Class Struggle Is the Name of the Game (was Re: Dope Wars)

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Fri Mar 16 11:19:31 PST 2001


I actually have a copy of the game, and although we are not big on board games in my family, we play it occasionally. (Thanks, Bertell!) When I used to play it in gard school in the early '80s, my friends and I worried taht it made it too esy for the workers to win. So we made up a new rule: that while playing people could propose new, more sociologically accurate rules, but these had to be justified by political sivussion. It led to long, interesting games.

jks

Speaking of Bertell, look at this, and look who was the judge:

750 F.2d 970

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. Bertell OLLMAN, Appellant v. Rowland EVANS, Robert Novak. No. 79-2265. Reargued En Banc March 6, 1984. Decided Dec. 6, 1984. As Amended Dec. 6, 1984. Professor of political science brought suit against two newspaper columnists claiming that they defamed him in newspaper column with the result that he was denied a nomination for position of chairman of department at his university. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., Chief Judge, > 479 F.Supp. 292, entered summary judgment in favor of columnists and appeal was taken. The Court of Appeals, > 713 F.2d 838, reversed and remanded. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that challenged statements were entitled to absolute First Amendment protection as expressions of opinion, and professor appealed. The Court of Appeals, Starr, Circuit Judge, held that statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion. Affirmed. Bork, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion in which Wilkey, Ginsburg, Circuit Judges and MacKinnon, Senior Circuit Judge, joined. MacKinnon, Senior Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion. Spottswood W. Robinson, Chief Judge, filed an opinion dissenting in part in which J. Skelly Wright, Circuit Judge, joined. Wald, Circuit Judge, filed an opinion dissenting in part in which Harry T. Edwards and Scalia, Circuit Judges, joined. Harry T. Edwards, Circuit Judge, filed a statement concurring in part and dissenting in part. Scalia, Circuit Judge, filed an opinion dissenting in part in which Wald and Harry T. Edwards, Circuit Judges joined. West Headnotes

A quote:

. . . . we turn next to the alleged defamation that, in our view, is most clearly opinion, namely that "[Ollman] is an outspoken proponent of political Marxism." This kind of characterization is much akin to the characterization, "fascist," found absolutely protected in Buckley v. Littell, supra.


>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/15/technology/15DOPE.html?0315ci
>
>The best part of the article appears to me to be the following:
>
>***** One player, Matthew Cook, said he had become obsessed with
>DopeWars while he was a graduate student at the Marshall School of
>Business at the University of Southern California. He said the game
>reflected lessons taught in his classes, including market testing,
>risk management, inventory control and money management. And of
>course, in the twilight of the dot-com age, it plays to the interest
>in sudden riches as players watch the price of drugs skyrocket.
>
>"It's like your company I.P.O.'s at five times what you expected it
>to," he said. (Mr. Cook's own company, an Internet start-up,
>recently went under.) *****
>
>Has anyone read _Class Struggle Is the Name of the Game: True
>Confessions of a Marxist Businessman_ by Bertell Ollman? It's out of
>print now, I think.
>
>"Class Struggle was a 1970s board game, conceived as a socialist
>alternative to Monopoly, in which players were randomly assigned to
>different classes and moved around the board forming cross-class
>alliances, engaging in struggle, and heading for one of two mutually
>exclusive destinations: Socialism or Barbarism. The box sported a
>rather good photo-montage of Karl Marx arm-wrestling Nelson
>Rockefeller. Improbably enough, a photograph exists of Helmut Kohl
>at the 1980 Frankfurt Book Fair holding a boxed set of Klassenkampf,
>the German edition of the game" (at
><http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_c1.shtml>).
>
>"Dr Ollman, of New York University, spent seven years working out
>'Class Struggle'. It bears a superficial resemblance to 'Monopoly'
>-- 'another political game', he says -- with players throwing dice
>and chasing each other round the board. You can be a Worker (with a
>hammer symbol), a Capitalist (with a top hat) or a member of the
>minor classes, such as Farmer, Student or Small Businessman. Rule
>One states that 'Class Struggle' can be played by two to six players;
>Rule Two adds, though, that the real players are classes, not
>individuals; Rule Three stresses that only the Workers or the
>Capitalists can win. That's life, says Dr Ollman" (at
><http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/johnnymoped/isthisthereallife/isthisthereallife_theendofthespectacle_page2.html>).
>
>Visit "Bertel Ollman: Communism Now":
><http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/di001.htm>.
>
>Yoshie

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