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

[Forstater, Mathew]

New School Econ prof Ed Nell was a co-creator of the game, and also wrote about
it in his _Making Sense of a Changing Economy: Technology, Markets, and Morals_
(Routledge, 1996; his attempt at 'popular' economics, which I recommend for
other reasons as well). Nell has also written on drugs (pro-legalization,
decriminalization; anti-drug war).  He had one article in _Challenge_ that is
worth checking out. Unfortunately, his manuscript _Hard Drugs and Easy Money_ is
still unpublished.

-----Original Message-----
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:furuhashi.1 at osu.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 1:00 PM
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: Class Struggle Is the Name of the Game (was Re: Dope Wars)


>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_the
endofthespectacle_page2.html>).

Visit "Bertel Ollman: Communism Now": 
<http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/di001.htm>.

Yoshie