![A square board game, "The Landlord's Game," with a central section labeled "Public Treasury" and "Money Denominations" showing $1, $5, $10, $50, and $100 bills. The 1903 board uses muted and earthy tones, primarily featuring shades of brown, beige, and green. The game board is divided into properties, including "Poorhouse," "Easy Street," "Coal Mines," "Oil Fields," "Broadway," "Market Place," "Rickety Row," "Beggarsway Court," "Goat Alley," "Boomtown," "Rubeville," "The Farm," "The Pike," "Lonely Lane," "Wayback," and "Luxury." Some properties have text indicating rent, taxes, or special conditions. There are also "Chance" and "Miscellaneous" spaces, as well as "Go to Jail" and "Jail" spaces. Four corner squares are "Poorhouse," "Jail," "Labor Upon Mother Earth," and "Lord Bluelbloods Estate." [gen AI description].](/media/monopoly.jpg)
Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 dollars. In the original version of the board game Monopoly, called The Landlord's Game, you went to jail for trespassing on the private estate of Lord Blueblood.
Capitalism is a name for a type of economic system which is primarily oriented toward the accumulation of profit, and is characterized by the private ownership of productive resources, that is, capital.
For Marx, capitalism can only emerge under specific historical and social conditions, particularly when the idea of private ownership of property is institutionalized. Private property necessarily entails denial to others of a right to use and enjoy productive resources. When a society’s means of production are owned as private capital, these resources are denied to the great majority of people in a society, all of whom need the same resources in order to secure their needs. Owners of capital use their capital in the production of commodities for sale, and their wealth comes from the profits gained from selling commodities in a market. Those who do not own capital must make a living by selling their labor. In a labor contract, workers enjoy none of the value of their labor. They can only earn what owners of capital are willing to pay for labor as a wage. In a system in which capital is private property and the value of work and use of these resources is realized only in the production of commodities for sale, profit comes from exploitation of workers by owners of capital.
In that sense, in a Marxist analysis, capitalism rests on a class division between on the one hand the owners of capital—capitalists or the bourgeoisie—and workers, or the proletariat. These two classes need each other, yet their interests are fundamentally in conflict. Society as a whole is defined by this ongoing class conflict.