andy blunden writes the following in Stalinism: Its Origin and Its Future:
"The bureaucracy, owing to its conditions of life, aspired to ownership of the means of production, but was excluded from this by Soviet law. Nevertheless, like all bureaucracies, they used their position to gain the greatest possible freedom from the control from the population."
blunden identifies the bureaucracy of a stalinist system as wielding the instruments of political violence on behalf of the proletariat (who won said instruments via revolutionary upheaval of a capitalist social order) while simultaneously negotiating greater and greater autonomy to conduct the state away from proletariat desires. this is specifically attributed to the isolation of the soviet state and the failure of international socialism in the wake of the russian revolution. when operating in a capitalist global economy and with the need to establish industrialized productive forces in a relatively undeveloped country, the bureaucracy organized markets and rigid economic control in order to create competitive parity with its neighbors.
these threads are woven tightly throughout your days as immigration officer in arstotzka. it presents the material contradiction at the heart of socialist bureaucratic rule cleanly: the regulatory actions of the bureaucracy can themselves be twisted into commodities. the ideal value of the officer's choice to accept or deny an immigrant's paperwork lies in its judgment on the fitness of a person to enter or exit a country; a binary moral evaluation of someone as a refugee, traveler, or potential productive labor vs an ideological dissident, terrorist, or purveyor of bourgeoisie exploitation. when this receives an exchange valuation in the form of "credits," a dialectic relation emerges. the need to keep one's family afloat in the face of daily expenses turns the throughput of the line into the driver of decision-making while the just impetus behind the officer's duty becomes less and less relevant. the game counterweighs this somewhat by instantly scoring you on your decisions, but it's only able to do so in terms of factual, unnuanced contradictions. forged seals on entry permits and stolen visas are smashed into the same category as those with minor typos in their region of origin and identification cards just a day or two expired. any means of quantifying the ideal behind the action of immigration squashes it into a degenerated new interpretation.
with this transformation of the action of immigration approval into a commodity, the state and its handlers are able to leverage it as such. when asian-expy country impor imposes trade sanctions on arstotzka, the latter fires back by cutting off access to its borders, withholding a service identical to its rival's cessation of the trade of physical goods. a fellow guard gets kickbacks off of detainments and cuts you into his share, giving the player the opportunity to reap rewards from detaining immigrants for virtually any small paperwork infraction. even terrorist attacks become easy paydays for the player, changing from unfortunate interruptions in your commission-based salary to a sigh of relief as a suicide bomber rushing the outpost is surgically eliminated by your hand. in all of these instances, the meaning behind these bureaucratic, theoretically necessary actions are gamified through their transformation into commodities. even the physical passports themselves are commodified by the end of the game, where surreptitiously confiscating above-board foreign passports gives your family the opportunity to create forgeries and emigrate into a different country.
in this way, the game forces the player's hand by accelerating a bureaucratization of the mind. I denied entry to a woman because she lacked an ID card even with a valid domestic visa; I immediately rationalized this because her excuse ("I left the country before ID cards were distributed") seemed incongruent with a supposed history that I had literally no basis for. at the same time, I applauded myself for making "morally correct" choices to weigh out my perpetuation of injustice, such as letting a woman join her husband even when missing her entry permit or denying entry to a pimp trafficking women through your checkpoint. in essence, the existence of the service I provided as a commodity gave the illusion of perpetual justice when I made discrete choices that defied the imposed exchange value, buoying the contradiction between moral ideal and commodified existence in the process. any sense of personal gratification off of these actions stemmed entirely from the fact that I wielded complete control over these people's lives, even if I occasionally offered benevolence. it succinctly shows the inability for meaningful revolutionary action by a single actor when perpetuating a regressive mode of a production. rather, only organized methods can viably allow for a true, international struggle for a classless society.
mechanically the game perfectly conjures the claustrophobic doldrums of work giving way to dull bouts of relief at the absence of any citation. chump sums it up rather tidily in their own review. virtually never a possible contradiction that doesn't appear during regular play at least once or twice, encouraging thorough play while simultaneously rushing you along.
"The bureaucracy, owing to its conditions of life, aspired to ownership of the means of production, but was excluded from this by Soviet law. Nevertheless, like all bureaucracies, they used their position to gain the greatest possible freedom from the control from the population."
blunden identifies the bureaucracy of a stalinist system as wielding the instruments of political violence on behalf of the proletariat (who won said instruments via revolutionary upheaval of a capitalist social order) while simultaneously negotiating greater and greater autonomy to conduct the state away from proletariat desires. this is specifically attributed to the isolation of the soviet state and the failure of international socialism in the wake of the russian revolution. when operating in a capitalist global economy and with the need to establish industrialized productive forces in a relatively undeveloped country, the bureaucracy organized markets and rigid economic control in order to create competitive parity with its neighbors.
these threads are woven tightly throughout your days as immigration officer in arstotzka. it presents the material contradiction at the heart of socialist bureaucratic rule cleanly: the regulatory actions of the bureaucracy can themselves be twisted into commodities. the ideal value of the officer's choice to accept or deny an immigrant's paperwork lies in its judgment on the fitness of a person to enter or exit a country; a binary moral evaluation of someone as a refugee, traveler, or potential productive labor vs an ideological dissident, terrorist, or purveyor of bourgeoisie exploitation. when this receives an exchange valuation in the form of "credits," a dialectic relation emerges. the need to keep one's family afloat in the face of daily expenses turns the throughput of the line into the driver of decision-making while the just impetus behind the officer's duty becomes less and less relevant. the game counterweighs this somewhat by instantly scoring you on your decisions, but it's only able to do so in terms of factual, unnuanced contradictions. forged seals on entry permits and stolen visas are smashed into the same category as those with minor typos in their region of origin and identification cards just a day or two expired. any means of quantifying the ideal behind the action of immigration squashes it into a degenerated new interpretation.
with this transformation of the action of immigration approval into a commodity, the state and its handlers are able to leverage it as such. when asian-expy country impor imposes trade sanctions on arstotzka, the latter fires back by cutting off access to its borders, withholding a service identical to its rival's cessation of the trade of physical goods. a fellow guard gets kickbacks off of detainments and cuts you into his share, giving the player the opportunity to reap rewards from detaining immigrants for virtually any small paperwork infraction. even terrorist attacks become easy paydays for the player, changing from unfortunate interruptions in your commission-based salary to a sigh of relief as a suicide bomber rushing the outpost is surgically eliminated by your hand. in all of these instances, the meaning behind these bureaucratic, theoretically necessary actions are gamified through their transformation into commodities. even the physical passports themselves are commodified by the end of the game, where surreptitiously confiscating above-board foreign passports gives your family the opportunity to create forgeries and emigrate into a different country.
in this way, the game forces the player's hand by accelerating a bureaucratization of the mind. I denied entry to a woman because she lacked an ID card even with a valid domestic visa; I immediately rationalized this because her excuse ("I left the country before ID cards were distributed") seemed incongruent with a supposed history that I had literally no basis for. at the same time, I applauded myself for making "morally correct" choices to weigh out my perpetuation of injustice, such as letting a woman join her husband even when missing her entry permit or denying entry to a pimp trafficking women through your checkpoint. in essence, the existence of the service I provided as a commodity gave the illusion of perpetual justice when I made discrete choices that defied the imposed exchange value, buoying the contradiction between moral ideal and commodified existence in the process. any sense of personal gratification off of these actions stemmed entirely from the fact that I wielded complete control over these people's lives, even if I occasionally offered benevolence. it succinctly shows the inability for meaningful revolutionary action by a single actor when perpetuating a regressive mode of a production. rather, only organized methods can viably allow for a true, international struggle for a classless society.
mechanically the game perfectly conjures the claustrophobic doldrums of work giving way to dull bouts of relief at the absence of any citation. chump sums it up rather tidily in their own review. virtually never a possible contradiction that doesn't appear during regular play at least once or twice, encouraging thorough play while simultaneously rushing you along.