Recently I got thinking about the game which families across the world have all come to love: Monopoly. Having sold what has been approximated at 275 million copies worldwide, Monopoly has become an international and cultural phenomena of timeless relevance and enjoyment across the generations. Its great success indicates how so many of us seem to rather enjoy bankrupting and crushing our friends and family. Thus, it seems the original message has become somewhat lost in the excitement and fun in our succeeding as a landlord and revelling in others demise. It would surprise many to discover the true origins of this game we all know and love. It was not, as we were led for years to believe, a story of a man fulfilling the American Dream narrative, devising a revolutionary board game that celebrated the prowess of a Capitalist economy, rather it was the work of left-wing, feminist Lizzie Magie. 

Surprisingly, the original edition of Monopoly ‘The Landlord’s Game’, as produced by Magie in 1903, was, in fact, designed to teach its players about the dangers of wealth concentration by demonstrating how an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where wealth is held by only a handful of monopolies. Specifically, the game was created as a way of communicating and sharing the economic ideology known as Georgism to a wider audience. Emerging from the ideas of popular nineteenth century politician and economist Henry George, Georgism and its supporters believed and advocated for the single tax that would lead to equality. Land was considered as belonging to the nation, to everyone, as God’s creation, not that which should be laid claim by a small group of monopolists.  Magie illustrated this by creating two sets of rules: the anti-monopolist set (‘Prosperity’) and the monopolist set (‘Monopoly’). In the anti-monopolist set, all players were rewarded when wealth was created, whereas in the monopolist set, the goal was to create monopolies and force others out of business. The tension between these two opposing philosophical positions was intended to demonstrate to players that the anti-monopoly version was the morally correct choice—both in the game and in the real world. The rules of the 1932 edition of the game stated:

 ‘The Landlord’s Game shows why our national housekeeping has gone wrong and Prosperity Game shows how to start it right and keep it going right’. 

Magie’s edition was never a huge sale success, however, it was taken up and became popular among leftwing intellectuals and across college campuses—much to her excitement. She saw the boardgame as a way in which she could widen her reach in informing others of the Georgist ideology—her evenings spent after work teaching her beliefs were frustrating and unsatisfying in achieving her goals. The board game was becoming more commonplace in middle class homes due to mass production making them more readily available and it was the perfect way to share her beliefs in a way that was interactive and creative. As she stated in a political magazine “it is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences. It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’…the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, i.e., the accumulation of wealth.”

However, another feature of this time in terms of board games was to create one’s own homemade version, including those already published. Copies of Magie’s Landlord game soon began to spread and where there are copies, changes can, and did, start to creep in. As the meaning of the game faded into the background and people became more invested in the crushing of their opponents, the Prosperity rule set became almost entirely abandoned and we were left only with ‘The Monopoly Game’ or just ‘Monopoly’. This was later co-opted by a Mr Charles Darrow who claimed the game as his own following an enjoyable evening of playing a friend’s version. It was the version eventually produced by Darrow that was bought by Parker Brothers in 1935, selling 278,000 units in its first year and 1,751,000 in 1936. Thus, we saw the subversion of a left-wing motivated board game, designed to highlight the evils of one person amassing great wealth at the detriment of others being celebrated and enjoyed for this very thing. 

I find it sadly ironic how the goals of feisty Lizzie Magie have been so forgotten and left rather out of the picture when one thinks of Monopoly. It is certainly notable that since the game’s origin, we have seen only a closer convergence on the very thing Magie seemed to be warning us, and society, of. All financial trends now seem to point to the concentration of financial resources to the few at the top, with the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorest families more than doubling from 1989 to 2016. Furthermore, with Trump’s recent victory, we saw a record $64 billion added to the wealth of the richest top ten, with the likes of Elon Musk receiving the largest increase with a $26.5 billion addition to his fortune (now standing at $290 billion). 

Thus, while Monopoly has become a staple in most homes across the world, characterising intimate, familial moments, it seems we have been living this game all along. I do not wish to spoil our fun, a game geared towards our natural human tendency to compete, especially where some fake money is involved, is bound to captivate us. Who doesn’t love a friendly bankrupting of a sibling or parent? However, I do wish to make this parallel and to also remind us of those original intentions that lie behind this beloved game. Magie was warning us of our current reality, where wealth has been amassed by a small few at the top, as the rich have only got richer while the poor only poorer. It seems the Monopoly game that has become our reality is near its end, there is not much further it can go. The levels of instability, as the rise of fascism and decline of living standards indicates, suggests we may be entering a new era, one that, hopefully, will not be as predictable as a board game. 

Image by Dee on Pixabay https://pixabay.com/illustrations/background-wallpaper-game-board-8383489/