Join the new world

Greetings everyone. Today’s article springs forth from a conversation had in the SFP Discord but also from my personal reminiscing in the archives of the SFP forum. I am an old player whom recently had to make amends with past. A time where my most fond memories came from but now, no longer exists for many reasons outside the intention of this article. Hopefully, by pointing out some of the previous ideas and struggles of the SFP in the past , we can look at these ideas as a way to stimulate new ideas for the SFP in the present.

I'd like to note that I'll be publishing this article as a new member to the Socialist Freedom Party's Writers guild


So here we go, some of the good ol memories I’d like to share with you

Note: Memory is not perfect, so names will be confused ; heck maybe even some events but the ideas are still the same.

Internationalism


The SFP has since my time in 2010, a strong focus on the game’s community as a whole. The question for the party at the time was how would they push their defense of the eProletariat on an international level? At that time known as V1, players would lose health over time if they did not have food. Players could only work in one place a time, and depending on their industry skill their wage could be just enough to survive daily but not progress anymore. If a player wanted to progress, they had to work once a day for months to develop a high enough salary all while hoping that their industry did not tank, so that they can eventually be a company owner themselves, or simply join a military unit’s commune, so this presented a problem.

The problem was the goal of economic advancement was a future possibly only for a few and not for the majority. The task was then building an alternatives for those players , the eProletariat, not just domestically but internationally. The party realized that the same issues the eUS workers experienced were the same that any eNation worker would experience, especially those who did not have the activity to put in to break out of their cycle. Here the SFP worked actively with other parties internationally, found comrades in all ends of the far-left political spectrum whether they were communist or anarcho-communists, there was comradery built up. From here someone came up with the idea of forming a Meta alliance called “The eInternationale”.

The SFP was not only getting involved domestically but now internationally; we were supporting politically other movements, and even sending bear cavalry in the “eInternatonale Brigades” where we battled in resistance or defensive battles against other nations which the alliance deemed as “imperialistic”. Take what you make of it, but that level of internationalism was truly something that added a lot more activity to the game besides the very limited clicking ability in V1. Now, it seems those sentiments are not too clear or obvious.

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SFP party organs/companies/communes

I cannot remember the names for the individuals in charge of these programs exactly, but I do remember the SFP had programs to help low-level party members catch up (e.g build-a-bear workshop although that was for bear cavalry). If they were below a certain level, the SFP gave Q1 food enough for them to survive daily to allow players to save up their wages that would be spent on food, to hopefully minimize the time necessary for them to advance themselves or get on their own two feet.

So, where did these supplies come from? For the SFP, Communing was a great alternative given the mechanisisms of State orgs of V1 and the whole skill and industry system. Workers worked in SFP communes, which managed by party individuals like Jude Connors who would publish news reports on the productivity of the party Communes. Surplus, if not saved, was sold at low market prices and then re-invested into upgrading facilities, to produce more for the growing party. Of course the economy was vastly more complicated then, and unfortunately extremely simplified now, but seeing the party take care of its members and actually building the frame work in which they would enact their “eRevolution” was admirable.

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Bear Cavalry



The official party MU, if one wanted to fight, you would look to Jude Connors, TheNorm and Lysander Spooner (Spelling?) and they would get you suited up. You had to pass a cadet program, and from there you could use the official SFP bear cavalry logo and fight for the liberation of the masses.

The MU had it’s own communes, it’s own supply chain which was only complemented by the SFP communes. The SFP then had two great powers, its political but also its military arm. While the political party focused on advancing domestically and providing political support internationally, the Bear Cavalry was constantly on the move fighting around the world daily to ensure that the big countries such as Poland would not dominate the whole world, or serbia, which were the big players in V1. They had a trainee program called build-a-bear which they trained their new cadets the timing for fights, getting them on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and reporting in to a form for requesting supplies. All this created a serious revolutionary MU that was honestly trying to make itself known to the eWorld as the liberator fighters to call.

Clearly the MU is still alive, but it will need a lot of assistance to get it to it's former glory.

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SFP’s creative party propaganda, and imagery


The SFP truly shined here with it’s writers potential. At the time, I thought nothing much of it, I was truly ignorant of the power of writing articles in eRepublik. Although I always would look first for the party articles because of the talent the writers guild had possessed. To name one individual whom struck out to me the most was a player named Phoenix Quinn. To me, he was one of the most prolific writers the Freedom Writers had; the party’s writers guild. This guy wrote a lot, and with each article there was great quality and creative thought echoed in his writings. He would truly write what he thought, and even at times go on a small ramble here or there but it expressed his genuity behind each article. From what I could recall, he had one of the most creative SFP propaganda attached to his articles, especially those written by the “Young Socialist” or the “Young Revolutionaries” a training program for the SFP Freedom Press or Writer’s guild. If one was not active in the forums or IRC, you could get all you needed to know from his and the press’s articles, entirely informative of the party’s workings.




Any who, those were the memories I always tend to be fond of but they were of a time long gone. The game has changed a lot, and with that the game has changed a lot of structures which have turned those ideas in their former state something short of obsolete. So I leave some questions for my readers, feel free to discuss them in the comments below or in a pm:

Do you guys think these ideas expressed by the past members, can still be expressed today?

Could certain ideas work better now or will they no longer be possible due to the mechanics of the game today?

How could we adapt these ideas into the erepublik structure of today?

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Hopefully this all provides some food for thought for active party discussion and ideas, So i'll end by saying this, The past was then, the present is here. Let us wake up from our slumber SFP, wipe the dust from our sleepy eyes, the trumpets are blaring triumphantly but only to complement the sounds of our marching steps. The revolution does not sleep.



EDIT: Some typos, and this banging banner from the Freedom writers.

Author's note: I'd like to thank the SFP party members for not getting rid of the archives of which these images come from. Also Quinn for having a link up to get a hold of these images.