On The Status of Gambling under $ocial$m¶
Figure 1: Artist’s rendering of what the average American imagines will happen to them if they just play the slots ONE more time. The money shower represents the false consciousness of the lumpenproletariat.¶
A Fermented Thought From The Mind of Miss Persephone
In which the author grapples with the GRAVEST contradiction facing revolutionary theory today
Socialism is a serious topic that‘s all the rage these days. As a communist myself, I’ve decided to dedicate my life to it[1]. Many other people, to varying degrees of commitment, feel that socialism is the only solution forward.
In Socialism, the answers to all of our problems are evident. Housing, Starvation, War, Poverty – you name it, socialism will solve it! There are a dime a dozen schemes for how to address all these issues. But it’s not quite as easy as one might think to bring about socialism. After all, we’re going on three centuries here in AmeriKKKa and in the year of our lord Anno Domini Two Thousand And Twenty Four, we have a choice between a Mussolini-like fascist and a senile geriatric genocide enjoying neoliberal corpse resurrected by a Necromancer. The closest we came was Bernie Sanders, and that guy‘s a milquetoast social democrat by all means!
Many smart people have written millions of words on these topics, and so I don’t want to spend much more time on them. What I do want to spend time on, however, is a topic I feel is very important but under addressed:
Danger
THE STATUS OF GAMBLING IN A SOCIALIST SOCIETY
If the goal is eventually to get rid of money, what happens to all the casinos? What about the lotteries? The roulette tables? The craps dice? The snake eyes and the jokers?
That’s what I want to write about and think about today. Persephone likes to think outside the box, and address the tough issues, so here goes.
Figure 2: Local man experiences what Freud would call “jouissance” upon discovering he won $47 at the penny slots. His therapist will hear about this for the next six months. Note the money appears to be entering through the window, suggesting either divine intervention or a very confused bank robber.¶
Many people often also speak of the costs of socialism. They argue revolutions are dangerous, they’re too risky, too difficult to implement, they violate human nature. I think all of these arguments are bullshit myself. But there’s one argument that absolutely nobody except myself has ever made, which I think is persuasive:
Warning
GAMBLING WOULD BE ERADICATED UNDER SOCIALISM
As a gambler and someone who enjoys rolling dice and performing ritualistic dances after rubbing a lucky talisman, the prospect of losing one of the world’s greatest hobbies and get-rich-quick schemes would be devastating. It’s like a giant crack in the armor of my own Maoist ideology, I must admit.
Revolution as Gambling¶
Are gambling and socialism really all that different? I would argue not. After all, the way I see it any form of socialism will require a revolution. And I can’t think of anything that defines gambling more than a revolution. You‘re literally going **”ALL-IN”** with the fate of an entire society in your hand. When it’s time to shove those chips across the table, will the bourgeoisie have the royal flush? Or will us revolutionary communists played our cards right and win with the full house?
Figure 3: The bourgeoisie’s hand. They’re bluffing. They’ve been bluffing since 1848. Call them.¶
Two of the world’s most decent cisgender heterosexual allies – a couple of portly bald Asian philosophers[2] by the names of “Vladimir Lenin” and “Mao Tse-Tung” – have written volumes of books on the this precise topic! And one common theme in all those books is that revolution is, indeed, a gamble.
Tip
However, it’s a bet where we can sculpt the odds in our favor. 🎲
But I didn‘t come here to talk about the science of revolution. I only brought it up to emphasize that gambling and socialism have a lot more in common than you might be led to believe. I want to talk not about gambling as a metaphor, but rather the actual activity of gambling itself. I want to address the issue of what will happen to really fun games like Craps, Roulette, Baccarat, Backgammon, Pai Gao, Poker, and Slot Machines. What do we make of them?
The Solution: Gambling Points (A Scientific Proposal)¶
Figure 7: This woman just won 47,000 Socialist Gambling Points and is EXTREMELY excited about the bragging rights. “I can’t BUY anything with these,” she screams into the void, “but EVERYONE will know I’m STATISTICALLY LUCKY!”¶
Dearest Reader, I’m so glad you asked that question! I think the answer is that we could have a community board of centrally maintained **Gambling Points.
Key Features of Socialist Gambling Points
They aren’t money or anything
They’re just points that you accumulate for BRAGGING RIGHTS
You don’t buy anything with them
You can’t sell them
They’re purely for glory and honor
Maybe the most skillful gamblers can get a trophy or something
But I think that would maintain the spirit of gambling while eliminating its exploitative character under capitalism. DIALECTICS, BABY!
Figure 8: Former casino magnate reacts to learning that under socialism his $47 million in gambling winnings have been converted to “47 million cool points” which entitle him to exactly one (1) trophy and the right to say “I’m very lucky” at parties.¶
See also
For more unhinged theoretical musings, consult the Collected Works of Chairman Mao, specifically the missing Volume 12 where he definitely addressed casino policy in the liberated zones.
Social vs Anti-Social Gambling: A Dialectical Analysis¶
Figure 4: The roulette wheel: a perfect metaphor for reformism. You keep betting on red, they keep landing on “actually existing capitalism,” and somehow you convince yourself next spin will be different.¶
Here’s my thoughts on the matter. There’s two general kind of gambling activities. They can be broken down into categories of Social and Anti-Social. What do I mean? Allow me to elaborate with a few examples.
(anti-social-gambling)=
Anti-Social Gambling (BAD! REVISIONIST!)¶
Anti-social gambling is something like video poker or slot machines. They are anti-social because there’s literally zero human interaction. The expected value of slot machines in particular is God awfully atrocious – something like every one dollar you bet, you can expect to lose twenty cents in the long run. That’s absurdly bad! Video poker, if you’re skilled and count casino comps (free hotel rooms, free buffets, free drinks, etc) as earnings, you can actually profit from. Blackjack falls into this category too. Although you might sit next to a table of people, you don’t really interact with someone while playing blackjack. You just say “Hit me” as if you have a kinky fetish for getting the shit beaten out of you by a wage laborer in a tuxedo shirt.
Figure 5: The CEO of Slot Machines, Inc. explaining to shareholders how they’ve optimized the dopamine extraction pipeline. “We’ve reduced the payout ratio by 3% and added more flashing lights,” he says, to thunderous applause.¶
Danger
ANTI-SOCIAL GAMBLING IS BAD AND SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BE ERADICATED UNDER SOCIALISM!
It’s not very social. It’s just a great recipe for someone to lose money. This is COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY and must be RUTHLESSLY CRITICIZED!
I suppose if you really like the various slot machines I could write a python program for you. In fact I will write one for you right now. Hold onto your horses! Here it goes:
Hint
There ya go. I just wrote a slot machine program for you. I’ll leave it open source in the Gurge, so you can legally and lawfully run this slot machine program on your computer. You can have that under socialism if you want.
But no ACTUAL slot machines! Bad! 🚫🎰
(social-gambling)=
Social Gambling (GOOD! REVOLUTIONARY!)¶
Then there is social gambling. Social gambling is good, because it is a social activity. Think of a craps table. You have a bunch of people talking to each other, having a good time, sharing drinks, discussing their favorite lucky talismans and collaborating over dice-rolling strategies. Craps gets the juices flowing. It’s a truly collective activity.
Figure 6: Under socialism, these chips will be distributed according to the principle “from each according to their ability to count cards, to each according to their need to feel alive for five goddamn minutes.”¶
Important
SOCIAL GAMBLING IS GOOD AND SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED UNDER SOCIALISM!
The craps table is basically a Soviet of dice enthusiasts. This is MASS LINE GAMBLING. The people demand it!
“But Miss Persephone!” the astute reader might say. “I get what you mean, girl, but how does any of this work without money?”