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.
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"Prison Tycoon"
Valusoft
2005
Pornography has reached a new qualitative low inside the united $tates with the appearance of videogame "Prison Tycoon." Advertised with a game box that shows a white prison guard beating a Black prisoner, "Prison Tycoon" is a game about running prisons for profit.
We call this game pornography, because it is entertainment oppression based on a profit dynamic. MIM's approach to this game is to try to understand the social forces behind its appeal.
In determining whether something is pornography, MIM asks if people would be entertained or emotionally moved in such a way without the profit dynamic. For example, in one pornographic television program, the program host brought out a secret admirer of a man, but the secret admirer was gay. Embarassed on television for the benefit of selling advertisements, the man later killed his gay admirer. There was a whole train of emotions and events that occurred thanks to the profit motive that would not have happened otherwise. Since it was in connection to entertainment and what people find entertaining, MIM calls it pornography. Even under socialism there will be pornography; even though it is banned, because there will be popular input in television, radio etc. and communist harmony will not occur overnight, which means that lesser degrees of entertainment perversion will still exist by mere fact of having to produce mass entertainment.
Our society has a whole culture predicated on what can be turned into profit. Among the consequences are the association of wimmin with cars. Sexist advertising is any use of the humyn body for purposes extrinsic to that body. In many ways the use of wimmin's bodies to sell commodities through advertising is worse than what people usually think of as pornography. A nude photograph can still be directly sexual to the persyn posing and the persyn consuming the photo. When we have bikini-clad wimmin drape themselves on cars to sell the cars, we can say perversion has set in. The worst perversion is entertainment intertwining militarism and sexuality-- a perversion also known as Hollywood.
Likewise, "Prison Tycoon" is really pornography about pornography. MIM is certainly not saying that prison administration is a taboo topic. Yet in "Prison Tycoon," we see a twisted or perverted dynamic to use the words of the commoner.
The simulated world of the game has a capitalist trying to run a prison for profit. Within that, he finds that he must entertain his prisoners to obtain the highest profits from their work. So in a sense, "Prison Tycoon" is professional training for pornography.
Yet it does not stop there, because Microvalue also advertises the game in pornographic fashion by appealing to sadism. The biggest character on the front of the box is a white man holding a shot gun and wearing a U.$. uniform peering in on his victims in the prison. It's hard to tell whether class or gender- related pornography motivations are stronger in this game.
Some may object that the player's job is to break up fights in prisons and actually improve prison conditions in order to make a profit. From our point of view, the "breaking up fights" angle is a justification for enjoyment of prison control. It's what makes pornography acceptable.
The pro-capitalist point of view is that if the legal system charges prison tycoons say $20,000 for each prisoner death and if prison tycoons can make a profit from "voluntary" work by prisoners, then the tycoon will have the incentive to improve work conditions in the prison. In the game, the tycoon can build factories or other work settings, but he cannot make the workers work except by increasing incentives.
Yet even in an idealized world it is pretty clear there is a conflict of interest. The prison tycoon is in charge of parole as well. Ordinarily one might think that prisons should parole those who have shown an interest in work and have work skills developed in prison. Yet, the choice is up to the prison tycoon.
In actual fact, it is in the interest of the prison tycoon to release prisoners who fight and keep prisoners who work. In other words, since the prison tycoon receives a flat amount of money to care for each prisoner from the state, the tycoon has an incentive to cherry-pick his prisoners. Perversely, the prison tycoon will want to keep the least fighting and hardest working prisoners while releasing the most murderous prisoners.
There is actually a similar problem in health care in the united $tates in what is called "managed care." Healthcare corporations have an interest in taking the most money from the healthiest people. In a situation where Medicaid or Medicare is paying for the reimbursements, healthcare corporations may still decide that some sub-populations are "worth it" and some are not. This will determine how many corporations bid or compete for government reimbursements for the most vulnerable in our population. On the other hand, the plus side is that anyone looking at the situation of healthcare corporations and sub-populations quickly understands why socialist planning is necessary. There may arise an understanding why Medicaid or Medicare bureaucrats have to use their purchasing power to twist arms at corporations for the benefit of overall goals instead of letting corporations cherry pick.
In contrast, in the game, the mayor and other stupid people make their presence known with stupid statements about how the tycoon's prison is raising employment and decreasing crime. So there is a sense in which the local community becomes complicit in the glorification of characters such as the prison tycoon.
The national oppression component of "Prison Tycoon" pornography is also clear in that the game portrays Black prisoners as fighting much more than white prisoners. Those eligible for parole with the worst fighting records are Black while the prisoners who work harder are white, according to the game.
On a technical level, the game is poorly done with bad maneuverability. The prison tycoon must constantly intervene in fights and separate prisoners--a micro-management detracting from strategy pursuits. The plus side of the game is that players will see humyn behavior in certain patterns. Fights will break out according to the design of the prison. Having to manage prisoners individually in a predetermined setting is boring and the disgust level was high for this reviewer.
So much for the contents of the game. On a theory level, we should distinguish followers of Freud such as Julia Kristeva on the one hand and MIM descending from MacKinnon and possibly Foucault on the other hand. According to Kristeva, there is an increase or spread of sado-masochistic sexuality including among French wimmin. (She lived in France when she became famous.) The "Prison Tycoon" game in Kristeva's analysis would stem from a failure to develop to adult sexual stages, thanks possibly to setbacks in a childhood that may not be remembered. Kristeva is especially concerned about the famous Freudian "anal" impulse. Why more people lately should fail to achieve mature and healthy adult sexuality as seen by Freudians now than in the past is not answered by Kristeva as far as MIM can see. Readers can disabuse us.
For MacKinnon, there is no anal persynality, but men in general enjoy oppression including sadism. So for MacKinnon, this is not a question of a subsection of the population needing Freudian therapy but a whole gender.
MIM Leninized MacKinnon to say there is a "gender aristocracy," where Kristeva would see a sado-masochistic element among females who do not achieve mature sexuality. We talk about Freud and Kristeva, because they may be the most famous and active opponents of our line. Within Marxism, it seems that most are unable to say one way or another what their theory of sadism is. Most of the time we Marxists can just say that games will glorify oppressors and leave our theory of sadism at that.
Few are willing to tread on this subject of gender reasons why games such as "Prison Tycoon" might achieve popularity. Why a game simulating popular hockey, football, basketball or baseball stars is popular is not surprising and also not out of line with what kids did in the past. MIM line on pornography is the only answer to "Prison Tycoon" within our communist movement at the moment.
We will also end on a note on class and superstructure. Prison guards and prison tycoons are parasites the type of which are increasingly common in u.$. society. Marxism predicts that they will find ways to legitimize their imperialist-labor aristocracy rule. "Prison Tycoon" is simply part of what Marx called the "superstructure" reinforcing class oppression. For that reason, MIM does not need a theory of gender at all to explain the sadist impulse in Amerikan society as depicted in "Prison Tycoon."
"Prison Tycoon" glorifies the kind of people we are likely to find inside u.$. borders. The proportion of the particular military and prison related parasites in U.$. society makes it impossible for the white nation as a group to liberate itself. Appeal to the white nation's majority self-interest only results in games such as "Prison Tycoon," the perfect embodiment of the alliance between capitalists and the labor aristocracy. It would be a different matter if Euro- Amerikans were a majority of farming, manufacturing, mining and transport workers. In that case, the difference between social-democracy and communism becomes harder to see. Anyone who is advocating majority rule as a major principle within u.$. borders today is clearly white nationalist whether s/he knows it or not.
Because a majority of U.$. society is one kind of oppressive parasite or another such as a prison guard, Amerikans have co-opted the word "democracy" for white nationalism, an excuse to oppress the rest of the world in the name of the Euro-Amerikan majority that voted for Bush. Even the word "liberty" is now a white buzzword used as an excuse to bomb other countries and not a reference to anything actual regarding the government's relationship to the citizen. Games such as "Prison Tycoon" indicate the real aspirations and hopes of the white nation.