u/WitheringState

Another month of full-time development brings another development update - potentially not the only one for this month. I have been working on ironing out the economy system, so I will reveal some of the mechanics and paths today. Additionally, there have been requests to talk of foreign policy, which I will address in relation to economic paths so far.

Initial Choices

The demo showcases two key choices when it comes to economy and foreign policy. First, the meeting of the Financial & Planning Organs Department has the Party decide on three major programs: Cooperatives, Light Industry Shift, and Heavy Industry. 

In the full game, cooperatives will not be mutually exclusive with either industrial choice. While these choices have their preferences among different figures in Sudlivia - liberals, Party reformists, and hardliners, respectively - they far from lock you into any path. Instead, the mixed and independent history of Sudliv economics means that political factions have more tolerance for economic deviation.

Next, the summit with Istrean Prime Minister Milos Trastamara presents an offer that intertwines the economic and political: legalize South Istrean parties (i.e., the Socialist Party of Istrea) and get a lucrative trade deal with the independent, fraternal nation of Istrea. Others want coercive action taken against this newly liberalized state. Again: whichever path you take here may color your reputation, but it will not yet lock you into any path.

A work in progress chart of economic combinations.

The Party Congress - Economic Paths

As discussed in the previous update on the Party Congress, this event is where you lock in some of the major choices that will define your tenure as the guiding personality of the Sudliv government and Party.

In addition to making choices regarding political reform and national policy (more on this later), you will have access to four major economic paths. At least one of these paths is conditional on certain choices or alliances, and they all contain sub-paths which unlock depending on the composition of the Security Council. Pay attention to who you put in charge of instituting economic reforms.

Status Quo (Birdcage Economy) - For those who don’t want to shake things up, this path entails keeping Sudlivia’s economy under state direction while maintaining special economic zones and a large degree of private or cooperative enterprise. Minor reforms associated with the other paths will remain available.

New Economic Policy - The codeword for socialist market economics, embracing new economic policies means expanding the special economic zones in Sudlivia. While a more reformist economist on the Security Council might propose a complete liberalization, another could suggest ‘grasping the large, letting go of the small’ to retain the role of planning in some sectors.

Five Year Plan - The classic, which entails abolishing special economic zones, which could initially cause a hit to Sudlivia’s wealth. However, planning offers other advantages and synergies which will be lucrative. A more liberal approach could entail decentralized planning and smaller enterprises, while others will want a more classic model.

Self-Management - Requiring alignment with certain advocates of the policy, this unique approach sees workers take management of enterprises into their own hands. Proposals include a decentralized model in which price controls are abolished and firms compete on the market, or a ‘negotiated economy’ in which planning decisions involve worker representatives on a mass scale.

I understand that there will be some economic models that players are interested in that these four major paths do not encompass. I hope that the breadth of roleplay and customization options that these sub-paths and the decrees system provide will satisfy most player’s desires. Writing all of this is intensive, and I am always refining and expanding the options - a process I hope to continue after the game’s release.

Other Sub-Paths

Some have asked whether historically untested models such as OGAS/Cybersyn will make an appearance. While these kinds of options will not be major paths like above, they will make an appearance if the right decisions are taken. A commitment to technological innovation and planned economy, for instance, could see a proposal for this kind of planning appear…

Agricultural decisions will also be an important plot. As currently written, agricultural choices are independent, but informed by, these major economic paths - modeling how some socialist states allowed some degree of private or cooperative farming outside of the dominant economic model.

Economy & Foreign Relations

The economic and political may be irreparably intertwined, but that doesn’t obscure the importance of the material realm. A refusal (or worse) to engage in Istrea, for instance, will damage your standing with the West and the Esperian Monetary Association, but embracing market reforms and signing joint ventures will entice them nonetheless. For the West, this can even make up (with enough effort) for maintaining the power of the Party at home.

Sudlivia’s history of independent foreign policy means that you can engage with both blocs with relative flexibility - up to a point. As Foreign Minister Sancha Yagodina hints at the beginning of Chapter III, it may indeed be time for Sudlivia to take a stronger stand in world affairs. Luckily, this point does not come until you acquire a definitive offer to align with one of the blocs on display.

Given the instability in the Eastern Bloc, most trade deals will be offered by Western states at first. But as some socialist neighbors suffer instability, and others attempt to forge new alliances, Sudlivia will have the opportunity to align with or influence these states. The instability in Alenormia and its allies will be a thread that runs throughout the game and you will receive frequent updates on how the situation in each country develops. The actions that Sudlivia takes at home will also influence these states.

https://preview.redd.it/s0ap3rzg6pth1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecf44c0c68c32b7f385ef298ca5efd9bb7e9462b

https://preview.redd.it/bkeccq3ilbqh1.png?width=375&format=png&auto=webp&s=33c73444099d6f9e54fcba8c3a92ddd5d92fdfa8

https://preview.redd.it/d6dlhlx0jrph1.png?width=1921&format=png&auto=webp&s=233393b048a60793fb55b6a7fb01e18307572bda

Hey everyone. Here's another development update as we come closer to the predicted Winter release of Withering State! If all goes well, there will be a lot of exciting news about this project in the coming weeks. For now, I'm an unemployed law school graduate, and that means I get to spend most of my time writing the game's story and wrapping up the technical aspects of the game.

In this update, I will review some of the writing I have been working on without going too deeply into spoilers.

The Party Congress

Those who have played the demo will have predicted that a major event in the game is the Party of Congress of 1981. This event will determine whether (or more accurately, how) Alexander Sants secures support to become the fifth General-Secretary of the All-Sudlivia Communist Party.

And yes, while it is possible to make the wrong choices and 'fail' to properly secure enough support, I made the decision early-on not to have an actual fail-state that forces you to restart the game. Instead, failing to secure support means that you will have to make embarrassing concessions to ally with one of your rivals, which will hamstring your political influence for the rest of the game - but by no means make things impossible.

Alexander Sants will emerge from the Party Congress having announced the major elements of his political program for the next several years. Some of these choices, particularly if you have made a major alliance, will lock you into attempting to institute certain reforms or policies. Other choices, such as appointments of cadres, are more flexible and have the opportunity to be reversed or confirmed later.

https://preview.redd.it/f0dah6rbtroh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=1166330bbd130be41f448d32067bd877640fa6c9

Historically, Party Congresses were displays of unanimity in which the programs of the Communist Party and the appointment of all delegates were confirmed. This changed in the late years of the USSR and Yugoslavia, where political instability as well as more pluralism led to contentious debates between different Party factions and visions of reform. In Sudlivia, the Party Congress of 1981 is expected to be a similar display of unanimity, but contentious debates simmer behind closed doors.

Political Paths

A major goal for me was to have an expanded political imagination in the story of Withering State, which not only means modeling historical alternatives to capitalist liberal democracy but also exploring how the Marxist states of the 20th century could have evolved differently.

As such, I wanted the player to have the opportunity to successfully—albeit with varying levels of difficulty—occupy all four corners of the in-game political map:

https://preview.redd.it/9yr9wgzatroh1.png?width=803&format=png&auto=webp&s=8512d454c79d700def8a2ddf45ed5ae39c2d61b3

These policies are tied, but are not identical, to the paths and alliances that Alexander Sants can make to find success at the Party Congress of 1981. There are approximately, if we count it liberally, five to seven different paths that Sants can use to secure support at the Party Congress. Most of these paths have already been mentioned in the demo, but they generally either involve making an explicit alliance with a particular faction or individual, using the Procurator-General to investigate a particular rival, or merely winning the approval of all relevant actors.

As the Security Council appointment screen suggests, appointing individuals from different factions can help secure your support. Be careful, though, because the history of both the United States and the Soviet Union tells us that a divided house cannot stand forever.

https://preview.redd.it/ddid1l1svroh1.png?width=818&format=png&auto=webp&s=df0ef3f4edf85eabefdd0820a8ebe83a5e0851f6

Decrees & Future Updates

After Sants becomes General Secretary, he will gain access to the decrees system which utilizes the three resources (Political Capital, Hardliner Clout, Reformist Clout) that are present in the demo and the appointment screen above. I've made a previous post about this system, but I plan to elaborate on it more as it develops.

What kind of topics do you want to see in a future development update?

A channel that makes many excellent Godot tutorials, particularly for grand strategy, did a playtest of the game. What cracked me up is that he said the main character looks like Hasan Piker and then called it a Hasan simulator in the thumbnail.

Anyone interested in making strategy or map games in Godot should check out his channel. It was a great resource for me when I made my first drafts of the map system.

Welcome to the first edition of Theory & Figures, a series dedicated to exploring figures and ideas that serve as inspiration for the game, the subject of my previous research, or merely interesting topics to discuss in relation to Withering State. This idea emerged following some great discussions on this subreddit recently, and some users on the discord server expressed interest in a series like this.

I will seek to provide a neutral exposition on these figures and avoid taking a stand on the debates in the Marxist tradition. As such, these figures are not necessarily represented in the game, nor are necessarily representative of my personal views. And as always, discussion, feedback, and even corrections are encouraged!

---

Evgeny Pashukanis (1891-1937) was a Soviet Lithuanian jurist and Marxist philosopher who wrote one of the first comprehensive treatments of law from a Marxist perspective, titled The General Theory of Law and Marxism, which supported the idea that law would ‘wither away’ with the abolition of capitalist social relations. His work was unavailable to English readers until 1978, and he thereafter influenced Western Marxism and further treatments of law and Marxism. Legal Form, a site dedicated to Marxist legal critique, recently marked the 100th anniversary of its publication, listing a number of events.^([1]) As any seasoned reader of Old Bolshevik biographies will have now suspected from his death date, Pashukanis died as a result of Stalin’s purges, but was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

The General Theory of Law and Marxism

Law has been a problematic subject for Marxists. The trouble emerges when we consider the Marxist theory of ideology. Although not the subject of this writeup, the briefest possible summary in Marx’s own words is that because “the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force… The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relation.”^([2]) Law—alongside religion, morality, and metaphysics—is included in this realm of ‘ideology,’ which is subordinate to the socioeconomic order that produces it. What some call the traditional ‘reductionist’ account of law sees it as nothing but the expression of the reigning socioeconomic order. On this account, there is little to examine about law but the ways in which it serves the interests of the ruling class.^([3])

Pashukanis is one Marxist who was willing to dignify law with a more comprehensive treatment. Because law can regulate social relations, he reasoned, it is not merely ideological but has material effects. His central innovation was to treat the law not as a distinct social relation but as part of the commodity form, ascribing law’s origin to the regulation of private interests. It follows that with the abolition of capitalist social relations and the commodity form, the legal form, too, will wither away.^([4])

Placing Pashukanis’ insights next to concurrent developments in the Soviet Union is helpful. The New Economic Policy saw the restoration of certain legal institutions to facilitate market dynamics. Pashukanis believed instead that a centrally planned economy could facilitate the withering away of the legal form as the overcoming of market relations would cause the legal form to lose relevance.

Criticism and Death

Pahsukanis’ most consequential critic was Andrei Vyshinsky, who argued that a socialist state would not see the withering away of the law but instead raise law to the highest level of development because law would be the expression of the people’s will.^([5]) Vyshinsky accused Pashukanis of being a traitor, and replaced him in the Soviet law institute after his arrest. Vyshinsky would go on to become the Procurator-General of the Soviet Union under Stalin, heading many prominent trials and later serving in more prominent roles such as Foreign Minister.

Another notable critic of Pashukanis was Karl Korsch, who argued that he turned Marx on his head by viewing law as not merely ideological.^([6]) By entangling law with the political economy and equating it with the commodity form, Pashukanis, in Korsch’s view, erroneously conflated ideology and the economic base.

---

^([1]) ^(Legal Form: A Forum for Marxist Analysis and Critique,) ^(https://legalform.blog/pashukanis-100th-anniversary/)
^([2]) ^(Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,) ^(The German Ideology) ^([1846] in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,) *^(Collected Works)*^(, vol. 5.[)^(3]) ^(Holdren, Nate and Tucker, Eric, "Marxist Theories of Law Past and Present: A Meditation Occasioned by the 25th Anniversary of Law, Labor, and Ideology" (2020).)
^([4]) ^(Quintana, F. The Withering Away of Law and Its Discontents: A Prolegomenon for a Reappraisal.) ^(Law Critique) ^(37, 41–64 (2026).)
^([5]) ^(Huskey, Eugene. “Vyshinskii, Krylenko, and the Shaping of the Soviet Legal Order.”) ^(Slavic Review) ^(46, no. 3 (1987): 414–28.)
^([6]) ^(Bernard E. Harcourt | Evgeny Pashukanis & Yakov Staroselsky: On Soviet Legal Thought and Ideology (2024))

View Poll

Hello everyone, today I have uploaded Demo 1.5, which will likely serve as the final version of the game's demo as I now focus fully on developing the full game.

Demo 1.5 finalizes the changes I have been making to the UI which brings it closer in inspiration to retro games such as Crisis in the Kremlin. I have also added new settings such as UI scaling for higher resolutions and fixed a number of bugs. A couple new soundtracks and sound effects have also been added.

Those looking for more content will find that a new story event has been tacked on as the penultimate event in the demo - the meeting with the Procurator-General alluded to in Chapter III. I considered adding events related to Cid in Chapter III, but I determined that it would require too many changes to fit within the context of the demo and that my effort would be better spent on writing the full game. ^((Plus, I am taking the U.S. Bar Exam next week!))

Finally - thank you to everyone for 3,000 wishlists! I am honored to have received so much support and feedback, and I have been enthused to see the many posts about this project on related subreddits.

As always, feel to post any feedback, questions, or related discussions on this forum or the Discord server.