Monopoly

Wait. Capitalism is bad? (The Bus 1.19)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

The best-selling privately patented board game in history, Monopoly became popular across the United States during the second half of the Great Depression. Designed to be played by two to eight players, the goal is for each player to remain financially solvent while buying and developing pieces of property to force opponents into bankruptcy. As bankruptcy results in elimination from the game, the last player on the board is the winner.¹

I lost this game. Photo: Bryan Padrick

Charles Darrow - an unemployed heating engineer - invented the game and sold the concept to Parker Brothers in 1935. Or, at least, this is the official version of its creation. In reality, the game was invented (and patented) in 1903 by Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Magie. A liberal progressive with intense political beliefs,² Lizzie felt the new century’s problems (particularly its vast income inequalities and over-powerful monopolies) were of profound concern - and that not enough people were being educated about these issues. She designed the game as an ‘interactive and creative’ way of engaging people with her progressive political views.³ 

Lizzie called her game the ‘Landlord’s Game’ and described it as a ‘practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences … all the elements of success and failure … and the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, i.e. the accumulation of wealth.’ To reinforce this lesson, she created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set which rewarded all players when wealth was created, and a monopolist set with the goal of creating monopolies and crushing opponents. Lizzie intended that players would learn to embrace the differences between these sets of rules in order to resolve the tension between them. However, from almost the beginning - surprising no one - the monopolist set of rules was far more popular. 

The Landlord’s Game was published in 1905 by the Economic Game Company, a New York–based firm in which Lizzie was part-owner. The game quickly became popular with ‘leftwing intellectuals and on college campuses,’ and spread in popularity throughout the next three decades. It eventually caught the interest of a Quaker community in Atlantic City (who renamed the streets after their own neighbourhoods) - and from there, a handmade version ended up in the hands of Charles Darrow.

The true origin story has been around for nearly 50 years,⁴ but the Darrow story remains as an ‘inspirational parable of American innovation.’ This is due to both Parker Brothers⁵ and Darrow himself who wished to keep it just that way. After his version of the game became a phenomenal success and earned him millions, journalists kept asking him how he had ‘managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air.’ In response to the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper, Darrow replied that, ‘It’s a freak. Entirely unexpected and illogical.’⁶

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to an article by Lauren Collee from Real Life in which she examines the impact of the digital age on our circadian rhythms. She shows that - despite technology’s efforts to regulate these patterns with blue light filters and reminders to take breaks, etc. - the relative nature of time when we’re online separates us from our real-world, biological connection to time. An interesting read, especially if you spend any time with a digital device.

Temporal Belonging

The Book

Today’s book is Kurt Andersen’s⁷ Evil Geniuses: How Big Money Took Over America.⁸ It is a highly-researched cultural and economic exposé of how America has ended up where it is today. From the back: ‘Evil Geniuses is the secret history of how, over the last half century, America has sharply swerved away from its dream of progress for the many to a system of unfettered profit and self-interest for the few. As the social liberation of the 1960s finally ended in the chaos of Vietnam and Watergate, a faction of rich industrialists, business chiefs, wide-eyed libertarians and right-wing economic radicals were waiting, determined to claw back everything they saw as rightfully theirs.’ It’s a very interesting read and - at the very least - you won’t see the world the same way again. 

A couple of reviews:

Marx and Philosophy: Evil Geniuses  

Publisher’s Weekly: Evil Geniuses 

Remember: You can buy Evil Geniuses at Amazon, but you can also get it from your local bookstore. And that’s better for everyone.

The Sounds

Another more or less random playlist today. The Magnetic Fields are an excellent band and more people need to listen to them. This track is a great one (of many) from 1999’s 69 Love Songs. The Modern English track brings back memories of my past - but it was a shock to realise it’s 40 years old this year. Ugh. Both the Saint Slumber and Hirsch tracks are relatively new to me and the ethereal ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’ sounds fresh, even though it’s from 2004 …. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

The Thought

Today’s Quotation is from John Dos Passos’s, 42nd Parallel (1930) - the first title in the USA trilogy.⁹ The trilogy, covering the development of American society during the first three decades of the 20th century, was ranked 23rd on the Modern Library’s 100 Best English-language Novels of the 20th Century in 1998. 

“The only man that gets anything out of capitalism is a crook, an’ he gets to be a millionaire in short order.”

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!

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Until the next stop …

1. There are numerous versions of Monopoly, ranging from Monopoly Junior and Monopoly Cheaters Edition to a Monopoly Star Wars version. There are currently 13 official versions on the Hasbro website. Street names and places change according to place of release, for example while the original US version’s properties were named for streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the UK version uses London street names. Sources for this Stop are The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game's leftwing origins and Monopoly (Brittanica)

2. By any account, Lizzie Magie was a remarkable woman who was far ahead of her time. She lived in Washington, DC on a block that ‘included a dairyman, a peddler who identified himself as a “huckster,” a sailor, a carpenter and a musician.’ She also ‘shared her house with a male actor who paid rent, and a black female servant’ (not her own), and in the evenings after work taught classes in politics.

3. At the turn of the century, as board games grew in popularity in middle class homes, manufacturers began to see them not just as pastimes but as a means of mass communication.

4. It was uncovered in 1973 by Ralph Anspach, a ‘leftwing academic’, who created the Anti-Monopoly game and got into a legal battle with Parker Brothers. Researching his case, he discovered Lizzie’s story and after he won his case, the information became widely available.

5. Today, Parker Brothers is a subsidiary of Hasbro, which continues to credit the origin of the game to Darrow.

6. I had no idea about Monopoly’s history until I began writing this issue after losing yet another game to my son last week.

7. For more information about Andersen and his work, see: Kurt Andersen

8. This is the UK subtitle; in the US it is The Unmaking of America - a Recent History.

9. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was an American writer whose ‘reputation as a social historian and as a radical critic of the quality of American life rests primarily’ on this trilogy. For a bio, see: John Dos Passos (Brittanica)