lbo-talk-digest V1 #4088

Brad Mayer bradley.mayer at ebay.sun.com
Fri Mar 16 13:51:18 PST 2001


At 03:39 PM 3/16/01 -0500, you wrote:
>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.

Like a typical american, I played the game (to death in the 80s), didn't read the book.

What we need now is the computer game version. It can be historical, too "Class struggle (or Revolution) through the Ages". Pitch it as an educational product.

-Brad Mayer


>"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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