The Marxist-Leninist Commonwealth

The People's Library

Handbook for New Citizens

Welcome, comrade. You have arrived in the Marxist-Leninist Commonwealth, where the land, the workshops and the stores belong to everyone, and what to build next is decided together in the council. This handbook tells you what you need for your first days.

The first things to do

  1. Have an account on the website, registered with your exact Minecraft name. The institutions and the /cw commands know you by it.
  2. Read the rules: stay in character (mark out-of-character talk in brackets), treat common property as common, settle disputes through the institutions, and be kind to the people behind the characters.
  3. Look at the plan on the website: what the Commonwealth is working towards this period.
  4. Find a place to live and work. Ask your comrades, or the council, where there is room. Your dwelling and belongings are yours; the land, the mines and the stores are everyone's.

The commands

Type these in the chat. Your comrades at the institutions answer within a few seconds.

The institutions

The government

The functionaries

In your pocket

Type /cw alone for the list.

Work and the common stores

Mine, farm, build and make, and deliver what the Commonwealth needs to the common stores: hold the goods in your hand and type /cw deliver. The State Bank counts them in contribution units. Each plan period you owe a quota of units in kind (100 by default), and every delivery counts towards it and earns merit. When you need goods yourself, ask the Distribution Office on the website: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

Take up a job on the website (My work) and the labour office gives you assignments: four at a time, and one more when the plan asks for goods of your trade (/cw assignments, /cw accept <number>). When all four are done the next round comes, with new work and no limit on a day, and every assignment you finish makes the next ones that day bigger, for more points. The State pays in rations.

The council

Every citizen is a member of the council, the highest authority of the Commonwealth. Table motions, debate and vote on the website. Votes are secret and the tally public. The council can overturn any decision of any institution. A motion needs half of the active citizens to vote: those seen on the website or in the world in the last 14 days. The game master's account counts like any other.

The government

Between votes of the council, the Council of People's Commissars directs the work of the Commonwealth. It holds three portfolios: the Plan, the Stores and Works. The portfolios are equal, and there is no chairman. The game master sets the number of seats, one to three, and does so at the council's request when citizens are few. The council appoints the commissars by a motion that names a citizen for one or more vacant portfolios, and can give the portfolios to them in a different order by a new one. They serve until the council recalls them; any citizen, a commissar too, may table the motion to recall, and a recalled commissar gives up every portfolio at once.

The government acts by decrees, published with their reasons. A proclamation is a statement by one commissar, published at once, with no legal effect. Other decrees need a majority of the commissars and take effect 24 hours after they are issued (a budget when the council adopts it); a new directive to an institution replaces the one before. Only the council can annul a decree. Any citizen who is not a sitting commissar and did not propose or sign it may move to annul it, while it waits or once it is in force (a budget once it is in force); the council's appointments on the register are records, not decrees to annul. The game master may also set a decree aside or strike it from the register, always with a public note. The government has no budget until the council adopts one, and draws on the common stores only within it: each portfolio has its budget for a plan period, which a majority of the commissars put before the council, and only the commissar who holds the portfolio allots goods from it. A large budget or a large allotment waits for the game master: a budget is large when it is more than all active citizens together owe in tax for its period, a limit that grows with the Commonwealth (the game master may set a fixed one instead). The government never allots goods, honours or works to a sitting commissar (those go to the council), and punishes no one: only the People's Court judges, and it can try a commissar for abuse of office.

A state of emergency needs every commissar, at least two, and the game master's approval: never while the game master acts, one at a time, and not within 72 hours of the last. It lasts at most 72 hours and ends at once if fewer than two commissars sit; the council may extend it once, before it ends. While it lasts, decrees issued during it take effect at once, an appointment or a budget can be voted on in a day, but never a recall, and a portfolio may spend half as much again as its budget. It never touches the court, excludes anyone or postpones the council. Until the first commissars are appointed, the game master acts in their place and may lay that office down; once the council has recalled the acting game master, the portfolios wait for the council's appointment. Anyone can see the commissars and the decrees in force; the government's log and the history of who has held office are for citizens who are logged in. So are the offices on a citizen's profile.

In the world, the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars keeps the Secretariat in the Council Hall. She reads out the commissars, the decrees and the budgets, and answers questions about how the government works (/cw ask council-secretary), but decides nothing: the government acts on the website, where the council holds it to account. The board of decrees beside her lists the decrees in force, and the booklet has a page for the government.

The institutions

The People's Court settles disputes and breaches of the laws, and hears both sides first. The Planning Commission keeps the plan. The Distribution Office allots goods from the stores. Every decision is published with its reasons, and can be appealed to the council.

The functionaries

In the town you will meet the state functionaries: the professors of the Academy of Sciences, the physician at the Polyclinic, the Writer, the Chronicler and the Librarian of the House of Culture and the People's Library, the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars in the Council Hall, and the wardens at the doors of the great buildings. Talk to them. The Functionaries page of the website lists the functionaries, and the pages of the square show everyone who works there.

Merit and honours

Work earns merit: deliveries, tax paid, work on the plan, votes in the council, cases brought, hours in the world. Merit brings rank, from Citizen to Honoured Builder of Socialism, and medals mark particular service. None of it can be bought.

Staying well

Keep your food bar high: at 18 or more you heal by yourself. Light your home; monsters spawn only in darkness. Set your bed before a journey. The physician explains the rest (/cw lecture medicine 1).

Forward, comrade. The Commonwealth is what its citizens make of it.