How Monopoly began its life on the left wing

Our story begins in 1903, when an American lady named Lizzie Magie, an ardent anti-monopolist (and follower of Henry George’s views on taxation), created The Landlord’s Game.

Monopoly began its life on the left wing – as a warning against the evils of capitalism. Picture: istock

Regrets? I’ve had a few,” sang Sinatra. Me too, Frank. Mine include a humiliating inability to whistle for a taxi ... and the fact that I can’t play chess, the most fascinating of games. The closest I got was watching The Queen’s Gambit. I can barely cope with draughts or noughts-and-crosses. Confession: I have a bad habit of wasting time playing Solitaire on my iPhone.

The origins of chess go back 1500 years, to Ancient India. India also gave the toffs their polo – and the masses Snakes and Ladders. More of the latter later.

I wasn’t too bad at Scrabble, invented just 87 years ago by US architect Alfred Mosher Butts and sold in 121 countries. But I gave it up a decade ago. Too many ugly arguments about whether this or that was really a word.

Dominoes? Not the mediocre pizza brand but the game, which was brought back from China by Italian missionaries and soon caught on.

But back to Ancient India for my favourite game as a kid. Drum roll ... Snakes and Ladders!! Up the ladders, down the snakes. A combination of luck and morality. According to legend, it was invented by the Indian saint Dnyaneshwar and brought to the UK as recently as 1890.

According to legend, Snakes and Ladders was invented by the Indian saint Dnyaneshwar.

One again suspects Christian missionaries, perhaps attracted by its moralising. As you know, a roll of the dice has you navigating between rungs and serpents, or good and evil. (It’s interesting how snakes always get such bad press – going right back to the Garden of Eden).

Hinduism in the Christian home. Toss the dice for naughty or nice, virtue or vice. Thrift, penitence or industry were rewarded with rungs. Disobedience or indolence had you on the slippery slope of a snake – headed for illness, disgrace and poverty. Oddly enough the English version balanced snakes and ladders, whereas the Indian original had more slippery slopes of snakes.

But now to the big surprise – and another game of moral instruction. Monopoly. These days, it seems to encourage players to amass real estate like so many mini Donald Trumps. One imagines daddy Lang playing with his delightful daughter Gina. Yet Monopoly began its life on the left wing – as a warning against the evils of capitalism. I can see Karl Marx playing it with Freddy Engels if the dates were a little different. Or Lenin with his protégé, that nice young Stalin.

Our story begins in 1903, fully 14 years before the Bolshevik Revolution. An American lady named Lizzie Magie, an ardent anti-monopolist (and follower of Henry George’s views on taxation), created Monopoly’s predecessor, The Landlord’s Game, and advertised it in The Christian Science Monitor. Magie would’ve been mortified had she known her game morphed into playful propaganda for the enemy just after the Great Depression.

It soon became one of the most successful board games in history. Originally (and ironically) it was set in Trump’s old stomping ground of Atlantic City, home of Donald’s famously failed casino. It spawned the famous version set in London, and was soon licensed in more than a hundred countries and 46 languages. Recent estimates have it selling 280 million copies. Plus, there’s a McDonald’s version with French fries. Do Not Go to Jail.