![]() ![]() Inspired throughout her life by the economist Henry George, who proposed an early progressive “single tax” on land, Magie also imagined an alternate political system. She invented The Landlord’s Game after observing the world as a land-grabbing competition - to her, “the game of life” - where oil, steel, and railroad monopolists like Carnegie and Rockefeller got rich while most players remained poor. Magie’s Monopoly came with a purpose: to demonstrate the evils of wealth accumulation. A woman named Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie, whose familiar sketches on my screen even included the crucial “go to jail” corner square, had patented The Landlord’s Game in 1903. I found that while Monopoly’s parent company Hasbro credited the game’s genius to Charles Darrow, the man who sold them the rights in 1935, the idea could be traced farther back. My questions about Monopoly Socialism turned to the politics of the Monopoly franchise. “A primer on socialism, by dipshits, for dipshits,” read another review. “It goes without saying that this game is entirely uninterested in trying to understand what socialism actually is and how it might function,” tweeted Rutgers University professor Nick Kapur. Who the hell invented this game? I couldn’t sleep that night without an internet escapade. “I’m bored.” Soon, I was left alone to fiddle with the abandoned game chips, to ask that silly cardboard how its politics had snuck its way into my leisure time. “All we’re doing is losing money,” my brother said, removing a chip and standing up to leave. ![]() Are they mocking the capitalist, or the socialist?” My brother drew the next card: “Your neighbor tells everyone they got food poisoning from your vegan meatloaf.” I wondered if vegan meatloaf had ever once crossed Marx’s mind. “Everyone in the Community loves your new podcast, Crapitalist,” my sister read aloud, placing a chip on the board. An hour ago, I had been corralling the two of them to test out my Christmas gift, eager to resurface the childhood glee of plotting their bankruptcy in a round of classic Monopoly, “the world’s favorite family board game.” Monopoly Socialism’s alternate premise fascinated me: instead of acquiring private property, the task was to build projects together, drawing from a shared Community Fund, in pursuit of a “socialist utopia.” But the game itself made the task feel silly. I watched my younger siblings scamper off, closing their bedroom doors behind them, before returning my gaze to the rubble at my feet -pseudo-cash, old-timey red tokens, and black chips with blue roses scattered without order or care on the living room floor. ![]()
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