by Donovan Lee McGrath
On the origin of Monopoly – the board game
Mtu yeyote ambaye amewahi kucheza mchezo wa ubao wa Monopoly anafahamu vizuri mienendo ya Mafanikio kwa Wenye Mafanikio: wachezaji wanaobahatika kutua kwenye mali ghali mapema katika mchezo wanaweza kuinunua, kujenga hoteli, na kupata kodi kubwa sana kutoka kwa wachezaji wenzao, hivyo kujikusanyia mali ya ushindi huku wakiwafilisi wengine. Kinachovutia, hata hivyo, ni kwamba mchezo huo hapo awali uliitwa ‘Mchezo wa Mmilikaji Ardhi’ na ulibuniwa mahususi kufichua dhuluma inayotokana na umilikaji wa mali uliozidi kwa mikono ya wachache, siyo kuuadhimisha.
Mvumbuzi wa mchezo huo, Elizabeth Magie, alikuwa mwungaji mkono mwenye msimamo wazi wa mawazo ya Henry George, na wakati alipoubuni mchezo wake kwa mara ya kwanza mwaka elfu moja mia tisa na tatu aliupa seti mbili tofauti kabisa za kanuni za kuchezwa kwa zamu. Chini ya seti ya kanuni za ‘Ustawi’, kila mchezaji alinufaika kila mara mtu aliponunua mali mpya (ikiakisi wito wa George wa kodi ya thamani ya ardhi), na mchezo huo ulishindwa (kwa pamoja) wakati mchezaji aliyeanza akiwa na kiasi kidogo sana cha pesa alipozizidisha mara mbili. Chini ya seti ya pili ya kanuni za ‘Mhodhi’, wachezaji walipata faida kwa kuwadai kodi waliokuwa na bahati mbaya ya kutua kwenye mali zao – na yeyote aliyewahi kuwafilisi wote wengine alikuwa mshindi wa pekee.
Kusudio la kuwa na seti hizo mbili za kanuni, alisema Magie, lilikuwa kwa wachezaji kupata uzoefu wa ‘mafafanuzi ya kiutendaji ya mfumo wa sasa wa kunyakua ardhi pamoja na matokeo na athari zake za kawaida,’ ili waweze kuelewa jinsi mitazamo mbalimbali ya umilikaji wa mali inavyoweza kusababisha matokeo ya kijamii yanayotofautiana kwa kiasi kikubwa. ‘Huenda ungeweza kuitwa “Mchezo wa Maisha”,’ Magie alinena, ‘kwa maana una vipengele vyote vya mafanikio na kushindwa katika dunia halisi.’ Hata hivyo kampuni ya kutengeneza michezo ya Parker Brothers iliponunua hataza ya Mchezo wa ‘Mmilikaji Ardhi’ kutoka kwa Magie wakati wa miaka ya elfu moja mia tisa na thelathini, waliuzindua upya kwa jina la Monopoly pekee, na kuwapatia umma wenye hamu seti moja tu ya kanuni: zile zilizosherehekea ushindi wa mtu mmoja juu ya wote.
Anyone who has played the board game Monopoly is well versed in the dynamics of Success to the Successful: players who are lucky enough to land on expensive properties early in the game can buy them up, build hotels, and reap vast rents from their fellow players, thus accumulating a winning fortune as they bankrupt the rest. Fascinatingly, however, the game was originally called ‘The Landlord’s Game’ and was designed precisely to reveal the injustice arising out of such concentrated property ownership, not to celebrate it.
The game’s inventor Elizabeth Magie was an outspoken supporter of Henry George’s ideas and when she first created her game in 1903 she gave it two very different sets of rules to be played in turn. Under the ‘Prosperity’ set of rules, every player gained each time someone acquired a new property (echoing George’s call for a land value tax), and the game was won (by all) when the player who had started out with the least money had doubled it. Under the second, ‘Monopolist’ set of rules, players gained by charging rent to those who were unfortunate enough to land on their properties – and whoever managed to bankrupt the rest was the sole winner.
The purpose of the dual sets of rules, said Magie, was for players to experience a ‘practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences’ and so understand how different approaches to property ownership can lead to vastly different social outcomes. ‘It might well have been called “The Game of Life”,’ remarked Magie, ‘as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world.’ But when the games manufacturer Parker Brothers bought the patent for the Landlord’s Game from Magie in the 1930s, they relaunched it simply as Monopoly, and provided the eager public with just one set of rules: those that celebrate the triumph of one over all.
(cf. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth (2017))