I wanted badly to like Monopoly: Socialism, I’ll admit. Though released last year, Hasbro’s socialist-parody version of the original board game caused something of a stir last month after it became the subject of a viral Twitter screed by an indignant lefty academic who complained it was “mean-spirited and woefully ill-informed.” “From the tagline ‘Winning is for capitalists’ we can see right away that this game is not going to be friendly to whatever it deems ‘socialism’ to be,” he wrote, somewhat unnecessarily.
The thread, with its tendentious grousing and wet-blanket scolding, and the rhetoric-aping writeups it inspired, was tailor-made to broach a tribal-ideological response, with those on the Right supportive of the game and those on the Left largely siding with the scolds.
As a greedy right-wing capitalist, I was naturally looking forward to trying it out for myself. As a homegrown fan of mean-spirited games — there’s been a moratorium on Addison family UNO games well on 15 years now — doubly so.
Thus, it was with some anticipation that I invited a group of friends — fellow capitalists, all — for an afternoon of nostalgic entertainment, lampooning the Reds, and toasting to free markets. Sitting on the roof deck of my Washington, D.C., apartment, overlooking the curling Potomac, cigars lit, Juuls charged, and refreshments flowing, it was a scene to make Rich Uncle Pennybags proud; a semi-ironic monocle wouldn’t have felt out of place.
Sadly, it only took a few turns to realize the game’s critics weren’t totally off base. While there is fun to be had, most of the laughs are cheap, and the gameplay mechanics are disappointingly unimaginative. Some of this is by design: Monopoly: Socialism exists to poke fun at the failures and realities of a socialist system, meaning the expansive cashflow of the original game’s rent-seeking market economy is replaced by stolid collectivist poverty. As it turns out, taking away the profit function from a game about economic activity somewhat dulls the fun.
As in traditional Monopoly, players roll dice to move around the board, but instead of trying to bankrupt opponents by buying up and developing properties, in Monopoly: Socialism your goal is to “manage” and develop community “projects” for “the pursuit of a socialist utopia.” While the gamepieces are antiquated — options include a gramophone, compass, typewriter, Ma Bell-style telephone — the imagined utopian community reflects contemporary left-wing fads. Out are Marvin Gardens and Connecticut Avenue; in are the “No-Tip Vegan Restaurant” and the “Healthcare for All Hospital.”
Each player begins the game with 10 “contribution chips,” all emblazoned with a colored socialist rose, which they can use to develop open projects. The first person to place all of their chips onto projects wins.
Of course, this being a socialist economy, no one has any money: Players start the game with empty pocketbooks and collect a “living wage” of only $50 when they pass “Go” in place of the standard $200. Instead, nearly all payments are made by dipping into the collective “Community Fund,” which begins the game stocked with $1,848 (“the year The Communist Manifesto was published!” the gamebook informs). If the fund runs dry, the game is over.
Unsurprisingly, this does not take long. In fact, averaging from the few games we played, economic collapse only takes about seven turns. While players must donate $5 of their living wage to the fund, and are allowed to donate more, none of us ever did. Instead, self-interest reigned supreme. As one of my friends said while taking from the till to pay for a project on the game’s very first turn: “Why not? It’s not my money.”
A useful lesson about collectivist misjudgment of human nature, but not one that makes for very exciting gameplay. Strategy is largely replaced by luck, as most of the action comes via the 44 “Chance” cards, which are utilized far more than in the traditional game design. Gleefully sardonic, most of the cards either allow a player to play a contribution chip for some “good” behavior or involve ratting on the other players for wrongdoing and removing one or more of their chips from the board in punishment. Some of these read like the petty neighborhood disputes of Nextdoor (“Uh, is that an extra floor your neighbor added to their project? Remove another player’s chip from any project card”); others are just cheap memes (“Everyone loves the song you made for the anti-capitalism rally! Place one of your chips on any open contribution space”).
Whether it’s “mean-spirited” depends on one’s political orientation — jokes at the expense of the Bolsheviks and their blinkered ideological descendants are just fine by me — but there’s no denying the fact that the game is a lazy attempt. As for being “woefully ill-informed,” well, if you’re looking forward to liquidating any kulaks, expropriating oil revenues, or sending fellow players to the gulag, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
In the end, the game is little more than a cheap play to capitalize on partisan messaging for profits, something to sell to right-wingers who want to own the libs. It’s no surprise, then, that this month, Hasbro debuted yet another version of the game, Ms. Monopoly, to appeal to a separate certain type of consumer.
Long live capitalism.
J. Grant Addison is the deputy editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
