{"id":2204,"date":"2010-05-27T12:53:47","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T17:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/05\/27\/finally-a-proper-marxist-videogame\/"},"modified":"2010-05-27T12:53:47","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T17:53:47","slug":"finally-a-proper-marxist-videogame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/05\/27\/finally-a-proper-marxist-videogame\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally a proper Marxist videogame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nAccording to Jonathan McCalmont , <cite>Dead Space<\/cite> is <a href=\"http:\/\/futurismic.com\/2010\/05\/26\/dead-space-the-shock-doctrine-goes-interplanetary\/\">The Shock Doctrine Gone Interplanetary<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nThe French intellectual and artist Jean Cocteau once said that for some, style is a simple way of saying complicated things. EA Redwood Shores\u2019 Dead Space (2008) is a game that proves how much can be said with minute shifts of emphasis for while the game is ostensibly yet another title all about collecting money and killing monsters, Dead Space is a fiercely left wing game whose narrative constitutes a vicious critique of neoliberalism and the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys. It is a game about the brutal economic dismemberment of developing economies in the name of Free Trade and how, finally, the world is starting to realise that you do not cure poverty with Shock Therapy as that only makes things worse. Much worse.\n<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>\nIndeed, the necromorphs are not alien interlopers into a natural process, but products of that process itself. This is an important distinction, as it chimes so well with the way in which Friedman talks about the free market. Indeed, one of the more intriguing tactics used during the rise of neoliberalism as a political doctrine is the idea of the free market being in some way natural, like a default setting. If this is true, then it follows that any intervention by the state in the market is a \u2018distortion\u2019 of the market and \u2018unnatural\u2019, but this is mere political rhetoric\u2026 the market is a human institution and, as such, it has no existence beyond that granted it by humans. Living in a state of bare-knuckle free market capitalism is no more natural than living in a Stalinist planned economy\u2026 and even if it was, it would not be clear what kind of moral or political authority \u2018natural\u2019 carries. It is not \u2018natural\u2019 to have a special room to defecate in, but it does not follow that we should all let it drop out the back like cart horses. Dead Space\u2019s suggestion that the necromorphs\u2019 presence is a result of the planet cracking suggests that the human costs of the market must be taken into account and not merely repressed with force. Indeed, the game\u2019s final act sees Isaac Clarke desperately trying to mend fences with the hive mind by returning the marker to the planet. This also chimes intriguingly with the history of neoliberal thought\u2026\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nYou know, I think Jonathan might hve been slightly tongue in cheek here&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Jonathan McCalmont , Dead Space is The Shock Doctrine Gone Interplanetary: The French intellectual and artist Jean Cocteau once said that for some, style is a simple way of saying complicated things. EA Redwood Shores\u2019 Dead Space (2008) is a game that proves how much can be said with minute shifts of emphasis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}