Game: Class Struggle

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spielekeller — 2008-11-25T19:09:49+00:00

Klassenkampf Board

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spielekeller — 2008-11-25T19:08:38+00:00

Klassenkampf

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spielekeller — 2008-11-25T19:07:23+00:00

KLassenkampf Box

Thread: Re: Class Struggle – Fun for the Whole Family

Balthus_Dire — 2008-10-06T05:59:18+00:00

read the cards and be amused, sure. Play, not on your life. This game would better have been published as a series of satirical comics. As a game, it's one of the worst I can think of.

Thread: Re: Class Struggle – Fun for the Whole Family

lord goon — 2008-07-16T02:45:19+00:00

This sounds AWESOME! The game that I have always wanted to play.

Thread: Re: prices on ebay

Comrade_Sarayev — 2008-04-05T04:38:17+00:00

Hi Chris

The prices on Ebay represent the perils of the Capitalist system A fool and his money, and all that....

The game was published in various editions, and that may account for some price spikes. Still, it was fairly mass produced back in its day so I wouldn't shell out big bucks for it.

Thread: article in FORBES magazine, January 1984

TVis — 2008-04-01T12:53:09+00:00

A short profile of the designer, "a Marxist professor of politics at New York University," and his game appears in the January 30, 1984 issue. About a column and a half, including a picture of him with his game.

First published on his own, then licensed to Avalon Hill in 1980,.

brief passages from the article:

[On publishing for himself] "I found I had to act a lot more like a capitalist than I cared for," Ollman says. "One of the toughest things I ever faced was learning to communicate to my workers that they had to get to work on time."

All things considered, Ollman hasn't done badly. He has sold about 90,000 English-language games, another 90,000 or so in Italian and 15,000 in German. "Of coure," he says, "we haven't made any money, and we think the demand has probably peaked, so we probably won't make any." But he thinks the game has helped him to get his point across

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obreelsulls — 2008-03-12T21:18:52+00:00

Lucha de Clases. Didact spanish edition

Thread: prices on ebay

armouredbear — 2007-11-18T23:11:11+00:00

why is this game selling for so much on ebay? i've seen roughly 2 or 3 a week going for $50 each, then a couple for $15 or less! i've been hunting copies of this for my school, but is it really that rare?

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ddyer — 2007-05-12T23:32:26+00:00

The Workers dominate!

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lucifugo — 2007-03-16T00:16:01+00:00

Player counters

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lucifugo — 2007-03-16T00:15:39+00:00

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lucifugo — 2007-03-16T00:15:18+00:00

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lucifugo — 2007-03-16T00:15:03+00:00

Components

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lucifugo — 2007-03-16T00:14:42+00:00

Italian box (First Edition)

Thread: Class Struggle – Fun for the Whole Family

KevinPostlewaite — 2005-07-01T19:10:59+00:00

This review was written by Fabio Rojas and originally appeared in the Marginal Revolution blog at:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/07...
I thought it would gain a wider audience by also being included here, and Fabio kindly gave me permission to add it here.

-Kevin

******

A few weeks ago, Tyler commented on Bertell Ollman’s Marxist rules for professional basketball. What Tyler didn’t tell you is that Bertell Ollman is also the author of the board game “Class Struggle: Game of Life in Capitalist America.” And yes, loyal Marginal Revolution readers, I own a copy and I’d like to tell you all about it.

The goal of Class Struggle is to teach people about how capitalism really works, at least according to Marxist theory. Each player plays a class (Workers, Capitalists, Farmers, etc.) because individuals aren’t the real players in capitalist societies. Each class moves towards the center of the board collecting assets and suffering penalties. The strategy is to accumulate as many assets as you can until the Revolution arrives. If you have the most assets when the Revolution comes, you win the game.

The game isn’t terribly fun to play, as one would expect from a game emphasizing oppression, unfairness and struggle. But much fun can be had reading the rules and the “chance” cards that give you assets. For example, the expanded “Full Rules” for deciding who gets to play the Capitalist class are designed to show players unfairness towards women and ethnic minorities: “Full Rules calls for the following: beginning with the lightest White male and ending with the darkest Black female, everyone takes turns with the Genetic die to see who throws capitalist class first.” I’m proud to say that I’ve won a few games, despite my modest disadvantage as a Latino male.

The chance cards are great fun. These two examples are for the Capitalist class:

* “You are caught feeling sorry for the Workers. Victory in class struggle comes to people who think about their own class. Miss two turns at the dice.”
* “Paperback edition of Marx/Engels Collected Writings (100 volumes) sweeps the country. Your days are numbered. 2 debits.”

These are for the Workers:

* “Workers finally understand that with America’s wealth and democratic traditions, socialism here will be different than what exists in Russia and China. A biggie – worth 5 assets.”
* “Together with your fellow workers, you have occupied your factory and locked your boss in the toilet. Capitalists miss 2 turns at the dice.”

These two chance cards are counter-Marginal Revolutionary:

* “All your propaganda says a person is free when the Government lets him alone. But almost everything one wants to do or have costs money, so only Capitalists are really free.”
* “You publish an ‘educational’ booklet to explain that in capitalism people – as consumers – vote for what they want with their dollars. You neglect to mention that in most industries, a few firms without any effective competition decide what to produce and what to charge, or that Capitalists who have the most dollars have the most votes. Give each class in the game 1 asset so they have money to buy your booklet.”

The game has other fun rules like the nuclear showdown option: if capitalists push the button, no one wins! Bertell Ollman might be interested in knowing copies are selling for about $15 on Ebay.

Thread: Review and Component List

ltmurnau — 2004-06-21T17:30:54+00:00

CLASS STRUGGLE

Designer: Bertell Ollman
Publisher: Class Struggle, Inc. (1978), The Avalon Hill Game Company (1982)

Players: 2-6
Playing time: 90 minutes
Era: 1970s America
Scale: Abstract

Bertell Ollman, then an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University, designed this game in 1978 as a simple encapsulation of his views on capitalist society vs. the worker’s struggle. Superficially, it is similar to many other move-around-the-board-collecting-things games, but the Marxist rhetoric in the texts transforms it into – well, some kind of learning experience.

Components (original 1978 long box edition)

1 large box, 10.5” x 20.5”, featuring a bad photomontage of Nelson Rockefeller and Karl Marx arm wrestling.
1 20” square folding mapboard, divided into 84 squares in three concentric rings
12 wooden blocks to support standy-uppy pieces and notice cards
6 standy-uppy pieces of cardboard to place in wooden blocks, to denote players/classes in the game: Workers (hammer); Capitalists (top hat with dollar sign); Farmers (tractor); Small Businessmen (cash register); Professionals (briefcase); Students (mortarboard hat).
4 Minor Class cards (Farmers, Small Business, Professionals, Students) to remind you of your alliances
2 Event Cards: “Trade Unions Formed” and “Workers’ Political Party Formed”
2 decks of Chance cards, of 35 cards each, one for the Workers and one for the Capitalists. Roughly equal in their overall effects, though the rhetoric on the cards varies considerably.
1 six-sided “genetic” die (symbol of each of the six classes on each face)
2 six-sided moving dice, each one numbering 1-3 twice
1 Beginner’s Rules pamphlet, 10 pages
1 Full and Tournament Rules pamphlet, with designer’s notes and commentary, 26 pages
124 Asset coupons
62 Debit coupons

The 1982 Avalon Hill release has similar components except for die-cut player counters and one rules booklet, packed in a bookcase box.

What the designer says

From the copy on the back of the box:

“FIRST EDITION SOLD OUT IN ONE MONTH!
First book about capitalism to come packaged in a game box…first game to be written up in a New York Times editorial, first game ever to be played on the radio (for two hours on WBAI)…First game ever to be sold by… three of New York’s most famous bookstores…first full-scale board game to present the side of the workers.”

What the reviewers say

“More fun than Das Kapital” – Paul Sweezy, Monthly Review
“Monopoly with its consciousness drastically raised” – Boston Real Paper

Player’s Value

This is a fairly simple game, good for one or two plays if you have only two people; might be more interesting with five or six sneaky ones who may desert you when you need them. The game starts with each player rolling the “genetic die” to see which class they have to play; the Full Rules vary this in a way which I will quote as an example of the designer’s rhetoric:

“Also in our society, WOMEN AND BLACKS HAVE LESS CHANCE THAN WHITE MALES TO BECOME CAPITALISTS. This has nothing to do with the human qualities of women and Blacks and everything to do with the unfair rules set by our society. Attempting to reflect these rules (and not in any way to justify them), “Class Struggle” calls for the following: beginning with the lightest white male and ending with the darkest Black female, everyone takes turns with the genetic (or luck-of-birth die) to see who throws the Capitalist Class first…. Then, the players throw the die in just the reverse order to see who plays the Workers.”

Players go around the board, picking up assets and debits along the way according to which squares they land on or Chance cards they take. Important points in the game occur when Major Classes strike alliances with Minor Classes and in Confrontation squares (strikes or elections). The winner of a Confrontation (determined by adding up all the assets and debits of his and all other allied classes) gets three free throws of the dice and the winner of the final Confrontation (Revolution, in the last square of the board) wins the game.

Other games by this designer

None. However, Bertell Ollman (now a full Professor at NYU) did write a book on his struggle to produce and sell the game, Class Struggle is the Name of the Game: True Confessions of a Marxist Businessman (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983). The book was revised and reissued in 2001 as Ballbuster: True Confessions of a Marxist Businessman.