Roleplay/Game Activity: Marxism through Arm-Wrestling!
This activity easily fills a full hour and is a very lively and interesting exercise. Students act out a roleplay over several rounds which is deliberately designed to illustrate the Marxist conception of how free market economies function. Through arm-wrestling and games of ‘split or steal’, the bourgeois class quickly emerges. Thereafter, attempts to maximise profits drives down wages, discriminates against smaller traders and generally creates a class of disaffected, exploited proletarians.