about those not involved with production.  That is, under socialism, you make a living through labour and if you do not labour, you won’t make a living.  I refer to this socialism sans-social safety net as Bootstraps Socialism.  In this sense, Bootstraps Socialism has an element of coercion (even if considerably less than under capitalism), you must work in order to make a living (though you won’t be exploited while doing so).  Now this sort of Bootstraps Socialism poses a problem for those who cannot be engaged in productive labour (i.e. making goods or services).  This includes some people with disabilities, some elderly people, and others. 

Marx argued that socialism would eventually evolve (again, dialectically) into communism.  If the transition from capitalism to socialism is the liberation of production from the profit-motive, then the transition from socialism to communism is the liberation of production from coercion itself!  Under communism, production is governed by the principle of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, that all will work will be voluntary and all would be provided for.  Such an arrangement ensures that those not involved in productive labour would also be provided for (again, like some people with disabilities or some elderly people).  Needless to say, that’s a considerable upgrade from socialism!

That sounds nice in theory, but a bit utopian to me.  Wouldn’t there be slackers in such an arrangement?

Perhaps, but let me ask a subsequent question, is the presence of slackers a problem under communism?  Consider this, capitalism leads to a great build-up in the productive capacities of a society (due to the profit-motive).  Socialism, free of the profit-motive, re-directs those great productive capacities towards meeting human needs (including lowering the amount of necessary labour).  As society progresses under socialism, it will require increasingly less labour in order to meet all people’s needs.  Eventually, this will reach a point where so little labour is needed that coercion to work will simply not be necessary, the core component of communist production!   

Think of it this way, we may not be inclined to volunteer every weekend, but what if that weekend was not your only leisure time?  Contrary to popular opinion, most people get satisfaction from helping others, provided it is not at great expense to themselves or their free time!  And in a society dedicated to liberating people from necessary labour, you’re going to find yourself with a great deal of free time.  This much increased free time greatly increases the likelihood of people voluntarily labouring to meet the needs of others.  More than that, think of all the hyper-productive people who, even after a 60-hour week of labour under capitalism, still go and volunteer at the soup kitchen on the weekend!  Imagine what those people could be like when liberated from their unfulfilling job as a … data input associate.  Will there be slackers?  Perhaps.  Are they an existential threat to the communist project?  Not in the slightest.

Yeah, I can see that.  If all I had to do was work a few hours a day, I’d gladly volunteer a bit as well.  Especially if I never had to worry whether or not I’d be provided for.

That’s the idea!  Now, before we wrap this up, I’d like to bring juuust one more thinker into this analysis.  He’s a contemporary of Marx, a sometimes-critic-but-often-ally and also the owner of a magnificent beard.  Yes folks, I’m finally going to talk about the anarcho-communist thinker, Peter Kropotkin.

But before we get into his thinking, let’s return to Borderlands to see why I bring him up.  I’ve already discussed how there was a distinct difference in tone after Borderlands 2, the transition from humour that punches-down to humour that punches-up or punches-sideways.  So too was there a significant change in tone from the original Borderlands to later instalments.  The world of Pandora is always portrayed as harsh and dangerous, but from Borderlands 2 onwards, you always feel like you have friends and allies.  The Crimson Raiders, the former vault hunters, and the numerous folks you meet along the way; you always feel as though you’re part of a mutually-supportive team in the later Borderlands games.  It’s no surprise that a major theme in these instalments in the Borderlands series is the importance of friendship in the face of adversity.

However, this is very much not the case in the original Borderlands.  Interactions between the vault hunters and other characters in this instalment are always cynical and transactionary (“Kill this creature and I’ll give you this item”).  The plot is jam-packed with opportunism and betrayal by all parties, only amplifying the sense of Pandora as an incredibly hostile planet.  As such, when you play the game, you have this go-it-alone feeling, that you can only rely on yourself in this dangerous wasteland.  That is, you feel like you’re playing as the archetypal self-sufficient, self-made man, as exemplified by the Wild West gunslinger.  This makes sense, of course, as the Borderlands series pulls heavily from the Space Western genre.

Alright, interesting enough, but what does this have to do with Kropotkin?

In pro-capitalist circles, especially those from the so-called libertarian right, there is this lionization of the supposed self-sufficient, self-made man (and it is usually a man, a gendered archetype).  You know what I’m referring to, the man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, who may appreciate help from others but could ultimately go-it-alone if he needed to.  Certain historical characters are often claimed to represent the self-sufficient man, especially those living in hostile environments.  Figures such as the golden-age pirate, the coal-miner, and (appropriately) the cowboy are often invoked as examples of the self-sufficient, self-made man.

This brings us to Kropotkin, a man whose views were in many ways like and unlike those of Marx.  While also an anti-capitalist and an advocate of communism, Kropotkin justifies his views in a manner quite differently from Marx.  As outlined in his seminal work The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin argues that capitalism is based on the faulty premise that the fruits of one’s labour are entirely one’s own.  In his own, rather poetic words:

“Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle — all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.  By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say — This is mine, not yours?”

The argument Kropotkin is making here is that, in essence, the idea of self-sufficiency is a myth.  All labour, he argues, is done in concert.  The farmer uses the tools made by the blacksmith, who is then fed by the farmer’s produce.  The fisherman’s catch will be used to feed the woodworker who built the fisherman’s boat.  The products of industries fuelled by the discoveries of science will be used to provide for the scientist.  We are all co-dependent, argues Kropotkin, that is the nature of division of labour!  And if we are all co-dependent, he asks, who has the right to lay sole claim to any part of the products of society?  “All is for all!”

This is also one of the areas where Kropotkin diverges from Marx.  The latter argues that you can quantify someone’s labour, “I converted a Widget into a Zidget, a labour worth two currency”.  Kropotkin would argue that this analysis is incomplete as it does not consider the other labour that makes that labour possible, “You wouldn’t be able to turn Widgets into Zidgets if not for other’s labour, how can you then say your labour is worth two currency?”.  At risk of stoking more leftist in-fighting, I have to say I find Kropotkin’s argument more convincing in this case.  This is not surprising, however, as I’ve noted already that I have a lean towards anarcho-communism.

But to be clear, I obviously agree that Marx’s work is absolutely critical in the wider view of theory.  Moreover, I’d argue that theoretical quibbles like this are simply not all that important in the wider scheme of things.  Both Marx and Kropotkin (and the numerous other leftist thinkers) believed in the wider project of the liberation of working people, a fact which should never be forgotten!  In that fact, we can identify their shared leftist tradition and find ground towards left unity.

An important point, to be sure.  By now, this essay is trending towards the longer end.  How do you want to wrap this particular essay up?  Any last thoughts?

The simple elegancy of Marx’s thought can be found in how he identifies the natural laws that point to the trajectory historical change.  He elucidates how the dynamics of capitalism hold within them the trend towards socialism, and within socialism towards communism.  Such insightful analysis is borne true in the real world and the world of fiction; the sheer ridiculousness of the capitalism in the Borderlands series is an echo of real-world trends.  Though there are some disagreements with aspects of his theory, like some of Kropotkin’s disagreements, Marx rightfully remains a cornerstone of leftist thought and practice.  And while we can certainly quibble over certain theoretical points, we should not and cannot lose sight of the fact that Marx, Kropotkin, and countless others worked towards the same end-goal, the liberation of working people.