Monopoly is an odd game, in game-playing terms, because the outcomes are so extreme. It's rarely a close game.
But there's a reason it's so illustrative. Monopoly was developed from a didactic board game called "The Landlord's Game." The particular one that Charles Darrow tried to sell to Parker Brothers was designed in 1904 by Elizabeth Magee, a supporter of Henry George's tax proposals. She designed it to be played on three consecutive nights, with the rules changing so that one could understand the effect of George's Single Tax proposals. The first phase (which morphed into Monopoly) is supposed to illustrate the shitty current system. (George's idea was to tax land at its full rental value, thus eliminating speculation in land--and eliminating other taxes. Land values increase as a result of community activity, so the owner shouldn't get the undeserved reward. Owners would still reap the benefit of productive use of the land, and get tax breaks for improvements.)
I have photocopies of an original rule set and the "Landlord's Game" board sent to me by Frances Hutchinson at the University of Bradford, UK. There's a different, later version here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord's_Game
The development of Monopoly is of particular interest in my family because my father invented a board game in the 1950's ("Careers") as a partial answer to Monopoly, which he thought was teaching children that money is the only value. It was a pleasant surprise to learn, nearly 50 years later, that the original 'Monopoly' was designed to illustrate the bad effects of ownership, rent, and speculation.
I played Class Struggle a long time ago and my memory is that the problem was not so much that it was didactic but that it wasn't much good as a game.
Jenny Brown