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Anti-capitalist Monopoly

2020-10-08T00:17:50.564Z


Two French sociologists triumph with a board game in which they criticize the class struggle and growing inequality


In its origins, at the beginning of the 20th century, Monopoly was a critique of property speculation and the accumulation of wealth.

But the passage of time diluted its message and it became an innocent board game with which to spend the afternoon bankrupt friends and family.

In the case of the Kapital! Game, published by La Ville Brûle publishing house, which has sold more than 25,000 copies in France, the anti-capitalist message is unlikely to be diluted.

Its subtitle is very clear: "Who will win the class war?"

The game, which comes in a deep red box, has been created by the sociologist couple Monique and Michel Pinçon-Charlot, who have dedicated their careers to the study of inequality, class relations and the lifestyle of the rich in their own areas, villas, private clubs, vineyards or castles.

"We created this board game as a way to understand the origin of social and economic inequalities that have become enormous and unacceptable," they say from Paris.

In the opinion of these scholars, the class "struggle" has turned into a true "war" in the France of Emmanuel Macron and the game is in perfect harmony with the times in which we live.

According to a recent report by PWC and UBS, great wealth, after the first blow of the pandemic, increased by 27.5% between May and July.

And a record of billionaires was reached: 2,189 people on planet Earth.

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In Kapital !, which they claim to be the first game of "critical sociology", one has to be dominator or dominated according to the chance of the dice and their objective is to accumulate the maximum amount of wealth and reach the coveted "tax haven" that the game ends.

During the event, through 82 squares that represent the average life expectancy in France, the player gains and loses the different types of capital established by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital (the one that is distilled from having a bombastic title, sophisticated hobbies, or a luxurious home).

"By hoarding all these types of capital and all the power linked to them, the capitalists not only exploit the workforce of human beings, they also plunder nature, the common good of all humans, for their own benefit", say the sociologists;

"The super-rich are not a problem, they are a planetary catastrophe!"

Also as in life itself, the powerful have it much easier to win on the board.

Through the cards that are read in the game we have the opportunity to understand how inequality is justified as something natural, how the world is commercialized, how class solidarity and privatizations operate or what the atmosphere is like in the clubs of yachts and other select environments.

Some cards proclaim the general strike: the rich lose economic capital.

If the card calls for revolution, wealth is evenly redistributed among the players.

All accompanied by the graphic design of the comic artist Étienne Lécroart.

According to the French magazine

Les Inrockuptibles,

this game is "a delicious poisoned gift for your right-wing friend."

"We want people to understand, with a certain joy, that in the neoliberal and financial phase of capitalism we are in a class war waged by the richest against the people", explain the Pinçon-Charlot.

They also intend to uncover "the truth of the violence of the rich, that the 10 billionaires who control 90% of the media in France and seek to hide that with ideological and linguistic manipulations."

Although it has been repeated ad nauseam that classes do not exist, that there is only a middle class and that therefore there is nothing similar to class struggle, the thing is not so clear.

The Pinçon-Charlot are convinced otherwise, but also one of the richest men in the world, the investor Warren Buffett, recognized it: “Of course there is a class struggle, but it is my class, the class of the rich, the who is waging this war.

And we are winning it ”.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-10-08

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