Class Struggle Is the Name of the Game

[Charles Brown]

Yes, I have this game. I'm not much of a game player, but I did play it a couple of times several years ago.

CB


>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 03/16/01 02:00PM >>>

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