Monopoly is not the invention of a single man: the truth is a story of imposture and the transformation of a cooperative game into ruthless mechanics.
The sidewalk on the Champs-Élysées has never seemed so wide. In front of the iron curtains of its luxury stores, some tourists descend the most famous avenue of Paris in a dizzying void. They are as at ease as at Tianducheng, this almost deserted Chinese city which reproduces some famous monuments of the French capital. With the containment measures announced against the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), there are more Parisians to pass on the Champs-Élysées playing Monopoly than taking their car. It is all the more certain that many must find to occupy themselves between four walls. They are therefore walking on the set of one of the most legendary games in the world.
Monopoly celebrates its 85th anniversary. According to its publisher, Hasbro, it has more than a billion players in 114 countries and more than 200 different versions. In a press release published on the occasion, the brand recalls that the game was created in 1933 by Charles Darrow. This unemployed American wanted to " stage the streets of Atlantic City " in New Jersey. But Monopoly is actually 30 years older and its creator is a woman. Here is how Lizzie Magie imagined one of the most popular board games on the planet, which came out of its box almost everywhere during this period of caulking.
The Landlord's Game
The players at table 25 start by arguing over the choice of pawns. Doug Herold is the first to decide. At 44, he is an expert in property valuation. He will play with the car. Facing him is Billy, a killer looking computer recruiter. He chooses the boat and opens a can of beer. The shoe is for Eric, a lawyer at war against polluting industries, often distracted by his BlackBerry. He plays, but does not stop working. The last one to choose is called Trevis, a somewhat soft IT technician. He sets his sights on the dog. He comes from Canton, Ohio, and this part allows him to do his BA: it is a way to help the National Kidney Foundation, sponsor of the 25 th Monopoly tournament held annually in the lobby of the US Steel Tower in central Pittsburgh.
The event drew 112 players divided into 28 tables of four. The company mascot, Steely McBeam, growls and encourages the participants by leaping into the hall, a huge foam bar under his arm. Also present are three referees in striped tops, a whistle around the neck, as well as a man with tired features. He wears a long judge's robe and an oak hammer. In everyday life, he is a judge at the Allegheny County Court. Today, he is there free of charge to " ensure that the players follow the rules ".
Last night, I had a long chat with Doug, last year's tournament winner, who told me about his game strategy. " I had managed to get Boardwalk and Park Place [the equivalent from the Rue de la Paix and the Champs-Élysées, editor's note] and all the other players stopped there, "he explains, putting his success on luck. “ You have to get a monopoly, any one, as quickly as possible. I asked him if he knew the secrets of the history of the game. He admitted that he didn't.
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According to Hasbro, owner of the brand, Monopoly was invented in 1933 in Philadelphia by Charles Darrow, an unemployed radiator repairer and part-time dog walker. Darrow had imagined a real estate transaction game in which the properties were named after the streets of Atlantic City, the seaside resort in which he spent all his summers when he was a child. Patented in 1935 by Darrow and the game maker Parker Brothers, the Monopoly sold more than two million copies in two years, making Darrow a wealthy man and saving Parker Brothers from bankruptcy.
Over time, Monopoly has become the best-selling board game in the world. It is estimated that more than a billion people have already played it in their lives, distributed in 111 countries and 43 languages. More than 6 billion small green houses have been manufactured to date. Monopoly trays have been created from the streets of most major cities in the world and there are many fanciful variations: some are dedicated to the world of finance (such as Monopoly € uro and Ultimate Banking), to teams sports (Paris Saint-Germain and LOSC have their editions) to television series ( Game of Thrones , The Walking Dead or South Park), to the regions and cities of France (that of Moncuq is essential) and even to famous brands with the Metropoly Empire.
Credits: Associated Press
However, the true origins of the game are not mentioned in the official texts. Three decades before Darrow patented her game, a Maryland actress by the name of Lizzie Magic created a first version of Monopoly in order to teach the thinking of Henry George . George is the author of the XIX th century who popularized the idea that no one should claim that "owns" the land. In his book 1879, Progress and Poverty Henry George qualifies landed property to " false principle and destructive ." He believes that land should be a common good and that citizens should act collectively as one and the same owner.
Elizabeth Magie christened his invention Landlord's Game , the "landlord of the Game." When it was released in 1906, it was already remarkably similar to the Monopoly we know today. It consisted of a continuous corridor along a square plateau, divided into several boxes each of which bore the name of a property, its purchase price and the value of its rent. Among the Landlord's Game's most expensive properties - and therefore the most coveted - are Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Wall Street.
The game was played with dice, money and titles. The players moved their pawns along the corridor, starting not with the "Start" box but with a box on which was written: Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages - "everywhere on Earth, the workforce produces wages " There were train stations, utilities and even a "luxury tax" of $ 75. The Chance cards were also in the game, inspired by quotes attributed to, among others, Thomas Jefferson (" The land belongs to the living "), to John Ruskin (" For many reasons, we have to wonder how the owners of the land end up by being possessed by it ") or Andrew Carnegie ("The biggest astonishment of my life was to discover that the man who gets rich is not the man who works ”).
Credits: Thomas E. Forsyth
Even the dynamics of the Landlord's Game were extremely similar to that of Monopoly: players found themselves in debt and then ended up going bankrupt, while one and the same person stood firm: the super-monopolist. However, in this Landowner Game, another scenario could arise if the players agreed among themselves. After a vote, they could decide to set up a device that is not part of the rules of Monopoly: cooperation. Under this alternative rule, players paid money into a common pot rather than paying their rent to the title owner. The rent was then pooled, so that we " reach prosperity ", As Lizzie Magic would later write.
Thirty years after Lizzie Magie created its first set on an old piece of agglo, we were still playing Landlord's Game in different forms and under different names. We played the " monopoly " on " Finance " or " Auction ". The game was particularly popular with Quakers in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, but also with economics professors and students interested in socialism. The Landlord's Game was part of the public domain just like chess or checkers: it belonged to all those who mastered its rules.
Annuitants
Thousands of Monopoly tournaments are organized each year in the United States: regional tournaments, school tournaments, parish tournaments, corporate tournaments, cellar tournaments, meeting rooms, dining rooms, public libraries and even on the Internet. Every four or five years, there are major tournaments sponsored by Hasbro: the American Championship and the World Championship. The toy maker offers a cup worth $ 20,580 to the winners. I missed their latest edition and that is why I landed in the hall of US Steel, a place of circumstance since the steel producer was founded by super monopolists Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan. The famous Monopoly mascot,
The master of ceremonies shouts into his microphone: “ Let's go for 90 minutes of Monopoly! Without further ado, the men at table 25 start rolling the dice and frantically buying properties as they move around the board. Doug buys Pacific Avenue (an expensive investment of $ 300), two yellow plots and other less important places. Trevis' possessions include two stations as well as Marvin Gardens, the most expensive property in the yellow huts. Billy got his hands on the ultra-chic Boardwalk for $ 400. Eric owns Tenessee Avenue and St. James Place, each worth $ 180. These two locations are among the properties most coveted by competitors because they are relatively inexpensive and players stop there frequently - as much as on properties around the prison.
" The division of labor is the product of a natural inclination to all men who pushes to traffic, to barter and exchange one thing for another ," wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nation s . This part does not contradict him. Sixteen minutes after the first roll of the dice, Doug offers a market to Billy. Since there are few properties, their value increases on the market as they become scarce - at Monopoly as in life - and often above their nominal value. " This one, " said Doug, showing one of his yellow properties, " against that one, " pointing to the one he wants to own. " Plus 300 dollars. "
It doesn't impress Billy. " No. You give me 300 dollars. "
" Me, $ 300 ? "
" Money is king!" "
The exchange inspires Trevis and Eric to haggle in turn. Billy and Doug start again to hinder the conversation when it puts their own in danger. The table gets noisy. Players make proposals, counter-proposals, reject both proposals and counter-proposals, soften their initial proposals and receive these concessions with even greater disdain. Doug sighs deeply. " If that's how it is, we will continue to circle around the stage and we will just collect money from square one. "
" This is the best thing to do, " says Trevis.
" Say the guy who wants my left ball ," Doug replies.
Then it's the conspiracy out loud. Billy tells Eric that if they make an exchange that gives them a monopoly each, they will be exempt from rent if one falls on the other's monopoly. A fine example of a dishonest duopoly clearly targeting Doug and Trevis.
Listening to the terms of the market, Doug shrugs, but Trevis is struck with horror. " You can't do this! It's against the rules! "
" The rules! Billy laughs. " I am the one who sets the rules!" "
For Adam Smith, these monopolistic rentiers were the parasites of the capitalist order.
" Bullshit!" "
" Referee!" "
The referee, his whistle still around his neck, runs up - the hammer judge has disappeared - to settle the dispute while the players bark on each other. " You can't do that, " he finally decides.
A few weeks before the tournament, I had a conversation with Richard Marinaccio, the champion of the 2009 American tournament. " The Sunday players " - that is to say most of the Monopoly players - " think that the goal is to accumulate goods "He told me. “ Make as much money as possible. But the real goal of the game is to ruin your opponents as quickly as possible. To have just enough so that everyone else has nothing. "
From this point of view, it is not a question of unleashing the creativity and the sense of innovation of competitors, nor of opening markets, of expanding trade or of creating wealth by working hard and putting at the center of the party his personal interest - the secrets of a prosperous and dynamic society according to Adam Smith. On the contrary, it is a question of closing the market. All the players have to do is sit on their properties and wait for the unlucky ones to roll the dice.
For Adam Smith, these monopoly rentiers - whose archetype, in his time, was the English land aristocracy - were the parasites of the capitalist order. They avoided productivity at all costs, never innovated, created nothing - the earth is already there - and amassed fortunes by bleeding the tenants. The first phase of a game of Monopoly, that of free trade - the most exciting to watch - in reality only aims to end free trade to lock the game and replace competition with rent seeking .
The single tax
Henry George is a self-taught economist. At the age of 16, he set sail from his hometown of Philadelphia on the Hindoo , a freighter that took him to Australia and India. There, he witnessed the mutiny of the crew, whose working conditions were deplorable. At the age of 20, he was back in California where he became an apprentice in a printing press before working on farms according to his roaming. He married young and penniless as a spate of unemployment hit the West Coast of the United States. During the winter of 1865, his wife, pregnant with their first child, almost starved to death. Things only got worse once her son was born. " Keep washing the child Said the doctor. " And feed him at all costs. It was poverty that drove him to take an interest in the economy. He wondered how poverty could proliferate on a land so abundant in resources. From economics, he turned to journalism, thinking that we could pay him for his writings. This is how he settled in New York.
1865–66
He could not understand why wherever advanced means of production developed - where industries emerged and capital accumulated - he also saw a greater concentration of poor people, living in more miserable conditions than 'elsewhere. It was an amazing paradox for him. " This is the enigma that the Sphinx poses to our civilization and our failure to resolve it will result in our destruction," he wrote. " As long as all the wealth brought by modern progress only serves to build great fortunes ... this progress is not real and cannot be permanent. "In 1879 he published the book that made him famous,Progress and poverty: Investigation of the cause of industrial crises and the increase in misery amidst the increase in wealth - Le Remède , in which he gives a categorical answer to the enigma: the land monopoly is the reason for which economic growth increases poverty.
As American civilization advanced on the path of progress, as populations grew and gathered in large cities and their surroundings, land became a scarce resource. Prices skyrocketed and the overwhelming majority of people forced to live and work in these territories paid for the minority of those who owned them. As a result of which the working classes have become the slave of rents. " To see human beings living in abject conditions, defenseless and hopeless, " he wrote, " it is not in the countryside that you should go, in the meadows without fences and the huts in the woods. In these places, man leads a solitary struggle with nature and the earth is worthless. We have to look at the side of those who live in big cities, where owning a small plot of land represents a fortune. "
It was from these small plots - those of New York above all - that the dynasties of the new wealthy Americans arose: the Astor, the Beekman, the Phippse, the Stuyvesant, the Roosevelt and later the Tishman, the Rudins, the Roses, Minskoffs, Dursts, without forgetting the Fisher brothers and the Tischs. According to George, the grabbing of pieces of territory was the product of a system of property " as artificial and baseless as the divine right of kings ". He continues: " From a historical and ethical point of view, applying private property to the land amounts to theft ... Its origin is always to be sought in war and conquest. It was for him the first great error of Western civilization.
In California, our title deeds come to us from the Supreme Government of Mexico, which held them from the King of Spain, who had received them from the Pope when the latter had, with a simple stroke of the pencil, divided the lands that remained to discover (or rather conquer) between Spain and Portugal. In the eastern states, they date back to treaties signed with the Indians and to the grants of English kings; in Louisiana to the French government; in Florida to the government of Spain; while in England, they date from the Norman conquerors. Everywhere, there is no question of law but of a force to which one must submit.
Henry George also pointed out that most pre-modern tribes did not recognize any rights to land ownership. The only property a tribe member owned was the bow and arrow he made with his own hands, not the land he hunted on. There is also no trace of it in the New Testament, in which the earth " was considered as the gift of the Creator made to all the beings to which he gave life ". Moses had indeed established the jubilee, during which the land was redistributed every fifty years while the debts contracted for the land were canceled - the Romans ended this tradition. In all the annals of the world's pre-capitalist which confronted Henry George, he could take place the " struggle between the idea of equal land rights for men and a tendency to monopolize through private ownership ."
In the XIX th century, the " fantasy " of an " absolute right to own land ," embodied by a complex system of shares and securities issued by the state, has become the cornerstone of the legal system American. It could not and should not be abolished, according to the economist. At this stage, the confiscation of land and their nationalization would lead to tyranny, he said. “ Let these individuals who are now owners keep what they like to call their land, if that is their desire. Henri George never advocated the revocation of the right to buy and sell properties, or to transfer land to one of his descendants. Rather, he suggested that the company leave the landowners " the shell " of their possession as long as they could recover " the nut ". “ There is no need to confiscate the land; what is needed is to confiscate rents… In this way, the State could become the universal owner without defining itself as such, ”he concluded.
The key to the problem was the rent. In accordance with the economic theories of the time of Adam Smith, Henri George defined rent as an undeserved income derived solely from the increase in the value of the land. He distinguished it from property resulting from work, the construction of infrastructure (houses, offices, factories) and the cultivation of fields. The productivity of a community was the invisible hand that increased the value of the land. A cabin in the woods became precious as soon as a mine opened on the other side of the field, a road connected the cabin to the mine, a trade opened to feed the miners, that other houses were built , then a railway, etc. until we witness the birth of a city.
The land on which the hut was built got its value from what society had built around. Henry George inferred from this that his added value was due by right to society, and this value should, according to him, be estimated and imposed according to market prices. This " single tax " on land and natural resources was a reform of capitalism, which George made a point of saving. This new life would " open the way for the realization of the noble dreams of socialism ."
Cover: Monopoly pawns. (Hasbro)
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