I’m not sure how I came across this, but there are at least two socialist versions of Monopoly in The Universe™.
The first is available at Target, and says very clearly that it is a spoof:
I came across the second when I was trying to find the first again, in one of those situations in which one sees something on The Internet™, thinks back upon it later, and tries to find it. This second version is described by a writer for a publication called The Globalist, whose wife grew up in Hungary and still had the game when he went to visit. Here’s part of his account (you can find the full thing here):
“Go” is the factory where the competing proletarians work. Every time you land on or pass it, it is payday. “Wheel of Fortune” cards perform the function of chance and community chests.
There are also spaces designated for the butcher, the restaurant, the zoo, the shoe shop, the nightclub —and tellingly, right after payday — the liquor store.
Famous national destinations like Lake Balaton, Visegrad, Siofok, the Fishermen’s Bastion, the Opera House and the National Gallery are also represented on the board.
All these destinations, however, are not grouped by color, because players do not actually buy properties.
They do not build houses — nor hotels, either. The aim of the game, in proper socialist fashion, is not to amass an empire of property and wealth.
It is to successfully buy, pay for and fully furnish an apartment.
The apartment can be bought in cash, if you have put up 30,000 forints when you land on the real estate square. Otherwise, you can make a down payment of 11,000 forints — and have the balance deducted from your weekly paycheck in 500-forint installments.
Once you have purchased an apartment, you can buy kitchen and bathroom furniture in the store on the 11th square. You can also get a radio, a washing machine, a sewing machine, and a vacuum cleaner from the store on the 32nd square.
If you are lucky, you will win some of these items from the Wheel of Fortune cards.
“Films both teach and entertain,” instructs the card that sends you to the movie theater. So, evidently, do board games.
The game is full of moral lessons. Cards and squares encourage participation in sports (“Sport is entertainment and health”).
And they discourage visits to the tobacco shop (“You have become addicted to smoking, which will cost you 100 Ft per month”).
Other “vices” — like going to the liquor store and the nightclub — are among the most expensive squares on the board. Meanwhile, public cultural institutions like the National Gallery and the zoo are generally free.
One twist the game offers is that you can exchange cash for bank certificates that periodically pay you interest — a lesson for those predisposed to keeping their savings under a pillow.
The most telling rule is printed at the end of the instructions: “Players may not sell property and furniture to each other.
“If a player wins a piece of furniture from the Wheel of Fortune cards that he/she does not need, he/she shall receive the cash value instead from the Bank.”
In other words, you can not sell your extra sewing machine to finance a radio, nor unload your vacuum cleaner to pay the traffic fine. This provides the lesson in socialist planned economics.
Your wage is your income, and that is fixed. You are not to profit off of your neighbors, even when that would seem mutually advantageous.
With no way of interacting commercially with the other players, the game is essentially a race — and a rather plodding one.
Paying off the mortgage in installments requires an excruciating 40 trips around the board — and the game comes with only one die, not two.
It’s a wild world out there.
