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[Ribs]

Communism needs direct intervention in real life because humans are not a hive mind of clones with only minor variations according to specific templates. The dwarven race of Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, are implemented this way, because it's the only feasable way to implement any large number of similar objects in a computer simulation.

That's not really true. Think Majesty: a game where all characters are "clones" but because there are different classes of characters they are forced to behave very differently. Only peasants can build or repair constructions, and only heroes can do other jobs.

When discussing the future of laws in DF, they have talked about making different laws that could possibly apply to different classes of people, in the sense that there will be certain citizens that the player won't be able to force to do certain kinds of jobs, etc. That's far from impossible to implement.

This is the final stage of communism, at least how Marx envisioned it, and Fun happens when the player fails at it, whether due to carelessness, the RNG, or most commonly, both.

I don't think Marx envisioned, as his final stage of communism, a society where assumedly an administration (read: the player) can forcefully and arbitrarely create a caste that can be put into a burrow, closed off in a room and burned to death when magma pours onto them from the ceiling.  Or a class of dwarves that only do hauling, and live in tiny 1x1 rooms where your cheesemakers for no apparent reason live in palaces. To be honest, the way the laws currently work it's all very arbitrary. Most people play the game a certain way because it seems mostrous to torture and kill your own citizens at will, but there are very few consequences to that. If you're a skilled player, you can easily kill all children and useless immigrants without having a tantrum spiral because there are ways around that as your dwarves aren't really programmed to be that upset about mass murder under the player's hand. If that's what Marx envisioned I'm truly glad the Soviets failed. Actually, one could argue that the current DF society is more similar to Soviet style socialism than the envisioned final of cientific socialism the modern left argues for. But that's not really a debate we want to have here....trust me, I know

While programing a way of making your dwarves aware that the player is committing genocide would be very hard, as there are few ways I can think of that the game could detect if it was an accident or if you're actually systematically putting your citizens in lava chambers, things like class struggle are very implementable. Certain dwarves can be peasants so they can only do these kinds of jobs, others are artizens members of a certain guild, so they get upset if you forbid them from working on their trade or force them to do other minial jobs. Maybe the entire guild is upset by this, or maybe there's a hard law in the fortress that outright prevents you from making these dwarves work on whatever else and you'd have to alter that law to make it so but altering laws would have consequences. Peasants only allowed to work minial jobs would perhaps be upset by their situation, and etc.

[Fleeting Frames]

While programing a way of making your dwarves aware that the player is committing genocide would be very hard, as there are few ways I can think of that the game could detect if it was an accident or if you're actually systematically putting your citizens in lava chambers, things like class struggle are very implementable. Certain dwarves can be peasants so they can only do these kinds of jobs, others are artizens members of a certain guild, so they get upset if you forbid them from working on their trade or force them to do other minial jobs. Maybe the entire guild is upset by this, or maybe there's a hard law in the fortress that outright prevents you from making these dwarves work on whatever else and you'd have to alter that law to make it so but altering laws would have consequences. Peasants only allowed to work minial jobs would perhaps be upset by their situation, and etc.

On the underlined bit, I believe noticing the difference is not desirable for a certain group of players

However, if a tree falls in forest and nobody is around to witness it, does it affect the price of tea in China?
Currently, dwarves are lot more psychic than us humans, such as being able to know their masterworks have been lost despite not seeing them and able to decide to haul rocks they haven't seen yet. . However, becoming distraught at the unseen deaths of unknown dwarves is something more of a "should" than "can" question.

That still is tangential of to the price of dwarven wine in China-shaped landmass.

I'm concerned that the guild ideas you have work against the player (who is supposed to be will of the fortress) and obstruct efficiency to the point where a player is better off wrecking the guilds' rules and taking the happiness penalty.

However, an example of using the guilds to increase efficiency is the planned idea to have the more experienced dwarves take an apprentice for hauling who will get to learn basic skills in the meantime.

[Ribs]

On the underlined bit, I believe noticing the difference is not desirable for a certain group of players

Honestly, the closest thing I have done is accidently flooding 80% of my fortress and letting half of the population drown. You'd think that the least they would do is start pointing fingers. The mayor and managers would probably lose their jobs or be hanged for incompetence.

I'm concerned that the guild ideas you have work against the player (who is supposed to be will of the fortress) and obstruct efficiency to the point where a player is better off wrecking the guilds' rules and taking the happiness penalty.

However, an example of using the guilds to increase efficiency is the planned idea to have the more experienced dwarves take an apprentice for hauling who will get to learn basic skills in the meantime.

I'm not claiming that my idea would make the fortress more efficient, but it could simulate how people behave a bit better. People get protective of their jobs, make traditions and prioritize their own interests, even if that goes against a more efficient administrator's ability on running things. The player having to juggle with the whims of their dwarves is part of the fun in my book. Or else we'd be arguing against dwarves feeling like taking "breaks" as they currently do and make it so the player could just force them to work until the feel like telling them to stop because that would be more efficient. Having the dwarves being permanently content slaves would be very efficient.

But to balance all that, guilds would really need more advantages than I've given them here. A happy guild could mean a more influencial guild. Maybe you'd get skilled dwarves from all over the kingdom wanting to be part of your guild because it's so prestigious, and because training new people is going to become much harder that could be important. It could also be the price of having an official monopoly: to make sure you have control over the production of high quality stonecrafts, you make a point of having all stonecrafting being controlled by a guild. To mantain this monopoly you have to grant certain privileges to the guild members to make it more appealing and prestigious, so people from other minor settlements actually accept and adhere to this system. Isn't that how these things usually work?

[FantasticDorf]

Its true to say on the topic of communism, every fortress is like the stanford prison experiment where over time, people put in meaningful positions of authority (you, guards, that crazy goblin pulling levers at random certain to destroy the fortress in a sealed room) abuse it in this communal system where pseudo-worth to your society is based on how poorly you can make cheeses, and people die gruesome orchestrated and accidental deaths aplenty usually on a whim.

Getting slightly back on topic, how fun are parties going to be when a generous traited rich dwarf start paying out for food and drink around a statue/temple/inn for a good time and invite all their friends to their poor excuse to get extremely drunk and do no work wedding. Pulling them away from vital lines of work, in which because they paid for it in advance...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...'IT CANNOT BE CANCELLED OR UNSET BECAUSE THE ZONE IS FORCIBLY BOOKED UNTIL THE DURATION IS OVER'

!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Least you'll always have your poor/middle class and socially awkward/one-hit legendary wonder (who does it for charity occasionally receiving a donation as per artifact tourism and apprentice fees), dwarves to rely on for zero-hours work while the elite clog up and drain your resources. Despicable bourgeoisie.

[inykane]

You do not need to go to the extremes with the economy. You may very well have most of the society as it is but only add coin economy to some aspects of it. This is how it has been traditionally. You share with the tribe but trade with the outsiders, as an example. Now you only set aside a small part of what is shared to what is traded - not to make a fortress "more efficient", but to create and break social ties within the dwarven community. 

What you need for this is:

1) a source of (abstract) wealth
2) a method for the flow of the said wealth
3) a way to cycle it back to the source

Let's have the king as the source. He demands the minting of a batch of coins if he has feels he's lacking some. When he feels like it, he dumps some of them on his nobility, or whoever strikes his fancy. These dwarves then use the coins to first satisfy their own needs and if they are left with a surplus, they start giving them out as gifts to those they like who they see as less wealthy. And so it goes. If we have use clothes here as an example, we could say the shops where the clothing is sold are all owned by the crown, so the coins return back to the source and the cycle repeats.

So clothing is this example serves as a way of displaying how close to the throner (power) you are.

Add in donations to the temples, and the clothing of the priests becomes a symbol of the influence of the said religion. Add in charity to the followers of a certain religion and you have your basic social security. Heretics and outcasts end up wearing tatteret old clothes, just as they should.  And then add features such as begging, gambling and so forth to ensure poor dwarves engage in time wasting activities (from the perspective of the fort) to truly make them useless and miserable.

Perhaps then introduce guilds again and have the guild leaders plead the king for coin in financing them. A guild would simply be a closed society for certain professionals that would choose their leader from within their ranks. The number of members and the relationship the leader has with the king is the determining factor of how much coin the king gives to the guild. You can also donate to the guild, like with the temples.

Have the rest of the fort function quite the same as before. No dwarf will die of lack of clothing, but unhappy dwarves do unhappy things, creating more fun. The social classes are not an end to themselves to be strived for, but rather something that would emerge out of this. The point of all this is to make a more interesting dwarven society with meaningful variables that are quite out of control of the player.