>Years ago at a Rethinking Marxism conference, Joel Kovel did a nice
>presentation on the "capitalist ego" - a voracious beast with a hunger to
>amass, consume, and domiante, but in a socially acceptable way.
Heh. Interesting. A few years ago, for a role-playing game convention, I refereed a game in which the main villain was a capitalist who had been twisted by an evil cosmic power into a monstrous troll: immensely strong, voracious (he "ran" a mining town as a reclusive mining baron in the late 19th century American South-West in which he secretly stalked, killed, and devoured the miners he hired), and impossible to kill by normal means (trolls regenerate from wounds and their body parts can live on after getting hacked off). He hid his monstrous appearance behind functionaries and locked doors. The players took the parts of various people hired by him to work in the town (doctor, school teacher, engineer, etc.). The idea was for them to find out what happened to the missing miners and kill the capitalist/troll (using something from his "innocent past"; so I'd been watching Citizen Kane while making up the adventure; sue me). The big problem was: this "monster" was so popular (for bringing wealth to the area, for bringing in professionals to help the town, etc.), even if the players could somehow prove he was the killer (and I gave them plenty of opportunity to do so), the townsfolk wouldn't be likely to just take up arms and march off to destroy him.
Great minds think alike, I guess, eh? !{)>
Todd
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