A Video Game on Socialist Struggle: “Half Earth Socialism”

Fatih Erdoğan

From the day that they were invented, video games were designed with the sole purpose of making money. This industry, which initially appealed to children and young people, has now found its way into the pockets of every individual. According to Gaming in Turkey’’ gaming sector report of 2022, 78% of all adults in Turkey play video games. It is impossible to imagine a platform with such a widespread audience and not having widespread political propaganda. Therefore, social struggle must exist here as in every other area.

The gaming industry in its current state has almost become a narcotic designed to serve our ever-decreasing attention spans, where capital only recreates itself. In addition, it is even possible for video games to become an imperialist tool. The American army uses video games as a tool to recruit new members. Video games that directly belong to the American army have existed for about 25 years. If we look back to the past, we can see how the history of video games can be told, and how easily the right and the wrong can be replaced within a closely controlled narrative. Such an efficient tool will not remain in the hands of only one country's capital, it will spread to other regions. If we consider that the gaming industry in our country, both the developer and the consumer segment, is on the rise; we may encounter similar practices in the next few years.

However, even in this darkness spread by capital through our technological devices, it is possible to see examples that shed light. “Half-Earth Socialism” is one of these examples, it is a project combines political struggle with video games which shares the same name as the book written by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass. The game is accessible on the internet with its Turkish version at (https://play.half.earth/) and it is free to play. The book on the other hand is not translated to Turkish yet. The following is from my interview with Sociologist Troy Vettese, co-writer of “Half-Earth Socialism”.

Can you tell us about yourself, this Project and the term “Half-Earth”?

I am an environmental historian, currently based at the University of California, Berkeley. I wrote my dissertation on neoliberal environmental thought at New York University, and since then I have had appointments at Harvard University, University of Copenhagen, and the European University Institute in Florence. As a scholar, I have spent years studying neoliberal environmental thought — things like carbon markets or a faith that the market will be able to overcome shortfalls in non-renewable resources. In addition to my scholarly work, I often write reviews and essays for popular media on a range of environmental issues, including a polemic against pet ownership and a short history on the debate whether fish feel pain. The ‘half-earth socialism’ project lies in between these endeavors. That is, it’s a rather technical environmental project that engages closely with neoliberalism, while also being oriented to a broad audience.

Just another word on neoliberalism. Neoliberals have offered powerful critiques of socialism, arguments that belong to the century-long ‘socialist calculation debate’. They have argued that socialist planning is impossible because knowledge is dispersed throughout society, beyond the reach of a planning bureau even if they had powerful supercomputers. Our book attempts to ‘out-Hayek Hayek’ by observing how nature is far more complex than the economy, and thus we need to restrain the market through planning. (Friedrich Hayek, by the way, is the progenitor of neoliberalism.) If ecological complexity necessitates socialism, then what kind of socialism do we need?

To answer this, my coauthor Drew Pendergrass—who is a climate scientist at Harvard—and I sketched the parameters of an ecologically-stable society. The environmental crisis is much greater than just climate because we also have to preserve biodiversity, prevent new zoonotic diseases, reverse eutrophication, et cetera. Ecosocialist plans, we believe, should focus on massive rewilding, mandatory veganism, energy quotas, and renewable energy as the means to stabilize the Earth-System. ‘Half-Earth’ is an idea from entomologist EO Wilson (though several other conservationists were making similar arguments before him), whose research on biogeography showed a close relationship between the size of a habitat and the biodiversity it could sustain. Given the destruction of natural habitats, we are on course to a massive extinction event as catastrophic as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. To avoid this disaster, we need to protect more territory – up to half the Earth (hence, ‘Half-Earth’)--- to be protected and rewilded in nature preserves. These policies would all be terribly unprofitable, so we have to rely on planning rather than markets.

It has been 2 years since the book and the game came out, do you think they achieved success? Were there any results you were not expecting?

I am not sure how successful any book can be. You could sell millions of books, but does that translate into reducing deforestation or sea-bottom trawling? One book is probably not going to solve much. Our hope was that our book could spark a conversation amongst different groups, such as animal liberationists, scientists, economists, politicians, activists, and socialists. To that extent, I think the book marks the start of what might be an interesting series of projects. I am already talking to a few activists about writing pamphlets on what Half-Earth socialism might look like in different countries—where would you rewild, how would you grow your food, what radical utopian traditions exist in different places? These could be quite exciting projects, and I think they would provide a bridge between academic Marxism and frontline struggles.

The game is a parallel project that has lots of potential. Consider that perhaps 10,000 people have read our book, 100,000 people have played the game. The book has been translated in several languages, but the game has even more translations. The game has been used in university and high school classrooms, while the book is listed on only a few syllabi. The game has allowed us to collaborate with a great team, including a musician, researcher, designer, and developer. game is also the reason why I started a conversation with Matteo Menapace, a board game designer whose Daybreak has just come out. We are working on making a game forecasting politics over the next couple of decades—will fascists win? Might the left ally with environmentalists? Could the bourgeois centre hold, despite recurrent environmental and economic crises? We want to use the game to think through these problems and bring radical politics to a much bigger audience.

To answer your last question, all of these collaborations with the book and the game have been surprises. An author has no idea how people will respond to their book! Even the game itself was a surprise, as the designers proposed it to us. We never would have thought of making a game otherwise.

What value do you think games have in political and social struggle?  Can they have an important role in changing the world?

Oh, I am not so sure. A game might spark an interest in a topic or encourage a different way of thinking, both of which might lead to real change. Still, it’s hard to see a game by itself doing much. Of course, we still took the time to make the game and the game can do things the book cannot. The game also can appeal to an entirely different audience from the book. The book cannot simulate all the different options available to a planner or show the trade-offs between them. I think the game can open up someone’s imagination, so they can begin to flex their utopian muscles, begin to imagine that life could be different. Games are also ways to simulate different forms of action. Of course, games come from war, while more recently games have been used to help firms or governments forecast various scenarios. That is, they let us imagine different futures – which is precisely what Otto Neurath calls ‘scientific utopianism’. That is, technical and precise discussions of various possibilities, seeing utopianism as a practical rather than fantastical act. We want to do something similar with the board game we are working on now.

I think the left and environmentalists are stuck at the moment, unsure which tactics might allow them to regain momentum.  What can we do, apart from strikes, demonstrations, and blowing up pipelines? We hope our board game could help people develop strategies for the next five to ten years, and also prepare people for the difficulties of organizing under fascism and environmental breakdown.

Moving on with a quote from your Co-authored book, HES “For too long the Left has been better at critique than creating its own positive proposals.” Did we lose our imagination while trying to break the siege* that dominates us?

*the Turkish term for this "siege" is ‘abluka’ which is often means all things that oppress us, in general; the system

People on the left often like to blame neoliberals for depriving us of the ability to imagine alternatives. This is nonsense. Our enemies cannot stop us from coming up with plans, with policies. They cannot put a gun to our head and tell us to stop using our imaginations. We disarmed ourselves. Marxism emerged in the 1840s just as utopian socialism, especially Owenism, was declining in Britain. Marx and his followers defined themselves against the utopian socialists and tried to organize a very different coalition between workers and intellectuals. In many ways their criticism of utopian socialists was justified (e.g., relying on philanthropists to lead the movement, or thinking that revolution could be avoided by persuading elites to support an anti-elitist movement). The problem with Marxism is that its adherents often think all we need to do is to identify the ‘laws of motion’ on an economy and ensure the full development of various technologies by removing the ‘fetters on production’. Socialism, however, is not merely the realization of the promise of capitalism. Socialism will have to operate with different mechanisms to ensure people are motivated to work, and it will have to operate under tight ecological constraints. We need to think seriously about what other institutions we could develop.

Of course, one does not need hyper-detailed blueprints of a future society—the seating arrangements at communal tables could be settled later—but having concrete proposals is definitely useful. It is useful to think through various problems beforehand and try to come up with frameworks that might solve them. For instance, how would socialists organize the economy? Would they rely on markets? Would value be based labour-time? On energy? Could we have planning without money or any other universal unit? It’s not clear. How would socialists protect democracy and prevent the slide into a single-party dictatorship? This problem is a serious one that is addressed all too rarely by socialists. Socialists need to win the battle of ideas before they take power. Think about the 1780s, when the Enlightenment had clearly triumphed over reaction. Ideas can be powerful, but a vulgar Marxism overlooks this. By refusing to put out concrete programs, Marxists will always be at a disadvantage. Can you imagine how great it would be if neoliberals never had any policies? If they just say ‘everything would be better if markets co-ordinated society’ but then not tell you how to actually create such a society. It’s obviously ridiculous, but the left confuses such inaction for theoretical sophistication!

You also talk about feminists and vegans being an ally in the struggle and often clashing with the socialists. Socialists are divided enough within themselves, can the socialist movement build a united revolutionary front within itself and queer, vegan, minority liberation circles?

I don’t think it would be easy to form such a coalition, but I think it’s necessary. We’ve barely made the effort. I think a lot of humility is needed – all the different groups have to learn from each other. For example, animal liberationists have no conception of capitalism or think that animal liberation could happen under capitalism; machismo is a big obstacle to achieve certain goals, such as reducing meat consumption or banning big cars and thus we need to learn from feminists. Socialists rarely care about the animal question. Environmentalists don’t realize that they’ve been co-opted by neoliberals. Conservationists can be quite reactionary, but socialism needs a radical form of conservation.

You were asking about how to build socialist unity. Too many issues are taboo amongst socialists and we need a proper discussion about these issues. Why are there so many men in socialists groups? Why aren’t there more ethnic minorities? Why are there not more working class people? Why don’t we ally with crazy saboteurs, like the animal liberationists? I don’t know enough about the situation in Turkey – obviously, Marxism has strong roots in some ethnic minorities like the Kurds. We should not pretend that Marxism has all the answers or Marx himself was right about everything. Planning and democracy should be the most important issues in Marxist debates, but they are completely ignored. We need to imagine what a feasible and attractive socialism looks like rather than just postponing it for after the revolution.

We need to hammer things out amongst socialists. There will be lots of disagreement, but I also think some unity too when socialism becomes more concrete. In general, I think there is a tendency to try to have perfect opinions when there is no chance at power — hence all the bickering — but if there is a chance at power then unity becomes easier. I think also by sketching our different utopias, we can begin to see who would make good allies, who we need onside. But ideas alone are not enough. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, but that alone did not make a neoliberal movement. He had to organize the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and hundreds of think tanks. Socialists need to hammer out what socialism might be through debate clubs like the MPS, and then turn scholarship into policy through think tank networks. After all, the neoliberals got this idea from the Fabian Society, and we have to learn our own strategy from our enemies.