Fate played a trick on Elizabeth J. Magie. In a display of imagination and pedagogy, in 1904 she designed a board game she called ‘The Landlord’s Game’ to point out the evils of capitalism and to publicise the propositions of Georgism, an economic philosophy that advocated collective ownership of the world. But over time her work became the opposite: a universal symbol of capitalism. So much so that today the game logo is probably the most iconic image of what the market represents, along with the US dollar symbol.

Its name has also changed. It is now called Monopoly.

Magic’s game. Her name may not come to mind, but Elizabeth J. Magie is the brains and soul behind one of the most popular board games in history: Monopoly. But she didn’t call it that. And over a century ago, the way it was designed has completely changed. It’s not unreasonable to think that her current approach would cause a scandal.

Magie was an unconventional woman from Illinois, passionate about art and economics, who at the beginning of the 20th century decided to create a work to draw attention to the evils of capitalism and to highlight her economic philosophy of Georgism. Unlike other writers, however, Magie did not choose to write an article or a play. What she did was design a board game called ‘The Landlord’s Game’. She registered it under patent number 748,626 in January 1904.

Another way to approach George. The form may be strange; the background not so much. What Elizabeth Magie wanted with her play was to publicize some of the economic theory of Henry George, a very popular intellectual of his time, author of ‘Progress and Poverty’ and a great representative of Georgian economic ideology.

As historian Eduardo Montagut recalls, George believed that each individual owned what he earned, so he respected private property, but he differed from capitalism in one important respect: the resources that nature directly provides, including land, are resources that belong equally to everyone.

With this premise, Georgism advocated a single tax on real estate, a rate that would tax the resource directly, not the greater or lesser productivity of the resource, and ultimately benefit society as a whole. The idea was simple: since land belonged to everyone, its use should also benefit the community through taxes.

‘One circuit, two modes.’The Host’s play was a didactic tour de force to promote Georgianism. The economist Kate Raworth remembers Magie designing a circuit full of streets and monuments for sale, purchase prices, services and randomly selected cards. But the key to her work was her two arrangements. Very different. And meaningful.

The first of these was “Prosperity,” a community game dynamic: all players gained something when a participant inherited a property. The game ended with the worst-ranked player doubling his “wealth.”

The second arrangement was competitive, and its name could not have been more deliberate: “Monopoly.” However, each player proceeded to destroy their opponents at the expense of purchasing property and collecting rent.

“Practical demonstration”The results of the game left little room for interpretation, but Magie was careful to state them clearly in black on white, just in case. He considered his work to be “a practical demonstration of the system of land grabbing, as well as its consequences and results.”

The focus was particularly on the little ones. “Let the children see clearly the tremendous injustice in our present agricultural system, and when they grow up, if allowed to develop naturally, the evil will be remedied,” Magie explained in the instructions accompanying the game.

And Tekel was createdMagie conceived of the ‘Landlord’s Game’ around 1903, patented it in 1904, and launched the game on his own in 1906. Three years later he tried his hand at a manufacturer but had little success. The company rejected him because they thought the rules were too complicated. The next important chapter in the game’s history came decades later, in the 1930s, when Charles Darrow stumbled upon Magie’s creation.

Darrows found the idea so appealing that he took it to Parker Brothers. Monopoly was soon launched. The company eventually bought Magie’s patent, but over the years the ideological approach that inspired its author has completely changed: the dynamic of the game, in which the participant who manages to bankrupt his opponents wins, is encouraged, and the assumptions of land and Georgia are eliminated.

The rest is the history of board games… and capitalism: the famous “Rich Uncle” managed to sell hundreds of millions of copies, and his image became a gray-haired man with a mustache, a cane and a top hat – a symbol of the economic system whose shame Elizabeth Magie wanted to highlight.

Images | William Warby (Flickr) and Wikipedia 1, 2 and 3

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