Monopoly

by Chris Bertram on January 10, 2004

I’m just back from the Oxford Political Thought Conference — and great fun it was too. One of the things I managed to do in Oxford was to meet up with Chris Brooke of the “Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html in his palatial college rooms. Just over a year ago Chris and about the board games: me about “playing Monopoly in the old GDR”:http://junius.blogspot.com/2002_12_15_junius_archive.html#90066036 and “he about”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2002_12_01_archive.html Bertell Ollman’s game “Class Struggle”:http://www.aardwolfgames.com/aardmakehtml.mv?look4=2985.00000&src=DETAILS . I was fortunate enough to find myself sitting next to Professor Ollman at lunch today and asked him about the game, and one of the things he told me was the Monopoly itself was originally conceived as an _anti-capitalist_ game by a follower of Henry George. The story of the game’s invention and its subsequent appropriation by Parker Brothers is “here”:http://www.adena.com/adena/mo/ (scroll down to list of articles) and “here”:http://www.washingtonfreepress.org//36/monopoly.html .

{ 4 comments }

1

Randolph 01.12.04 at 2:10 am

I’d thought it was fairly obvious that Monopoly was anti-capitalist–it’s fun to play, but the game ends with one player owning, well, everything.

2

Randolph Fritz 01.12.04 at 2:24 am

Hey, a GPL version would be fun!

3

Gregg 01.13.04 at 3:32 am

I’d thought it was fairly obvious that Monopoly was anti-capitalist—it’s fun to play, but the game ends with one player owning, well, everything.

Not so much anti-capitalist as honest-about-capitalism, then?

4

Decnavda 01.13.04 at 3:55 am

If it was created by a follower of Henry George to illustrate his ideas (which is why that fact would be relevant, and which it actually does fairly well), can it really be called “anti-capitalist”? Anti-monopolist, yes, but…

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