I Played Star Wars Monopoly As An Anarcho-Communist—And Won

The setting: a wooden kitchen table.

The game: Star Wars Monopoly.

The players: Two greedy cappies (pejorative form of capitalist), and me. I have not seen the Star Wars movies since I was about eight years old, so I can only describe the pieces we used:

One opponent played as an ugly fellow with a sword, the other as the robot that looks like a stumpy penis. My figure was wearing a jacket reminiscent of Dr. Evil’s garb.

I went into the game with a strategy—buy little to no property. My first opportunity to purchase a tract of land was some sort of platform in the Cloud City. Even if I hadn’t been playing as a communist, this was a no-brainer. How safe does a city on clouds sound? Why not just build a home atop a pile of runny cow dung? I passed.

Peter Kropotkin

My next move landed me in the Ewok Village. Now that had a communal ring to it. I shelled out the samolians, or in the case of this version of Monopoly, “credits.” I like to tell myself even Peter Kropotkin would have been okay with that one.

I landed in jail at least six times over the course of the game, leading me to realize my character was some sort of free-thinking anarchist. Though frustrating at first, I eventually realized all that time in the clink worked to my advantage. While in jail, I sat idly and avoided rent charges, while the other two players slugged it out betwixt themselves. Numerous times after being freed from prison, I went right ahead and landed on the “Free Parking” space, the treasury of which was very fat every time, due to penalties and taxes paid by the unincarcerated.

Sometime during all this, I landed on a property adjacent to the Ewok Village, The Forest, which I purchased simply to provide a buffer zone for the community and also prevent the razing of the trees for a galactic equivalent of Walmart to be built.

The next swing around, I found myself in the Throne Room of the Death Star. I picked that one up, and, unknown to the other players, filled it with an unshaven mass of jobless vagrants, in order to give it a sort of “Occupy Wall Street” vibe. The surrounding properties subsequently went undeveloped.

As with nearly any game of Monopoly, an impasse was reached. I, with three properties, accepted an offer for the trinity-completing neighbor of the Ewok Village and The Forest, in exchange for the Throne Room.

I took all the money I had amassed and spread it among the people, promptly erecting four communes on each piece of land. We decided to gladly accept rent from any wayfaring capitalist that came our way, and invest the money in useful things, like hammers and sickles. The other two players, by following the law and not spending most of the game in jail, owned plenty of property, but could only afford sparse development.

Within three turns, both capitalists were bankrupt, with one of them desperately trying to sell me something called “The Moisture Farm” in an embarrassing effort to restore some semblance of wealth.

So there you have it: indestructible proof that communism and anarchy work.

 

You May Not Like Communism, But Its Manifesto Has Some Great Writing In It

From the opening line of The Communist Manifesto—“A spectre is haunting Europe–the spectre of communism”—oh baby, that’s good—to the last four sentences–“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!”—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had me hooked.

How about this tasty lick: “In this way arose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core, but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.”

Who could forget this pungent whiff: “In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin’ phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.”

And what about the rich imagery of this: “The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths,” all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst the public.”

I was so enveloped in the writing style, I didn’t absorb any of the ideals or theories put forth, except that Marx and Engels did call for income tax, as well as free public schools for children, so Amurica’s got a lil’ communist in her after all.