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 blood reaper wrote:
I don't even know what 'The Greater Good' is supposed to be; I don't even think it's properly defined anywhere.

That's the joke. The grim, dark joke. It's never defined.

No one has any idea what the hell the Greater Good is. Which means it can be whatever the Urethral caste want it to be at any given time, and they expect the slot-faces and their assorted dregs of society to go right along with it. And they do.

Also, I think we should avoid the chatter on Commies and Fascists. This thread is focused on Tau, we don't need to add in two more varieties of garbage to the discussion.

Quibbling over Marxist doctrine is irrelevant ITT. Same goes for Soviet apologetics. We don’t need to reference or trace out the endless squabbling among Marxists over whatever “true Communism” might be because Tau aren’t actually Communists. When people refer to them as “space commies” or similar, all people really mean is that the Tau empire is totalitarian but not in the same way as the Imperium. “But communism opposes social castes” is not a sound objection because the perception of Soviet society is that class divisions were a fundamnetal day to day reality despite the ideology purporting a classless future. Similarly, the Tau appear to be stark materialists, like communists, in contrast to the ubiquitously religious Imperium. Communism could therefore certainly have been a major inspiration for the Tau. But of course Tau aren’t actually communists. And communism isn’t the only or even foremost inspiration for Tau.


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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:
I don't even know what 'The Greater Good' is supposed to be; I don't even think it's properly defined anywhere.

That's the joke. The grim, dark joke. It's never defined.

My impression is that the Greater Good is not primarily a hypothetical future state but rather a present willingness of the individual to prioritize the needs of the group, the cadre, the sept, and ultimately the empire successively above their own. In other words, it’s a statement about the ongoing social order as much as about some goal to be achieved.

 Manchu wrote:
Quibbling over Marxist doctrine is irrelevant ITT. Same goes for Soviet apologetics.

It wouldn't be necessary if you hadn't got Marx entirely wrong in the first place. I don't think claiming that class did not exist in the Soviet Union in the Marxist sense 'apologetics' (an undeniably loaded term) either.

We don’t need to reference

People are making claims about Communism and the theories behind it; I am providing the actual theory. I don't see any issue about this.

or trace out the endless squabbling among Marxists over whatever “true Communism” might be because Tau aren’t actually Communists.

I wasn't talking about true Communism or anything like that.

When people refer to them as “space commies” or similar, all people really mean is that the Tau empire is totalitarian but not in the same way as the Imperium. “But communism opposes social castes” is not a sound objection because the perception of Soviet society is that class divisions were a fundamnetal day to day reality despite the ideology purporting a classless future.

When people refer to them as Space Commies they reveal a staggering ignorance of political theory.

 blood reaper wrote:
People are making claims about Communism and the theories behind it; I am providing the actual theory. I don't see any issue about this.

Then let me explain the issue for you: this isn’t a discussion of Marxism, it’s a discussion about Tau. Statements like “Tau are space commies” are not literal claims that these fictional aliens read Das Kapital. At best, there are potential allusions to perceptions (especially negative ones) of communism that partly inspire certain aspects of the Tau. Materialism, the suppression of individualism, extreme class identity — whether these are the principal characteristics of “true Communism” whatever that might be simply doesn’t matter to this discussion. Whether rightly or wrongly, people associate these themes with communism and they certainly inform the Tau brand.

So it's necessarily a valid criticism, 'cause it matches your misconceptions about the CCCP and Communism in general?

Seems legit.

Your opinions as to whether they are MLs - or not - are utterly worthless if you haven't the first clue what MLism is. Which you and pretty much everyone else here demonstrably do not.

Communism isn't just everything you don't like.

I'd always assumed the communism parallel was just drawn from "the Greater Good", which implies, much like communism, that the benefit of the whole is more important than the benefit of the individual. Or, basically, it was a meme.

 flandarz wrote:
I'd always assumed the communism parallel was just drawn from "the Greater Good", which implies, much like communism, that the benefit of the whole is more important than the benefit of the individual. Or, basically, it was a meme.

Yep, this is true. People who make the comparison do not mean it in some literal sense, as opposed the people who dispute the comparison (see above). Like everything in 40k, the historical allusions are just that — allusions — and they are only semi-historical or even based upon propaganda. An example would be how the Inquisition in 40k is inspired by the Black Legend as opposed to the actual Spanish Inquisition.

I mean, arguably, the Tau cannot technically be historical materialists, as opposed to idealists, because they (seem to) believe that history is driven by their concept of the Greater Good. But there’s no real use to debating historical materialism as an IRL concept when we talk about the Tau because, well, they are fictional aliens and in the fictional setting in question they have never even heard of historical materialism nor do we have any reason to believe that their history or culture would have produced such a school of thought. However, it does seem like the Tau were inspired by a materialist point of view inasmuch as they are a foil to the religiosity of the imperium.

"[For] The Greater Good" applies to basically every Faction. The IoM believes that what they do is for the greater good of the Imperium. The Aeldari, broadly, believe that what they do is for the greater good of the known universe. The Tau believe what they do is for the greater good of the Tau Empire.

It's an utter non-statement that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. Like most of GW's 'writing', honestly.

But yes, that is part of it. Or rather, again, people's miconceptions are part of it. So is, IMO, a tendency to conflate China and Japan.

The suppression of individual freedom and the parallel insistence on obedience to the state is indeed a theme that applies to almost all 40k factions.

But for the Tau, it’s not just “the greater good” — it’s the “Greater Good,” a term of art that, at least for the Tau themselves, has a meaning particular to their own historical experience and culture.

Now, whether we can define in to mean something more specific than just the demand on the individual to sacrifice everything for the sake of the state is a real question. For some people, there is no difference and this is why the Imperium and the Tau, despite looking very different, are in their opinion morally equivalent.

It's literally just "For the Emperor" for the tau.

While yes, there's supposed to be a complex in universe justification for it. There's doubtlessly the very same kinds of politics behind For the Emperor for imperials.

Well, that and the mind control. Which reminds me, outside of captian redpants who's name I can't properly remember, do we have any solid examples of tau vs tau conflict? He seemed to bail on the greater good in general, so it's somewhat lacking in adding context to our question. That would pretty quickly give us a real handle on how the whole greater good thing works out when it smashes into itself. It's readily easy to see two imperial fanatics duking it out because someone ate meat on friday, but how do things fall out when the tau come into conflict.

One more reason for more xenos lore.

Last I checked Farsight still very much believes in the greater good, he just doesn’t trust the ethereals anymore. Now he is just worried that if he calls them out the entire empire will collapse, so he just stays away.

 Manchu wrote:
The suppression of individual freedom and the parallel insistence on obedience to the state is indeed a theme that applies to almost all 40k factions.

But for the Tau, it’s not just “the greater good” — it’s the “Greater Good,” a term of art that, at least for the Tau themselves, has a meaning particular to their own historical experience and culture.

Still applicable to basically every Faction, regardless of capitalization.

Same sentiment, different words.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The suppression of individual freedom and the parallel insistence on obedience to the state is indeed a theme that applies to almost all 40k factions.

But for the Tau, it’s not just “the greater good” — it’s the “Greater Good,” a term of art that, at least for the Tau themselves, has a meaning particular to their own historical experience and culture.

Still applicable to basically every Faction, regardless of capitalization.

Same sentiment, different words.

Hence why some people see them as morally equivalent.

IMO, however, there is a difference between “For the Greater Good” and “For the Emperor.” The Greater Good is not an individual person. Following the logic of the Imperium to its most extreme conclusion, the good of the Imperium itself is subordinate to the good of the Emperor. Sure, for most purposes, these can be and are assumed to amount to the same thing. But, in addition to the unimaginable scale of the Imperium, I think this contributes to justifying the total callousness of the Imperial view of life, even regarding many billions of lives. No amount of human lives would ever be enough to outweigh the absolute value of the Emperor. There is no hypothetical upper limit to the amount of sacrifice demanded of humanity as a whole, not just individually, for the sake of the Emperor. The Tau, under the rubric of the Greater Good, would have a tougher time justifying such blatant disregard for massive loss for life. At some point, X number of deaths would tip the scales and the potential sacrifice could no longer meaningfully be justified as being necessary for the Greater Good.

Another way of putting it is, for the Tau their society is a good in itself but for the Imperium the value of society is completely contingent on whether the Emperor judges it worthy of existence. And the Emperor’s judgment is quite harsh. When an Inquisitor makes a decision about exterminatus, she is exercising that level of harsh judgment. I doubt the Tau would ever consider sane much less thinkable to make that kind of judgment discretionary for a single individual.

 Manchu wrote:
When an Inquisitor makes a decision about exterminatus, she is exercising that level of harsh judgment. I doubt the Tau would ever consider sane much less thinkable to make that kind of judgment discretionary for a single individual.

I don't think death by committee decision would be any better than death by the decision of a single bureaucrat. Either way it's still death.

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
When an Inquisitor makes a decision about exterminatus, she is exercising that level of harsh judgment. I doubt the Tau would ever consider sane much less thinkable to make that kind of judgment discretionary for a single individual.

I don't think death by committee decision would be any better than death by the decision of a single bureaucrat. Either way it's still death.

Sure, if it came to that. I doubt whatever Tau committee would make the same decision as the Inquisitor. I doubt the Tau committee would even seriously consider something like snuffing out X billion Tau lives all at once. By contrast, the Imperium not only would/does but leaves it up to, in some cases, a single guy’s judgment.

But you make a good point nonetheless: Just because the I think the Tau and Imperium differ doesn’t clarify that I’m sure the Tau are morally superior to the Imperium. I still think this question about “valuing life” is not necessarily moral for the Tau, but rather more likely a cold question of resources.

When people discuss whether factions in the 40K universe are inspired by or similar to real world regimes, it is important to realise that we may be talking about those regimes as they are or were understood to be in reality (note, understood to be, which does not mean the objective facts of their reality).

Nobody here was talking about theories of communism or fascism, just how GW drew inspiration from their knowledge (which may have been imperfect) of those regimes.

The fact that I have to lay this out with this many caveats tends to suggest that some of us here are a bit too touchy about this.

Whilst communism seems to be among the many inspirations for the Tau, it is not really explicit; they're not really communist in any meaningful sense. The Imperium on the other hand is pretty clearly fascist. They only fall short in the centralisation aspect due the limits of communication and travel in the setting.

 Da Boss wrote:
Nobody here was talking about theories of communism or fascism, just how GW drew inspiration from their knowledge (which may have been imperfect) of those regimes.

Yup. And now that people are talking about IRL Communism, we’re no longer talking about the topic. I think we can conclude on that front that, as Crimson said, whatever inspiration GW might have drawn from IRL Communism is pretty superficial and we have probably taken that as far as is useful, a few pages back.

So, the issue stands, if Tau values can be summed up as “for the Greater Good” and Imperial values can be summed up as “for the Emperor” is there a meaningful moral distinction between them?

Yes, because neither of those ideas are relevant to morality. To get an actual answer you need to define right or wrong, until then we’re just spouting vague nothings.
In this case, right or wrong will apply largely to the means. How does each government attain its goals? Both have strong opposition to dissent, both wage wars of conquest, both place the needs of the state above the individual etc...
The biggest difference in means is that the tau will subjugate aliens before trying to kill them. Are they doing this because they care or because they think aliens are useful? Maybe both. But if it’s solely utilitarian then the tau are no better than the imperium. But I haven’t read anything conclusive on the matter. Generally I feel that they do care about aliens, but only out of principle and fairness, which imo makes them more moral than the imperium. (If only by a little bit)

But no matter how you slice it the imperium cannot better morally better than the tau. Both empires are doing what must be done to preserve themselves. The tau sterilizing rebel humans to ensure safety can’t be worse than the imperium nuking Xenos to eliminate a threat.

Dandelion wrote:
The tau sterilizing rebel humans to ensure safety can’t be worse than the imperium nuking Xenos to eliminate a threat.

As has already been shown earlier in this thread, there is no clear evidence the Tau have sterilized any humans. It's just another of those things repeated so often people think it's true.

Imperium routinely commits genocide in massive scale. The Tau do not. It is really not hard to decide which is morally better. The Imperium is evil, it is utterly horrible. It was intentionally written so. And that is fine; this is fiction.

Well, as discussed before- the Imperium isn't genociding people "because they are there". They're doing what must be done to preserve the human species.

That's one of the things I do like about 40k, is that despite how absurd the lore can be sometimes... in many ways, it's a bit more realistic than a superhero comic book or other noble-bright fiction. The 'best possible outcome' isn't always a happy ending in real life. Sometimes, the most decent decision you can make is going to get blood on your hands (or worse, you Nurgle players).

Many times in 'brighter' fiction stories, the dilemma that the protagonists face is solved by some deus ex machina, or some other contrivance to ensure the hero saves the day in the best possible way and all the innocents are saved and the evil is punished. 40k is meant to be the worst possible future for mankind, where everything we strived to be has fallen apart and we're struggling to survive so that maybe when we go back and try it again, we're a bit smarter and get it right.

Mankind has hit its own reset button a few times because things got really, really bad and we were on the verge of extinction. The Tau haven't got there yet, and rest assured... as long as the Imperium doesn't see them as this big threat, they'll survive long enough to hit that button at least once.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Well, as discussed before- the Imperium isn't genociding people "because they are there". They're doing what must be done to preserve the human species.

But that is bs. You're literally buying into propaganda of a horrible and oppressive fascist regime.

The tragedy is not that thhis is best they can do; the tragedy is that they think that this is best they can do.

 Crimson wrote:

But that is bs. You're literally buying into propaganda of a horrible and oppressive fascist regime.

I'm understanding the lore of a fictional Space Empire. I'm not out goose-stepping and strapping the angry windmill around my arm, calm down.

 Crimson wrote:
The tragedy is not that thhis is best they can do; the tragedy is that they think that this is best they can do.

Yes, and you are doing what we call lensing.

They think this is the best they can do, much like our primitive ancestors thought that prayer and herbs were the best that could be done to cure diseases... what should they have done, use Google to find the answer?

In relation to the Imperium, what is the better option presented before them?

I'll give you a hint, there isn't one that they know of. Because, let's kinda apply just a little realism here- do you honestly think that every person in the decision-making process of the Imperium is malicious or incompetent enough to just abandon all possible better options, and choose the "this is gonna suck" button because reasons? If you think so, sure- then at that point 40k is a comedy in its own way and then we can stop with the rationalizing and just laugh at the silliness.

Indeed, the tragedy is that they're so far gone that they cannot conceive the better way. Or maybe some them can, but they lack the power to achieve it*. But it is just religious lunacy, it is not that there literally isn't better options. For example it probably would be beneficial to ally with some aliens, exchange knowledge with them. It would be beneficial to develop new technologies. But these things are religious taboos, and thus they are not done.

(*This is why Guilliman so strongly goes against the themes of the setting, He can conceive a better way, and he might even have power to achieve it.)

 Crimson wrote:
Indeed, the tragedy is that they're so far gone that they cannot conceive the better way.

If I tell you to do long division, but you've never seen a calculator before and don't understand how it works... can I call you stupid for using a paper and pencil?

 Crimson wrote:
But it is just religious lunacy, it is not that there literally isn't better options.

And the thing about religious lunacy, is that you're pretty much dead set in your beliefs- especially in the cultures of the Imperium. It's not like these folks can wake and say, "You know, what if this is a load of crap and I can live my life differently?" If you think this is just some random epiphany people can just randomly have, without outside influence... then you don't know how people work.

 Crimson wrote:
For example it probably would be beneficial to ally with some aliens, exchange knowledge with them. It would be beneficial to develop new technologies. But these things are religious taboos, and thus they are not done.

Which aliens? The flavors of deceptive pointy-ears that have tried to kill us, the blue ones that want us to join or die, the ones that eat us, the green ones that kill us because they have to kill, the robo-skeletons that want to exterminate us and rebuild their empire over our ashes, the pile of worms that wants to kill us, the weird stinky bendy ones that want to kill us...

I mean, which of these particular "wanting to kill us" species is really out there saying, "Hey, let's put our differences aside and live as equals and work together to save the galaxy"? And don't say "The Tau", because that ain't their message.


Reminder that during the great crusade, many human colony worlds were completely genocided... by Xenos species. And we did exactly what made sense, we killed the hostiles and reclaimed it.

Humanity has had a semi-peace accord with several xenos species in the past, even to some degree being an associated "federation" during the Dark Age of Technology. And this was when humans were the most terrifyingly technological species in the galaxy. Understand that this wasn't a polite mutual agreement- we made peace with them by saying, "You're pissing us off, and we have technology that can launch your planet back in time and into a sun that burned out a million years ago- so knock it off, chill the hell out, and sign this damned treaty".

Or, what should we do... roll over and die?

You seem to have a misconception about the number of aliens in the galaxy. The playable factions are all aggressive and militant and so make for poor allies, but there are thousands of non militant alien species. Most of the tau client races are non militant and they sided with the tau to avoid eradication by humanity. This has made the tau stronger than they would be alone, which was the point.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

If I tell you to do long division, but you've never seen a calculator before and don't understand how it works... can I call you stupid for using a paper and pencil?

And the thing about religious lunacy, is that you're pretty much dead set in your beliefs- especially in the cultures of the Imperium. It's not like these folks can wake and say, "You know, what if this is a load of crap and I can live my life differently?" If you think this is just some random epiphany people can just randomly have, without outside influence... then you don't know how people work.

All this applies to real world too. You're just explaining why things are gak. Doesn't change the fact that they're gak. And of course sometimes changes happen. We used to burn withches too, there used to be slavery. And many people back then though there was perfectly good justifications for those things. But we don't believe that anymore.

Which aliens? The flavors of deceptive pointy-ears that have tried to kill us, the blue ones that want us to join or die, the ones that eat us, the green ones that kill us because they have to kill, the robo-skeletons that want to exterminate us and rebuild their empire over our ashes, the pile of worms that wants to kill us, the weird stinky bendy ones that want to kill us...

I mean, which of these particular "wanting to kill us" species is really out there saying, "Hey, let's put our differences aside and live as equals and work together to save the galaxy"? And don't say "The Tau", because that ain't their message.


Reminder that during the great crusade, many human colony worlds were completely genocided... by Xenos species. And we did exactly what made sense, we killed the hostiles and reclaimed it.

Humanity has had a semi-peace accord with several xenos species in the past, even to some degree being an associated "federation" during the Dark Age of Technology. And this was when humans were the most terrifyingly technological species in the galaxy. Understand that this wasn't a polite mutual agreement- we made peace with them by saying, "You're pissing us off, and we have technology that can launch your planet back in time and into a sun that burned out a million years ago- so knock it off, chill the hell out, and sign this damned treaty".

Or, what should we do... roll over and die?

And we're back at regurgitating Imperium's racist propaganda.

Yes, some aliens are hostile. Yes, some aliens posses the technology to threaten humans. Sometimes the same aliens possess both of these traits. But it is completely implausible that all would, or even the majority. And of course even against hostile sapients genocide is still wrong. This is exactly where Tau show how wrong the Imperium is. Thy have managed to coexist with other intelligent species and even incorporated them into their society.

I don't know, for me, it's more tragic that the horrific genocides the Imperium does are now their only option of survival, instead of their being some peaceful/superior way out (other than death). The tragedy and darkness don't come from "the Imperium could be so much nicer!", it comes from "if you don't do these things, you will be snuffed out - and maybe it's better if humanity is wiped out, with only scant traces living on in the fringes of the galaxy" For me, that provides more interesting morals, but that's just my take.

Is the Imperium evil? Yes, obviously. Should the Imperium cease to exist? In a sense, yeah, it probably should - it's a society built solely on the targeted genocidal suffering of others, and that kind of society should not be permitted to exist. But I think it's more interesting when it's a case of "do evil things to survive, or you die", and there's no option for coexistence.

For me, T'au are only able to get away with coexisting because they're small enough. In my headcanon, humanity was once just like the T'au, but suffered massive losses and were betrayed by alien "allies" - needing to become the currently evil Imperium in order to not be wiped out.

The horribleness is probably needed for the Imperium to survive. It is not needed for the humanity to survive. But as this would mean relinquishing the position as the ruler of the galaxy and sharing the power with aliens it obviously is an unthinkable proposition to many humans, especially to the elite.