Elizabeth J. Magie was dealt a dirty trick by fate. In a display of imagination and pedagogy, in 1904 she created a board game that she called ‘The Landlord’s Game’ to point out the evils of capitalism and to make known the postulates of Georgism, an economic philosophy that advocated collective ownership of land. However, over time her work ended up becoming the exact opposite: a universal symbol of capitalism. So much so in fact that today the game’s logo is probably, along with the US dollar symbol, the most iconic image of everything that represents the market.
Its name has also changed. It is now called Monopoly.
Magie’s gameHer name may not ring a bell, but Elizabeth J. Magie is the brains and soul behind one of the most popular board games in history: Monopoly. Only she didn’t call it that. And the original purpose for which she conceived it, more than a century ago, has ended up being completely altered. So much so, that it’s not unreasonable to think that she would be scandalized by her current approach.
Magie was a nonconformist woman from Illinois, passionate about the arts and economics, who at the beginning of the 20th century decided to create a work to point out the evils of capitalism and highlight the economic philosophy she embraced, Georgism. But unlike other authors, Magie did not choose to write an essay or a play. What she did was create a board game that she called ‘The Landlord’s game’. In January 1904 she registered it with patent 748,626.
Another way to approach GeorgeThe form may be peculiar, but the content, not so much. What Elizabeth Magie wanted with her game was to make known part of the economic theory of Henry George, a very popular intellectual in his time, author of ‘Progress and Poverty’ and a great exponent of the Georgist economic ideology.
As historian Eduardo Montagut recalls, George believed that each individual was the owner of what he earned, and so he respected private property; but he differed from capitalism in one key aspect: that which is directly provided by nature, including the land, are resources that belong to everyone equally.
With this premise, Georgism advocated the application of a single tax on real estate, a rate that would directly tax the resource, not its greater or lesser productivity, and would ultimately benefit society as a whole. The idea was simple: since the land belonged to everyone, its use should also leave benefits, via taxes, for the community.
One circuit, two modes.The Landlord’s Game was a great display of educational talent in order to make Georgism known. Economist Kate Raworth recalls that Magie designed a circuit full of streets and monuments for sale, purchase prices, services and cards that were chosen at random. The key to her work, however, was its two rules. Very different from each other. And eloquent.
The first was “Prosperity,” a community game dynamic: when a participant acquired a property, all players won something. The game ended when the worst positioned player at the beginning doubled his “fortune.”
The second set of rules was competitive and its name could not have been more deliberate: “Monopoly”. With it, each player advanced by buying properties and collecting rents to ruin their opponents.
“Practical demonstration”The game’s conclusions left little room for interpretation, but Magie made sure to put them in plain English just in case. Her work was a “practical demonstration of the land grabbing system, as well as its results and consequences,” she reasoned.
The focus was on the little ones. “Let the children see clearly the enormous injustice of our current agrarian system and, when they grow up, if they are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will be remedied,” Magie explained in the instructions that accompanied the game.
And Monopoly was createdMagie designed ‘The Landlord’s Game’ around 1903, obtained a patent in 1904 and launched the game on her own in 1906. After three years she tried her luck with a manufacturer, but without much success. The company rejected her because they considered her rules too complicated. The next crucial episode in the history of the game came decades later, in the 1930s, when Charles Darrow happened to discover Magie’s creation.
Darrows found the idea so attractive that he took it to Parker Brothers. Not long after, Monopoly was launched. The company ended up buying Magie’s patent, but over the years the ideological approach that had inspired its author was completely altered: the game dynamic was promoted in which the player who managed to drag his opponents into bankruptcy won, and the idea of a single tax on land and the Georgist postulates vanished.
The rest is board game history… and capitalism: the famous “Rich Uncle” has managed to sell hundreds of millions of copies and his image, of a gray-haired man with a moustache, a cane and a top hat, became an icon of the economic system whose shame Elizabeth Magie wanted to expose.
Images | William Warby (Flickr) and Wikipedia 1, 2 and 3
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