Dead Marxist's Widow Turns Capitalist Over Wargame

April 7, 2008 -

In addition to numerous writings, Guy Debord (left), a prominent Marxist theorist who died in 1994, left behind a wife - and a game design.

Back in the 1970's, it seems, he created Kriegspiel, a board wargame, and documented his design in a book called A Game of War.Now, as Ian Bogost writes at Water Cooler Games, Debord's long lost game has resurfaced in controversy.

It seems that political thinker Alex Galloway, an admirer of the obscure Kriegspiel, created a digital version which he offers as a free download for both Mac and Windows. As Bogost writes:

A lot of thought went into the adaptation, along with a number of difficult decisions... The implementation is both functional and gorgeous, thanks to a thoughtful 2D and 3D visual design.

Here's the kicker. Galloway has been served a cease and desist by the attorney representing Guy Debord's widow. It's too early to tell what will happen next, but as Liz Losh points out, Galloway's situation bears some similarity to that of popular Facebook app Scrabulous. The irony, of course, is the estate of a dead Marxist pursuing litigation over the exchange value of the name and image of its intellectual property.

Liz Losh has more on the Debord dust-up at Virtualpolitik.

Via: Kotaku

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Comments

Submitted by DeusPayne (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 06:44.

I dream of a world where no one has ANY money... because they gave it all to me.

Submitted by myrpok (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 09:01.

@joe:
Very true, I always thought Marxism was about ferociously upholding a man to get paid for what he worked. no more; no less. (I believe that it's foolishly idealistic) I see where some people would see irony, but I think she's not being explicitly hypocritical in this instance.

Submitted by joe (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:50.

For what it's worth, I hate that term "Intellectual Property". This is a case of possible copyright infringement, not theft.

Submitted by BlackIce, Dragunov Marksman (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 06:53.

@DeusPayne

But then someone would have money - namely you and the servants who steal it from you.

Submitted by GoodRobotUs (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 07:35.

And, of course, every time you spent it, someone else would get some ;)

Submitted by DeusPayne (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 07:53.

Who said I was going to spend it. I'm just going to fill a huge pool and swim in it, like Scrooge McDuck, but richer. And... and then I'll be the winner.

Submitted by GoodRobotUs (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 08:16.

Hehehe, just watch out for friction burns, Scrooge could only get away with it because he is a Duck, and if Ducks can survive in the Thames, a few thousand tonnes of metal is nothing...

Submitted by Zerodash (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 08:39.

Classic. Every marxist/leftist I have ever known (I worked in academia for years) was secretly obsessed with money and status.

Submitted by CyberSkull (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 08:45.

"Marxist Doesn't Want To Share"

That's a delicious headline.

Submitted by joe (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 08:48.

Trying to figure out the irony... The little that I understand about Marxism is that the working class profit according to their production, rather than just those who own the means of production profiting from the working class. Seems in-line to me, that the family of someone who created the game, tries to profit from the game.

Submitted by L42yB (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 09:29.

@Joe and Myrpok:

But...

He's letting people download it for free! So there is no profit

Submitted by Eville1 (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 09:53.

@L42yB;

Which is why the widow is now showing her true colors. She probably never shared his beliefs to begin with.

Submitted by lordlundar (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 09:55.

As well, there's no reference that she did anything involved in the making of the game, so by the Marxist approach, she should get nothing. Her thinking is very capitalist as opposed to Marxist.

Submitted by Peter Nordstrand (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:45.

Opposing intellectual property rights, or the idea that people should'nt get paid for their work is generally not part of Marxist thought. Furthermore, the idea that spouses inheriting each other (or children their prarents for that matter) is one connected to some early Liberals, not necessarily Marxists.

This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you are Marxist or not. There is no irony, only ignorance.

Submitted by joe (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:46.

Capitalism theory says, as I understand it, that those who can make the money should make the money, and market forces will provide for all players. This is anti-capitalistic, actually, lordlundar, since, in this case, r-s-g.org is leveraging that work for their own gain. Capitalists would say, let the market forces prevail.

Submitted by joe (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:55.

Ah! I think I have got it. The irony is that the game was created to teach values of Marxism. One would expect the widow of the Marxist who created it would be pleased that the ideas would spread online, yet, instead, she is censoring that distribution. Thus: irony.

The original source, virtualpolitik, has a much better explaination than the cliff notes here and on Kotaku.

Submitted by Ian Cooper (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 11:56.

The fact that Debord was a Marxist doesn't mean his wife has to be. Anyway, the world is not Marxist and as they say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".

Submitted by Mike Skolnik (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 13:09.

I find it interesting that there's further contestation about who invented Kriegspiel, with the documented assertion that it was created roughly in 1781 by the master of pages of the German duchy of Brunswick.

It was modified in 1811 by one Herr von Reiswitz and his son, who gave it the Kriegspiel name. the younger von Reiswitz was a Prussian artillery officer, and the game became an officer training tool in the Prussian army.

Source: Mackay, Daniel. The Fantasty Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art. McFarland & Co: Jefferson, N.C., 2001. p.13.

Makes me wonder how much of a claim the Debord estate has.

Submitted by Eville1 (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 14:48.

Mike, good find.

Submitted by chuck (not verified) on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 17:51.

Debord's widow does have a good point though: what if they wanted to create an "official" version? should be pretty simple: give it a different name. In one of the rare instances of sanity in this IP-obsessed world, you cannot copyright or patent a game's ruleset (a textual representation, sure, the rules themselves, no).

Of course if the documentation that Mike dug up holds up, even Disney's lawyers couldn't say it hasn't passed to the public domain (trademarks may be forever, but they only live as long as they're held).

Submitted by fourthirtythree (not verified) on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 08:22.

But Debord was not a Marxist. He was a situationist. Quite different, as they said in the late 60s "yes a Marxist, of the Groucho variety". Had he simply been a marxist there would be no irony at all. Situationists, however, believed in undermining systems by such tactics as giving away for free items which would normally be paid for. Their house journal was called "Potlatch", supposedly a term from Native Americans relating to gift giving as a means to remove surplus capital from circulation (thus performing one of the functions that religion has traditionally performed).
1978 though? Well, Mitterand's presidency was just around the corner: the old situationists and radicals (the non-suicides) were on the cusp of accepting lucrative sinecures from the fifth republic, totally co-opted by the establishment. Althusser's wife was not long for the world.
Despite the political naivety I really enjoyed this - the game came up in conversation only last week and I'd forgotten to look for it, and the virtualpolitik blog looks excellent too.

Submitted by Ebonheart (not verified) on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 19:23.

Hah woman is capitalist.

Remember boys and girls, in Communism everything you do BELONGS TO THE WHOLE not the creator.

Submitted by squid (not verified) on Sat, 04/12/2008 - 10:00.

It is not hypocrisy to deal in the economy one has available while advocating one that you think is better.

That would be like saying that one is wrong to petition the king in spite of held beliefs in democracy. It is not as if ones beliefs, held strongly enough, will remove unwanted players from the equation.

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