In Under The Yoke, SM Stirling shows us the Draka occupying post-War Europe and redirecting production both for their own consumption and for their nuclear arms race against the US. Frederick Kustaa of the OSS lands secretly to work with the Resistance.
In the Domination of the Draka, money circulates only among the Citizen minority. Even in conquered France, production and transport workers no longer:
receive a wage or salary;
buy consumer goods;
live in owned or rented properties.
Instead, they are confined to curfewed Compounds and continually threatened with physical brutality. Not a post-War settlement but a war-time Occupation continues indefinitely. I hope, and suspect, that it is impossible to manage a complex industrial society on such a basis. When a Citizen supervisor sees that the output of a factory is too low, he informs a born-serf manager who informs a local gangboss who tells the factory serf-drivers to kill a production worker slowly by hanging him from hooks in full view of everyone else. If the slowly dying man is removed or mercifully killed, then he will be replaced by two others. But output is higher when workers are paid and can buy goods produced by themselves or others! However, this is not the sort of society that the Draka want...
The Resistance includes a Catholic nun and a former Communist Party member. What of other defeated groups? The text has not so far raised this specific question but it is worth considering: in what circumstances, if any, would you cooperate with an unrepentant Nazi? My answer is: not many, but Resistance to the Draka would probably qualify. However, the Nazi should have no say in framing any post-Draka society.
I would have far fewer problems in working with Communist Party members - in fact, I have worked with them in trade unions where Nazis would not have been welcome - but they would have to be watched because of their history. The purpose of Communism was to end exploitation, not to build a bureaucratic - and exploitative! - dictatorship. It was a historic tragedy that so many well-intentioned Party members were misled into defending that regime for so long but history has left them behind and hopefully can be learned from. Lesson One: make sure that any Party you belong to remains internally democratic. Lesson Two: always ask questions.
I said that I might work with a Nazi in the anti-Draka Resistance. However, I would prefer to destroy the Domination from a safe distance. I never thought that I would contemplate the use of a nuclear weapon but, if the majority of the Race could be persuaded to congregate in Archona...
Nearing the end of Under The Yoke, I am not sure what the good guys' plans are and am also not confident of a happy ending. I might resort to some lighter reading for the remainder of this evening.
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