Monopoly as Zero Sum Game

Once upon a time children played by the roadside, chanting traditional rhymes in a long-established pattern. Games flowed in a natural progression, one following another as the mood took the group. The question of who had 'won' and who had 'lost' in the playing of the games was of little interest. Play was a social occasion, a chance to test out one's personality as an individual and to learn the roles and rules of operating as a social being. The fun was in the playing, in the process, not the end result. Through games children learned to work together, developing the social skills they would need to participate in the adult community. By contrast, modern games foster the desire to win at the expense of the other players, preparing children to operate in a very different world. Monopoly is one such `zero-sum' game. The Penguin Dictionary of Economics describes a 'zero-sum 'game as "...a game in which one player 's gain is equal to another players losses, whatever strategy is chosen. The players can only compete for slices of a fixed cake: there are no opportunities of overall gain through collusion. The sum of gains will always equal the sum of losses, the whole summing to zero.

Monopoly is an excellent teaching aid for the development of the mass mind of global competitive capitalism, where individuals maximise their own benefits and minimise their own costs. Community, kin, friends, family and locality are eradicated from this 'real' world of competitive fantasy. Like the internet, Monopoly enables people to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, ignoring social and environmental reality. All that counts is staying in the game, playing to win and forcing opponents (other people) off the board. The 'selfish game' of Monopoly is a best seller. Since its reproduction by Parker Brothers in 1935 the game has sold over two million copies and is available in 80 countries. Five billion little green houses have been built, and a person who has never heard of the game is regarded as a curiosity.

Although the game is translated to portray the familiar street names of the capital cities of different countries, there ends the concession to locality. Players buy and sell the land and buildings with no respect for the local culture of the region where they operate. Players compete as 'rational' individuals seeking personal gain, free from any restraints of tradition that might balance rights with responsibilities. Geography, ecology, flora, fauna, folkways, everything relating to place and community is eradicated. The game is played in a timeless continuum, where people are neither sick nor old, there are no young to care for and questions of food, fodder, fuel and fertility of the land do not arise. As a teaching aid for the 'real world' of the global capitalist economy, Monopoly is excellent. As a blueprint for operating in the non-fantasy real world of the natural economy and the real-life community it is terrifying.

Like an old-fashioned fairy story, Monopoly presents a scenario which encourages 'right' moves while discouraging 'wrong' actions. It is all the more effective for being played rather than merely listened to. The question is, how did Monopoly originate? Was it the brainchild of a single individual inventor, or the product of teamwork? Was it snapped up at once by a toy manufacturer, or was it repeatedly rejected? Monopoly has a fascinating story of its own.

Charles Darrow has been credited with its invention. He took the game to Parker Brothers in the early 1930s, but they turned it down because of 56 design faults. In 1933/4 Darrow went ahead and produced 500 handmade copies of the game selling them through a chain store. The game was immediately popular. Unable to keep up with the demand, Darrow approached Parker Brothers again, and the rest is history.

Less well known is the start of the story. The 'design faults' were scarcely surprising, since the game was never intended to illustrate the smooth working of the capitalist economy. On the contrary, it was initially designed to demonstrate the inherent flaws in monopoly control of the land. The game taken to Parker Brothers was one of a large number of versions circulating in the States, the UK and elsewhere under a range of different names. The 'Darrow' game was painted on an oilcloth used for covering a table, and is reputed to have been stolen from a Mrs Elizabeth Magee Phillips in the late 1920s.

The games were devised as teaching aids to portray the evils of the selfish system of monopoly land holding and financial exploitation. The idea was to move beyond mere protest towards practical alternatives. The socially responsible view of land holding, and proposals for a Single Tax based on land ownership originated in the work of Henry George.

The early 'win-win Georgist games circulated in the USA and the UK around the turn of the 19th century. Their creators held a profound faith in the human capacity for action based upon reasoned argument. The games were designed to be played cooperatively, providing a focus for discussion and following a common pattern. Monopoly was developed from the first phase of the game which demonstrates the effects of a greedy, selfish pattern of monopoly land-holding. The later two phases, which form games in themselves, demonstrate the potential for communities to regain access to land. It is ironic that a game first devised to move away from monopoly land holding should have come to serve continued exploitation and degradation of the land.

In 2006 a group operating under the name of Planetwatch Communications, re-drew an early version, which had circulated in the UK as "Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit" just before the First World War. Despite the title, this is not a children's game. However, a major obstacle to the thoughtful playing of this original version is familiarity with the selfish, zero-sum game of Monopoly.