There’s a socialism Monopoly game, and a Rutgers history professor is melting about it

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Nick Kapur is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University–Camden.

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I bought a copy of Hasbro's mean-spirited and woefully ill-informed "MONOPOLY: SOCIALISM" board game so you don't have to - a thread 1/

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From the tagline "Winning is for capitalists" we can see right away that this game is not going to be friendly to whatever it deems "socialism" to be. Because as we all know "socialists" never play sports or participate in any sort of competitive activity, like board games. 2/

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The player tokens include a typewriter, an old-timey phone, a pocket watch, a phonograph, and a CRT television set, presumably because "socialism" is so incredibly outdated? 4/

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Spaces on the board include a snarkily named hospital and school, because apparently schools are supposed to produce losers and hospitals are only supposed to help some of the people. 5/

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There are also tons of references to health food and veganism, despite the lack of any clear connection to socialism, apparently because what they share in common is that they are odious things that are fun to mock. 6/

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It's also crucial to mock environmentalism because, haha, as we all know environmentalism is stupid and hilarious. 7/

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It goes without saying that this game is entirely uninterested in trying to understand what socialism actually is and how it might function. 8/

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