This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Maoist Internationalist Movement

Even Stalin tank games help imperialists

"Moscow to Berlin: Red Siege"
Cinemaware Marquee & Monte Cristo
2006

MIM has very mixed feelings about this game. The question our readers will ask is how we can pan a game with such a tastefully done hammer and sickle on the front and a subtitle "Red Siege." How can we oppose a game that finally has Amerikans focussing on the greatest battle of all history, the one which Amerikans do everything to avoid thinking about, the Soviet battle against Nazi Germany.

On the plus side, there are some people who will find themselves motivated strictly by questions of graphics. When that hammer and sickle shows up on the screen, that may be as far as it can go for many people and their allegiance to politics. The capitalist class does the marketing to do itself in, but not really. The art and forms of communism may be somewhat apparent, but in the end it is only marketing.

The labor aristocracy market

This is a labor aristocracy game, a sergeant's game. We call it a sergeant's's game because it's about missions. Sergeant's games may be ever so slightly more complicated than the average role-playing game, since role-playing games may be about one character while a sergeant has to coordinate a few characters.

There is no politics and no resource management in the game, beyond conserving what one already has. Whether physical or monetary economic surplus, this game has no consideration of it. So the object is to take X number of tanks and secure Y place in the face of Z opposing units. MIM is not saying that is not a real task in front of billions of people one way or another. Even for that purpose, the computer is making people smarter. What we really want is for game-makers to tell us something about the economy, since it is easier with a computer representation than with a book.

The game comes with a doggy tag with a corporation name on the back. The doggy tag comes from China and has a tiny hammer & sickle, probably the only hammers and sickles China is producing lately. Yet the appeal of the game is at that concrete a level.

Doggy tags represent order and set numbers of units provide place to our labor aristocracy. Order and place will make our labor aristocracy happy. Some will argue that providing the hammer and sickle is the best that can be done--a final symbolic and artistic touch to fill any remaining gaps in the labor aristocracy's life.

Yet even the benefit of saying, "look, here is order and place, all very concrete, and here's your hammer & sickle," is lost in "Moscow to Berlin." If played in order, as one probably would, the first assignment in the game is to attack the Soviet Union by playing as Hitler. In other words, the game has a "professional" labor aristocracy or mercenary outlook to it. It does not matter what one's side is. There's no politics in the game anyway. Just take X tanks and other units to Y place and somehow win against Z units. Then next turn play the other side.

The game does come with some accurate historical information on the battles of World War II. One may get somewhat of a sense of the flow of World War II.

The first computer games that came out were for nerds only. Then the video arcade merged with the computer game and brought us Nintendo, Xbox etc. In the wake of the popularization of video games, dumbed down games also flooded the persynal computer niche.

MIM's guess is that the persynal computer market is going to return to nerd service, because the joys of tank driving are done better with the console game systems and a TV. SONY and Microsoft will figure out how to service the labor aristocracy market entirely without going to individual games on the persynal computer. Along the way, of course, some smaller firms will be gobbled up by the monopoly capitalist game makers.

Another possibility is that there is not really a market for a petty-bourgeois nerd niche. It may end up being an art form such as sewing to make games for nerds. If anyone has an idea about how we can make winnable demands in the console game market, MIM would like to hear about it.

The principal contradiction today and World War II

"Moscow to Berlin" serves as an illustration of how a Maoist understanding of the principal contradiction affects life politically. Stalin's epic struggle against Hitler cannot rank any higher in the history of class struggle and justice than it is. Defending Stalin is one our tasks of principle, and so it is not easy for us to oppose a game that may draw interest to the Eastern Front of World War II.

Of course, if this game were in the ex-Soviet Union, we could reject it out of hand. The people there are already interested in their own history and don't need a game watered down by Nazi mission-playing at all. It is only in the West where the Amerikans are teaching such a bias about World War II that this game becomes of interest.

In the end though, "Moscow to Berlin" is the same old labor aristocracy militarism in different trappings. It even has a dangerous aspect in humynizing the Nazis, by making it OK to play their side. The principal contradiction in the world is between imperialism and oppressed nations, and in connection to that, this game just fans more imperialist militarism, a joy in militarism for its own sake.

Today the left-wing of parasitism does anything it can to oppose the obvious discipline needed in attacking the superior enemy of u.$. imperialism. It is the task of the left-wing of parasitism to come up with excuses for those who may have doubts about imperialism for why not to stop the imperialist onslaught. At the moment, old Soviet weapons including some that appear in this game are being used against I$rael by Hezbollah. Yet if it were the other way around, MIM would not be siding with I$rael. If I$rael adopted some trappings and forms from the Stalin era, to carry out its attacks, MIM would not be swayed from its understanding of the principal contradiction. Whether it is attacking Iran's clothing style for wimmin, concern with the nuclear energy programs of all countries, a desire to draw attention to the Eastern Front of World War II-- these are all distractions from what we need to do in connection to the principal struggle of communists today. Like variety in any other pornography, "Moscow to Berlin" promotes imperialist militarism and that is its principal aspect for our day.

There is even a political task today that did not exist before. World War II's Eastern Front battle was so huge and so all-out that it simply cannot be afforded again today. The result was a bittersweet happy ending in World War II, but if it happened today, it would be a species-ending disaster. Just picture for example if France today decided to occupy Europe and take a piece of Russia or vice-versa. The bad part is that the Third World proletariat would not be close on hand to intervene in sufficient numbers in some potential inter- imperialist wars. So this is a case where we must "make the past serve the present" as Mao said. During World War II itself, we scientific communists said one thing, but today, we cannot look at World War II just in connection to history for its own sake. The imperialists are using World War II to stoke up enthusiasm for today's imperialist wars among video game players of the united $tates and similar countries. Even if "Moscow to Berlin" did not come with the part about playing as Hitler's side, MIM would oppose it.

Don't Buy This Game