The game of 'Monopoly' is a very familiar board game for most
people in the 20th-21st century. Throughout this course
we have focused on materialities and imaginaries of information capital(ism). The
original game of Monopoly promotes a capitalist ideology for how to be successful;
own as much property and have as much money as possible. The concept of Monopoly was challenged in 1973 by an economics professor named Ralph Anspach. Anspach created his own version of the game with a twist; there were monopolists and competitors. Monopolists strived to gain and maintain monopolies and competitors worked to disperse wealth among all of the players.
A real life battle had begun when Prof. Anspach challenged the creators of Monopoly; which shows that the original creators of the game did not want there to be an opposing product to impede the sales of Monopoly, especially one which went against the overall message of the game. By challenging the corporation behind Monopoly, Prof. Anspach was unintentionally challenging the capitalist ideological system of modern society. The link below is to a Wall Street Journal article which gives an overview of the implications of the creation of 'Anti-Monopoly'.
Article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125599860004295449
What are your thoughts on the challenges Prof. Anspach faced when he attempted to oppose capitalist norms and create his own version of how society ought to function?
I think the idea of antimonopoly is a very interesting notion to explore- especially in the context of modern society. Today, every major Fortune 500 company is going after the same thing- monopolization of the market and monopolization of information. This of monopolization also goes hand in hand with convergence which was explored breifly by Fuchs in week 7's reading.
ReplyDeleteThe Internet has played two differentiating roles in this quest. Firstly, the internet has enabled domination and monopolization of a marketplace by extending commerce online. This opens up the international market in a more competitive and transparent fashion. The internet has also disabled the ability for companies to monopolize. It functions as a storage for information that is widely accessible by everyone- Information companies need and want in order to gain a competitive advantage over their direct competitors is now also available to the competitors themselves.
I find it so interesting that although the game "monopoly" is old, the fundamental ideas the game is built are still extremely relevant foundations of social structures and societies today.
I find the whole situation quite comedic. It seems like Monopoly wanted to have a monopoly on everything to do with monopoly.
ReplyDeleteThe example of his battle with toy giant Hasbro speaks to all the reasons that there needs to be education on the contemporary capitalist society. Unfortunately, corporations have found work around monopoly laws. One way this happens is that companies become holdings companies, which are just companies who run companies. By doing this, the power continuously is still concentrated in the hands of the few, even though it may appear to be different.
Even in the end of the Professors struggle, Anti-Monopoly just became a part of the giant it was trying to critique by requiring a license from the giant to distribute.