Communist dogs vs Capitalist pigs

May 26, 2009 2:32 PM

What game can I play with a History class to demonstrate the differences between Capitalism and Communism?

I would like to introduce Capitalism and Communism to the kids I teach prior to starting a unit on the Cold War.

Does anyone know of a game that can either have a two teams (Commies vs. Capitalists) or can have a rule change at half time to show the difference in economic and idealogical outlooks?

Bonus points for not pushing either agenda as the answer to all life's woes!

posted by man down under to education (30 comments total)

well, the interesting thing would be to come up with a different way of playing Monopoly. Start with the tried and true version. Stop halfway and say, okay, this is how Karl Marx would do it ...

But I don't know of any existing game that actually does this.
posted by philip-random at 2:51 PM on May 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

Class Struggle?

It won't win any bonus points...
posted by notyou at 2:52 PM on May 26

This is problematic because communism works reasonably well in a small, well-connected group, at least in the short term. The advantages of the self-organizing nature of capitalism only become apparent in the long run, in a larger economy based on arms-length transactions.

The easiest thing might be to show what communism was a reaction against. Basically, play out the industrial revolution. Start by randomly dividing the class into peasants and nobles. Make the peasants do some repetitive task and reward them (jelly beans or whatever), but then give most of the reward to the nobles. This is pretty unfair as the nobles only got their position by random selection, not virtue.

Now, the industrial revolution. The wealthy invest in factories (the means of production), and hire the poor to work for them. The work continues, and the wealthy capitalists continue to extract value from the labor of the working class. This is still pretty unfair, as the wealthy capitalists only got their starting wealth from the inequalities of the old system.

So they can see how communism, which advocates worker control of the means of production and thus getting a fair share of the value of their labor, would be attractive. So you can have a communist group where there are no nobles or capitalists everyone gets an equal share.

This sounds pretty good, so to introduce some drawbacks you can bring 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' Randomly select a couple of students to be injured. They won't help with the work but will continue to get paid. Then, select a few students as really good at the repetitive task. Make them work extra hard but continue to get the same reward as before.

See how long it takes them to realize that they can slack off and still get their regular allotment of jelly beans.

To contrast this with the incentive system inherit in capitalism, subdivide the capitalist side into two groups. They initially have the same reward allotment, but the wealthy capitalists are given the freedom to offer higher wages and the workers have the freedom to quit and join the other side. See how long it takes for a competitive bid system to result in both capitalists offering higher wages than before.

Then, if necessary, illustrate the problems of collusion among capitalists by showing what happens if the opposite happens and the capitalists conspire to force wages down. The workers have no where else to go for work and so are stuck making a terrible wage no matter which capitalist they work for. This demonstrates the need for market regulation and antitrust laws.

I think you could do this in a pretty short time (no more than an hour) and show that both systems have their flaws.

philip-random: It's not quite how Karl Marx would've done it, but there is a game called Anti-Monopoly.
posted by jedicus at 3:00 PM on May 26 [14 favorites has favorites]

The first thing that came to mind for me was Guns & Butter. A description of the game on someones blog. Another more basic description of a class playing it.
It was made into a board game in 1972, and has since been made into a computer game a few times.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:02 PM on May 26

Playing cards could be used as an analog for resource alocation. Split the class into a few different groups, and distribute playing cards randomly. Keep some as a form of global resource bank.

The teams will take turns wagering their cards against the bank cards in a form of high card wins. So team A plays their card. The bank deals out their card, and if the team has a higher card, both cards go to the team. If the bank has a higher card, both cards go to the bank.

Set up the rules with competing interests. The teams wants to arrange resources such that everybody has at least some minimum number of resource points, and each individual team member wants to maximize their own point totals.

Now, they can pursue several strategies to accomplish this. They can put all of their cards into a giant master pool, or they can trade cards amongst each other.

You'll need to work out some additional rules in terms of how and why the teams would trade or share cards with themselves, but generally, that would be the gist of it.
posted by willnot at 3:02 PM on May 26

well, the interesting thing would be to come up with a different way of playing Monopoly. Start with the tried and true version. Stop halfway and say, okay, this is how Karl Marx would do it ..

To truly have Monopoly represent Capitalism, have the kids play it just like normal, but with these variations:

60% of the kids start out with only 10% of the money you are supposed to start the game with, and they have to pay that damn $200 or 75% of your worth income tax every single time they pass Go.

20% of the kids get the normal amount of starting money, but they have to pay the excise tax every other time they pass Go.

10% get twice the normal amount of starting money and don't have to pay the tax unless they land on that square.

10% get five times the normal amount of starting money and none of the negative affects of the game count for them. No bad community chest cards, not taxes, no jail.

Finally, you are the government, and if anyone pays you $2000 Monopoly dollars, you give them whatever they want. Not an automatic win, but you can go ahead and give them boardwalk or take a property from one player and give it to them or make one person's properties rent free for them.

Let the game play out to the end and see how each group enjoyed playing.
posted by ND¢ at 3:14 PM on May 26 [12 favorites has favorites]

To truly have Monopoly represent Capitalism, have the kids play it just like normal, but with these variations:

That's not really capitalism per se, but rather a crude approximation of socioeconomic inequality in the US coupled with a (distorted) version of our regressive tax system. One could argue that our system is a result of capitalism, but I think it's not a necessary result (cf other liberal democracies).
posted by jedicus at 3:21 PM on May 26

The guns and butter game is a good example of why a Cold War arms race and investment in wars by proxy are losing propositions for everyone involved, but it doesn't really explain capitalism and communism as economic ideologies.
posted by jedicus at 3:23 PM on May 26

it doesn't really explain capitalism and communism as economic ideologies.

True, but couldn't you use a variation of the game for specific goals? One of my links has a class play close approximation of what he described.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:33 PM on May 26

what *willnot* described
posted by P.o.B. at 3:33 PM on May 26

What age group are we talking about? That can make a difference as to the kind of game that would fit. And are you hoping to play it over the course of one class period, or make it a longer term thing?
posted by Caravantea at 3:56 PM on May 26

The age group is 14-15 year olds...

I like the Jedicus' response the most at the moment, as it will give them a historical overview as well!

Thanks for the input so far guys.
posted by man down under at 3:59 PM on May 26

Chris Crawford's Guns and Butter is now a free download from the author's site, but you'll need a pre-OS X Mac to play it.
posted by zippy at 4:29 PM on May 26

Love Jedicus' idea, but I would change it a tad so that the "peasants" are actually working to create something or finish some sort of task. The peasants have to work on the task, and the nobles/factory owners have to make sure they stay on target. The teams are allotted jelly beans based on production, but the noble/factory owner gets to decide how many jelly beans each peasant gets and how many to keep for him/herself.

Then during the industrial revolution, the peasants can choose which noble/factory owner to work for. Maybe do three rounds, to give the peasants the opportunity to switch if they didn't feel fairly treated in the first round.

More complicated, but I could see this being a lot of fun for 14-15 year olds and gives them the experience of making choices within the system.
posted by lunasol at 4:42 PM on May 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh, and in case it doesn't occur to the workers, you could invite them to consider unionizing and striking for better pay. This shows how collective action by workers can lead to better conditions within a capitalist system.

If their demands become unreasonable, though, then you can suggest that the capitalists send the work to a foreign country with cheaper labor. This shows how, even if the workers work together (i.e., in an ideal way with no scabs), the capitalists still ultimately control the means of production.

Oh: task ideas. Folding paper airplanes comes to mind but it's kinda wasteful unless you have a recycling bin full of paper to work with. If your reward is something like jelly beans or Skittles, then the students can be assigned to sort them. Their reward would some percentage of the sorted candies, as tallied at the end of each turn.
posted by jedicus at 4:58 PM on May 26

The repetitive task could be copying words out of the history text book. Turn them all into scriveners. It's something everybody can quietly do at their desk for a short bit of time, and they're forced to interact with the text. The rewards (to the group or the business owners) can be based on the number of words copied in the allotted time, so you can allow the business owners in the capitalist section to reward higher producers or see if productive output is as high in the communist section where you don't make any more for writing faster.
posted by willnot at 5:07 PM on May 26

I like jedicus' ideas, and agree with his initial warning (that "the advantages of the self-organizing nature of capitalism only become apparent in the long run, in a larger economy based on arms-length transactions."). But I am uneasy with his proposed game because it's primarily Marxist in nature. It's great to teach that worldview, but it's nigh impossible to see the advantages of Capitalism in that framework.

One concern: Communism has its own version of nobles, as well. A less "Capitalism = Eternal Class Struggle" way of playing the game would remove that class factor from the Capitalism game or include it in the Communism game (where you are acting as the benevolent Central Planner in jedicus' version).

I recall some quick games that show the benefits of free trade, but can't find squat on the internet right now. It's sad there there aren't pithy examples of these kinds of games, but it makes sense -- it's a huge topic that creates a lot of misunderstanding when oversimplified in the other's worldview.
posted by FuManchu at 5:27 PM on May 26

I say this without snarkiness but please don't leave out the secret police and gulags. You have to include the coercive elements of Communism if you're going to portray it with any realism.
posted by codswallop at 5:34 PM on May 26

But I am uneasy with his proposed game because it's primarily Marxist in nature. It's great to teach that worldview, but it's nigh impossible to see the advantages of Capitalism in that framework.

I primarily framed it as a way of explaining the economic ideologies, which I think is the best way to go in an abstract game that can't take up more than a single class session. Getting into the details of how communism has failed throughout history requires more in depth discussion of the particularities of each state. The Soviet Union's failures are not China's failures are not Cuba's failures, just as the United States and other capitalist democracies have their own more or less unique problems.

As a result, I think a game like this has to deal in generalities. For the sake of intellectual honesty, it also has to put each ideology's best foot forward, at least at first. This may, as you suggest, make capitalism seem less appealing than it really is, but I feel it's safe to say that the 20th century history lessons on the repeated, horrific failures of communism will underscore the appeal of capitalism.

Communism has its own version of nobles, as well.

True, you could have some students be Party Members, who do things like pick whether to sort jelly beans by flavor or by color, or which pages of the history book to copy, or whatever. They would do no actual sorting themselves, being too busy dealing with the difficult task of choosing what the rest of the students should produce. They could also set wages, both for themselves and for the workers. They could set production targets and send dissenters to the gulag, if you wanted to see the abuse of power at work.

A less "Capitalism = Eternal Class Struggle" way of playing the game

Capitalism can be an eternal class struggle while still being better than communism in all respects. For example, many people in America may have very little class mobility, but that doesn't mean that they would be better off under communism.
posted by jedicus at 5:44 PM on May 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

(Also, Anti-Monopoly is an insanely dull game, as a game.)
posted by Casuistry at 5:51 PM on May 26

(Also, Anti-Monopoly is an insanely dull game, as a game.)

The people at BoardGameGeek would seem to agree with you.
posted by jedicus at 5:58 PM on May 26

I say this without snarkiness but please don't leave out the secret police and gulags. You have to include the coercive elements of Communism if you're going to portray it with any realism.

And in fairness, point out the fact that a much higher percentage of Americans are imprisoned than was ever the case in the Soviet Union!

Also, don't forget to mention that many "luxuries" in life were entirely free (and so cheap as to be functionally free) in Communist countries - the opera, ballet, art exhibitions, all sorts of activities. A low-skilled worker could buy two dozen books a week with scarcely a dent in his paycheck. Try that in America!

And education was of a high standard, and free! If you proved yourself capable, it was possible to get one's doctorate degree without one iota of stress about money or funding. Cost did not limit much higher education to those with means. I know loads of impoverished village kids who worked hard and studied often and made it to the top echelons of many fields only because they merited it. This is considered a "success story" worthy of the news in America, but it was ordinary in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, etc.

Also, Communist countries offered totally free medical care to all. Now think of the cost of even low-quality medical care in America - where a Wal-Mart worker might have to pay between a third to a half of his pay to keep his family "safe" from sickness or injury. So to survive, the parents work two jobs, and even the teenagers contribute. Think of this as one of the "coercive" elements of Capitalism - fit into the system or you may very well be devastated. Communism may not have tolerated as much dissent as Capitalism (though there were exceptions on both sides), but if you proved your talent, you could "drop out" and publish philosophical works, paint murals, do ceramics or write poetry with state support and little oversight.

And don't forget that most Capitalist countries are dependent on the rape of the lands and riches of "lesser" peoples throughout the world. Bhopal, India? A big Capitalist company. Slave workers in mineral / metal mines in the Andes? Big Capitalist corporations. The decimation of the entire country of Biafra, which was likely to have been one of the few corruption-free, democratic nations in West Africa? Paid for by US and UK oil companies . . . you know why!

Capitalism can be an eternal class struggle while still being better than communism in all respects.

I've lived under both systems. I prefer Capitalism, so to speak . . . but it's a system which is grossly unfair, and whose failings will be epic and eternal . . . even if this may take a while. But Communism had advantages, too - and that's in spite of an unequal comparison, as capitalism has probably existed in purer form than Communism ever did, so what's being compared are pretty reasonable examples of Capitalism and forms of Communism which bore almost no relationship to its ideological core.

But even given this, I'd rather be a poor person under Communism than Capitalism. If I weren't highly educated (and thus privileged in a special way), I'd also be better off as a woman under Communism compared to men in the same system. A person's individual life is better in many ways under Communism, too. Life is led in a more sustainable manner. Getting around was easy, nearly free and more "green" than that of the common American experience of driving a gas-guzzling SUV around the corner for milk. Nearly everyone's family was so close and openly loving as to make most Americans uncomfortable. Friendships were nearly always for life and felt much deeper than American friendships. Shopkeepers and waitstaff aside, a typical person who lived under Communism was almost always more warm, welcoming and generous than his or her much wealthier and privileged Capitalist counterpart.

Many suffered under Communism. But for what it's worth, this suffering was borne much more equally than the suffering which exists via Capitalism. If you were lucky enough to be born in one of the primary Capitalist homelands, such as the USA, well then your life is likely to be better than your imaginary Communist-land counterpart's. But if you were born outside either system, in a Third World country (like most of the world's population), than it's probably more likely you were a victim of Capitalism than Communism, historically speaking. Which system has done more damage to the world at large? It's actually quite hard to say.

Americans are very weak at seeing the world with anything like objectivity. An easy test: Ask any American who's suffered greater casualties in the last twenty-five years in just America and Europe - Muslims at the hands of Christian zealots or Christians at the hands of Muslim zealots? Nearly all of them will say "Christians, of course." But they're wrong, by a very wide margin! Similarly, most Americans have little real understanding of Communism. Those who lived under Communism are (and always were, by my reckoning) much more knowledgeable about Capitalism, outside of loony cut-off places like North Korea.

The truth is always pretty complex, so I hope you won't resort to stereotypes. Both systems were and remain pretty imperfect, and both systems have long histories of brutality, warfare, destruction and evil.

I think you have to include all this if you're going to portray it with any realism.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 6:46 PM on May 26 [10 favorites has favorites]

That's not really capitalism per se, but rather a crude approximation of socioeconomic inequality in the US coupled with a (distorted) version of our regressive tax system.

The thing is, you don't need to stack the odds in anyone's favor. All this "Well, if you really want to make it realistic, then…" stuff is childish and unnecessary.

Just play like normal.

And guess what happens?

Someone wins. What does that mean? That means that someone was able to gather up all the resources and force everyone else out. Watch how that happens. Watch how, even given a random distribution, with random odds, you eventually have winners and losers. You don't have to stack the odds at the start (even though we all know they are). This happens because of the intrinsic economic momentum of having shit. Those who have, well they get more, and faster. Monopoly is the perfect example of how unfettered capitalism inherently leads to despotism.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:29 PM on May 26

Look, I don't want this to get into a "which system is better" contest. It's not the question and it's not going to go anywhere.

My complaint, jedicus, against your proposal was simply that it included class issues in one system and not the other. Its economics were definitively Marxist. Its the best game proposal we've seen, but it is flawed in that sense. I'm not arguing that Capitalism does not have its class conflicts, I am arguing that your proposal ignores class issues in Communism. I don't think you can deny that your Communism mini-game establishes a benevolent actor while maintaining greedy actors in the others.

And frankly, we agree: the kids will not see the benefits of Capitalism without long-term trading, and inclusion of supply and demand. At the end of the day, the kids will need to be told "hey, Capitalism actually provides faster investment and pricing signals than Communism can, and thus results in a slightly more efficient economy." Otherwise they'll just come away with "hey, Communism is more fair than Capitalism" (which is apparently how many people feel about it anyway, especially on MeFi).

man down under, sorry to come in without any constructive recommendations. A true example of a Capitalism mini-game would necessarily be one of the Economics mini-games that are played in Intro Econ or Game Theory classes. Since that's not really what you're looking to teach, I don't think it's worthwhile in your instance. My initial comment was simply to say that jedicus' proposal, while excellent, brought in other issues.
posted by FuManchu at 7:32 PM on May 26

Shouldn't some mention be made of Democracy?

Capitalism can exist with a dictatorship ( i.e. Chile ) or a monarchy while Communism is totalitarian.
posted by sien at 8:07 PM on May 26

Communism is totalitarian

Well, in theory, after the workers rise up in revolution and establish a socialist state, the state is supposed to wither away, eventually giving rise to a workers' paradise of collective ownership. Of course in practice the idealized process always stops with a socialist totalitarian state because of, among other things, the iron law of oligarchy.

Before the Cold War and early on during it, which is the timeframe the asker is working in, I think there was still a believe that the communist revolutions would yet bear fruit. Consider North Korea and Vietnam, for example. Clearly there was still some hope among the revolutionaries that everything would work out: why fight and die for a doomed ideology or economic system?

So, given the timeframe the asker is working in, it's not quite apropos to presume that communism necessarily leads to totalitarianism, as that was neither known with certainty at the time nor what motivated people to revolt nor what led to the Cold War.
posted by jedicus at 9:07 PM on May 26

I don't think you can deny that your Communism mini-game establishes a benevolent actor while maintaining greedy actors in the others.

Well, I did suggest that it's extremely likely that the students in the communist group will rapidly figure out that they can slack off while still getting paid. That's a pretty greedy response to the perverse incentives of a communist system, I think.

Also, I followed up on your suggestion to include Party Members, who derive self-determined wages for work that, within the confines of the game, amounts to being a dead-weight loss on the economy, as it doesn't really matter what pages of the book the students copy or how they sort the jelly beans. I didn't explicitly state it, but I suspect that the students who end up as Party Members will quickly give themselves great wages while giving the other students very little. That's pretty greedy behavior, too.
posted by jedicus at 9:12 PM on May 26

Certainly there was a real thought that Communist economics might work. The "We will bury you" speech by Nikita Khrushchev reflected the idea. And indeed to quite an extent Soviet industrialisation in the post war period did OK.

But at the time totalitarian systems were not viewed as they are now. People were largely unaware of the Holodomor and were yet to see The Great Chinese famine.

Wasn't "bourjoise democracy" one of the things that Communists in the 1950s railed against?
posted by sien at 9:17 PM on May 26

The thing is, you don't need to stack the odds in anyone's favor. All this "Well, if you really want to make it realistic, then…" stuff is childish and unnecessary.

Just play like normal.

The reason that playing Monopoly by the normal rules does not accurately approximate Capitalism is that every player in Monopoly starts out with an equal amount of money and plays by the same rules. Every single player, at the beginning of the game, has an equal chance at winning, and it is only through their own strategy, skill, natural talent and luck that they succeed or fail in the game. That isn't Capitalism any more than telling the kids that everyone sharing with each other is Communism.
posted by ND¢ at 5:25 AM on May 27

That isn't Capitalism any more than telling the kids that everyone sharing with each other is Communism.

You clearly missed the part where I said "You don't have to stack the odds at the start (even though we all know they are)". You also clearly missed the point that it doesn't matter!

Even if you play under completely unrealistic circumstances where everyone starts out equal, you will still get the concentration of all resources into the hands of one. It doesn't matter the skill, luck or cunning of the other players. Oh, for a while it does, sure. In the beginning. But power eventually consolidates into one person's hands. Eventually they end up with so much that you're left with a long, drawn-out endgame where everyone else spirals down to nothing. That's usually the point where someone tips over the board, throws the bank and all the hotels into the air, and stomps off in a tizzy.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:08 PM on May 27