Action Replay: Icy conditions (2026)

The Action Replay column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in the Russian city of Sochi (see Action Replay for December 2013 and April 2014). There was plenty of controversy attached to them, with environmental problems prominent and up to a third of the cost of staging the Games lost in corruption and embezzlement. Many cities are now reluctant to bid for the Games, because of the costs involved.

This year’s Games were held last month in Milano Cortina, meaning Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (which, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an upscale summer and winter sport resort’). Again, there were problems with corruption (Guardian 31 January): in October three men were arrested and charged with controlling the distribution of drugs in Cortina, controlling some of the nightclubs and forcing the local council into awarding Games-related construction contracts (the bill for the Games will be well over £4bn). The methods of intimidation allegedly used included threats and beating people up.

The Open Olympics 26 report managed to get the Games’ organisers to publish their financial dealings online (see PDF – tinyurl.com/nczd45hp). This has shown that much of the money being spent will be on road projects which won’t be completed until after the Games are over.

And it’s not just in Cortina. A new ice hockey venue in Milan was still unfinished at the end of January, with the hospitality boxes and press area far from ready. There had also been complaints that the rink was too small and the ice was unsafe. Demonstrations took place in the city over the environmental impact of the Games, to which the police responded with tear gas and water cannons, and there were reports of sabotage of railway lines.

Another controversy has been over the role that the thuggish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will play. Let’s ignore jokes to the effect that Trump misunderstood the kind of ice needed at the Games. Describing them as ‘a militia that kills’, the mayor of Milan said they would not be welcome in the city. It appears that in fact a separate ICE department, Homeland Security Investigations, will provide intelligence and so on, as it has done at previous large sporting events, but will not conduct any kind of enforcement operations (officially, anyway).

As at some previous Olympics, there will be a new sport at this one, ski mountaineering (skimo), a combination of skiing and mountain climbing. At least it’s more clearly a sport than breakdancing, introduced at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Paul Bennett

Letter: Olympic Retrospect (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Olympic Retrospect

I started watching the Olympics and at first was just taken by how well the participants excelled in their particular activities. Then an unease about the whole show leaked through. The elitism, the flag waving and the full-on nationalism made me switch off. Better the athletes, etc had competed in the name of their multinational sponsors or pharmaceutical company than this hideous exhibition of national identity. Backed up by officials and commentators winding up the patriotic fervour, even that stupid chump Adrian Chiles and other media prostitutes, screaming for “their” country. Doubtless the same was happening in all the other countries’ media. I expect the 1936 Olympics was much like this.

Stuart Gibson,

Bournemouth

Action Replay: Only funding (2025)

The Action Replay column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Governments support capitalism and its ruling class in various ways, such as the police, courts and prisons. They fund transport superstructure and technological research. In addition, among other things, they provide financial support for sport as a way of boosting national ‘pride’ and patriotic fervour.

At the 1996 Summer Olympics, the British team fared very badly, winning a solitary gold medal. Not good enough, in terms of inspiring interest in the national team and endorsing flag-waving. The response was the establishment the following year of UK Sport, a government agency that invests money in Olympic and Paralympic sports. The funding comes from the government and the National Lottery, about £370m over the four-year cycle of the Olympics and Paralympics.

That may sound like a lot of money, but at the level of individual athletes it is a lot less generous. Recently the canoeist Kurts Adams Rozentals was suspended from competing by Paddle UK, the governing body. They have not said why, but he reckons it is because of his posts on OnlyFans, a social media site that hosts adult content.

Rozentals has earned over £100,000 from his posts there, which contrasts with the meagre £16,000 he was getting from UK Sport via Paddle UK. He simply couldn’t get by on that, and so started his OnlyFans site, saying, ‘I came to the realisation about why I started doing this last winter after years of struggle, years of living on the edge, my mum working 90 hours-a-week, having bailiffs at the door’ (BBC online, 29 May).

Some sports of course do better than others in terms of funding, such as over £20m for athletics in 2025–9, but just £700,000 for baseball, which doesn’t have anywhere near the same public appeal. The current focus is on the Los Angeles Games in 2028. According to UK Sport’s website, ‘Olympic and Paralympic sport occupies a special place in the hearts of the British public with more than 80% saying they were proud of Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s performances at Paris 2024.’

Besides individual athletes and sports, the organisation also supports particular sporting events and championships, such as this year’s Women’s Rugby Union World Cup, to be played at a variety of stadiums in England in August and September, which also has official sponsors too.

Other countries vary in how Olympic and Paralympic sports are funded. In the US it is largely private funding, including sponsors and commercial partners. Earlier this year the ‘philanthropist’ Ross Stevens made a $100m donation to the US Olympic Committee; he is the boss of an asset management company, so a wealthy capitalist. The Chinese government has a substantial sport budget, over £2bn a year, mainly for Olympic and Paralympic programmes.

Whether the money comes from the government or direct from capitalists, it is clear that funding for sport is an important part of boosting nationalism and loyalty to ‘one’s country’.

Paul Bennett

Action Replay: Games and the Olympics (2024)

The Action Replay column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a 2013 Action Replay we raised the question of whether chess counted as a sport. We felt that maybe it did, as the top players were required to take drug tests. But of course chess does not involve any physical exercise, which is usually counted as an essential aspect of sport.

Similar questions have arisen more recently, in connection with this year’s Olympics, as to whether certain other activities are to be considered sports. This applies to rhythmic gymnastics, skateboarding and breakdancing, for instance, which are certainly physical but somehow do not resemble traditional sports. As another example, people now often see martial arts as a sport rather than a form of combat.

And the same may apply to gaming or esports (electronic sports), competitions involving video games, where people compete either individually or in teams. There is little physical effort, other than pressing buttons and so on, but they can be psychologically quite demanding. They can be played for fun, but there are also professional players, and the whole enterprise is surprisingly big, with plenty of people watching others play. Nearly a hundred million watched the 2018 final of the world championship for one video game, League of Legends, for instance.

Recently the International Olympic Committee announced that the inaugural Olympic Esports Games will be held next year in Saudi Arabia. The country has over 23 million gamers, with a hundred full-time professional esports players, and its Minister for Sport described it as ‘a global hub for professional esports’. Women there are apparently participating more and more in esports, and indeed in sport more generally. Such is the official picture, anyway, no doubt designed to counter claims of how much discrimination Saudi women suffer from.

Just like other sports, capitalist companies have seized on esports to promote their products, in what has been termed esportswashing (nakedcapitalism.com, 25 August). Car manufacturers, oil companies and even the US armed forces have signed sponsorship deals with the esports industry. The fanbase is global, mostly young and overwhelmingly male, and they are a good target for capitalist concerns that need to boost their public image. Saudi Arabia was already using football for more general sportswashing (see Action Replay for October 2023), so this is not all that new.

As sports expand and adopt new methods of playing, much of the marketing and other paraphernalia stay in place.

Paul Bennett

Material World: Taking the gold (2024)

The Material World Column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every four years the Olympics give us a demonstration of human skills, determination and intelligence. Athletes from around the world compete for honours: yet in each Olympics, it seems, only a handful of countries take home the bulk of the medals. We could reasonably expect raw human ability to be evenly distributed around the globe, and yet, the Olympics shows us that of the 200 countries and territories that compete, US, China, Australia and some European nations will win most of the events.

Racists would attribute this to some sort of inherent national ability and superiority on the part of those nations. Of course, there are more sensible explanations. The Olympics represent the sporting culture of the countries that established them: people in many countries just do not have the same interest in these sports. In many countries, there is not the participation, much less the infrastructure, to find and train the most able sports people.

Engagement in sport requires the time to train, and billions of people around the world are tied to long working weeks (and many of those simply do not have the diet available to realise their sporting potential). On top of which, some states, like the UK, spend millions on training, supporting and honing their athletes.

Further, some states are able to attract talent through migration, offering opportunities and citizenship that others cannot match.

The participation of the other countries is essential to the spectacle, though: after all, for someone to come first someone has to come second, or even last. In many ways, the Olympics can be seen as a mechanism to transfer sporting glory from a global majority to a minority.

North and south

As such, it serves as a good metaphor for the way that wealth is concentrated internationally. In July this year, Hickle, Lemos and Barbour published a paper in the journal Nature Communications entitled Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy. In it they argue ‘wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains’.

They analysed data, from 2021, showing the global breakdowns of types of labour performed, and the relative prices/wage costs of that labour. Around the world, they suggest that 9.6 trillion hours of labour were performed in the world economy. 2.1 trillion hours went into traded goods (including services). They divided the world into the global North (based on the IMF list of advanced economies: USA, United Kingdom, etc) and the global South (all other countries).

The overall net balance of trade was in favour of the global North, amounting to 826 billion hours of labour transferred from South to North. They note there is no sectoral imbalance (ie, the global South is not just producing primary products, but also intermediate and finished goods for consumption). The South is not just performing unskilled labour, but highly skilled labour across the full range of economic activities, and ‘This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development’.

They explain that the:

‘Dynamics of unequal exchange are understood to have intensified in the 1980s and 1990s with the imposition of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) across the global South. SAPs devalued Southern currencies, cut public employment and removed labour and environmental protections, imposing downward pressure on wages and prices. They also curtailed industrial policy and state-led investment in technological development and compelled Southern governments to prioritise “export-oriented” production in highly competitive sectors and in subordinate positions within global commodity chains. At the same time, lead firms in the core states have shifted industrial production to the global South to take direct advantage of cheaper wages and production costs, while leveraging their dominance within global commodity chains to squeeze the wages and profits of Southern producers. These interventions have further increased the North’s relative purchasing power over Southern labour and goods’.

That is, through control of international institutions and control of finance. We could add in the raw power of ownership, as many industries when decolonisation occurred still belonged to Northern capitalists. We could add naked corruption as another mechanism. And some capitalists in the periphery choose to invest their profits in the North rather than locally. Although not included in their list, we can add military dominance as well, as some Northern states will use force to ensure their position in the global chains, as well as providing the military resources that prop up rulers in the global South.

Hickle et al find that ‘Southern wages are 87–95% less than Northern wages at the same skill level, ie, for equal work as defined by the ILO. Southern wages are 87% less for high-skill labour, 93% less for medium-skill labour, and 95% less for low-skill labour’. This is also part of the driver for imbalanced trade. They conclude:

‘Given this dynamic, it is clear that the North’s development model cannot be universalised, as it relies on appropriation from elsewhere. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the North’s current levels of aggregate consumption could be maintained under fair trade conditions’.

And as they note:

‘It should be understood that unequal exchange is ultimately driven by the corporations and investors that control supply chains, and the states that determine the rules of international trade and finance, not by workers or consumers’.

Globalised workforce

There is a clear class issue here. The 9.6 trillion hours of labour that the authors calculate are performed in the world economy are performed by a globalised workforce that is being exploited through producing more value through their work than it costs in wages to maintain and reproduce their ability to work. Capitalists, North and South, compete to grab a share of this surplus value. What the authors have in effect uncovered is how successful, and how, the capitalists of the North have been in this struggle at the expense of the capitalists of the South.

They also calculate that ‘globally, labour received, on average, 51.6% of world GDP during the 5-year period 2017–2021’ and that this represents a global decline in the share going to labour. But it does not follow that a more equal sharing between the capitalists of the North and South of the 48.4% up for them to grab would alter this.

Pik Smeet

Action Replay: Faster, higher, fraternity (2024)

The Action Replay Column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Olympics comes round every four years, and this time it was the turn of Paris. The French capital had hosted the Games twice before, in 1900 and 1924. The 1900 Games were only the second of the modern era, and they were run more by the French state than the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Quite apart from the nationalism that you might expect, there was emphasis on military applications, with the events including not just target shooting but also cannon-firing and ballooning (which had potential uses in terms of spying and so on). In 1924 forty-four nations competed, compared to just twenty-nine in 1920; Germany was banned from both these Games, because of the First World War.

Over two hundred nations were represented this year, but of course, capitalism being what it is, there is more to be said. Athletes from Russia and Belarus competed as Individual Neutral Athletes, without flags or anthems. There was also an IOC Refugee Olympic Team, consisting of athletes from various countries and reflecting the fact that there are millions of displaced people globally. ‘This unique project demonstrates the IOC’s commitment to standing with refugees and supporting them through sport at elite, but also grassroots, levels’ (olympics.com).

The city of Paris benefitted from the publicity and increased number of visitors. There were complaints that advantage was being taken of a captive audience, with increased prices for buses and the Metro, and also for attractions such as the Louvre and Eiffel Tower, plus higher tourist taxes in hotels. This was balanced, though, by a concern that some tourists might avoid Paris because of the congestion caused by the Games and increased security clampdowns. Visitor numbers did indeed drop in some cases.

Some of the ticket prices also gave rise to protests, with the most expensive tickets for finals in athletics and basketball being priced at €980. In response, it was stated that such prices helped make the lower prices for other tickets possible, with nearly half of those available priced at €50 or less, and one tenth at just €24. The cost of staging the Games was reduced by using existing venues and facilities where possible.

We should also point out that the Olympics are not just about sport, national rivalry and money-making. Over 200,000 condoms were provided in the Olympic Village. It’s probably not connected, but it may have been good to see that Head & Shoulders was adopted as the official Olympic shampoo.

Paul Bennett

Sting in the Tail: An Outbreak of Truth (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Outbreak of Truth

Edwina Currie the former Under Secretary of Health had to resign because she upset a powerful section of the capitalist class.

Her comment on ITV 3rd December, '88 that "most of the egg production in this country is now infected by salmonella" caused an uproar among that section of the capitalist class who have their capital invested in egg production. As sales, and of course profits, fell they mounted a campaign to get rid of her.

Now socialists have no sympathy with capitalist lick-spittles like Currie. Her insulting remarks on workers dying of hypothermia (lack of food and warmth) — "they should knit themselves woolly nightcaps” — recall the "let them eat cake" of the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy.

But her forced resignation is really somewhat unique. She had to resign because she told the truth!

An outbreak of truth in the Houses of Parliament would certainly be extremely refreshing. Say Nigel Lawson admitting that capitalism controls governments and not the other way about. That he is powerless to control slumps and booms. Or Neil Kinnock admitting that he is opposed to socialism and just wants to run the buying and selling system.

Alas, it appears that truth is less catching than salmonella and Edwina Currie's case is an isolated one.

Lake Plonk

A search through a European Atlas will not reveal its location. But it's there somewhere . . . unchartered, its location unsuspected.

It's Surplusland, a European country with a weird geography. We know something of its topography from newspaper reports. It has Beef Hills, Butter Mountains and a Wine Lake.

In The Independent 24 January ' 89 we were given some of the details of the Wine Lake.

There were 250 million gallons of surplus alcohol (distilled wine alcohol) for disposal last year. Another 118 million gallons is expected this year. A further 92 million gallons is due for disposal Inside of the next three years.

Why not give it away?, you ask. Well to those of you who fancy a couple of free glasses of wine with your Salmonella Chicken Supreme, the Select Committee on European Legislation (Third Report) has the answer.

In practice there appears to be little demand for wine alcohol as such which reflects the cost of production .

In other words — it's not profitable !

A society that produces and stores surpluses of beef, butter, wheat and wine while millions starve is an absolute obscenity.

It's not Cricket

Annoyed at the cricketing authorities' decision to ban players from the England Test team If they played in South Africa, Mr. Norris McWhirter of the Freedom Association has attempted to take action through the courts.

The Independent 25th January, 1989 referring to the Association's defence of Zola Budd and its recent cricket legal case, stated:

The inevitable conclusion is that it must support the race policies of the South African government but this is not so. Both cases the association says, concern the freedom of individuals to carry out their business or affairs as they chose without interference from bullying authorities.

Mr. McWhirter's organisation makes great play of defending a sportsman or woman's right to go anywhere they wish in their sporting careers irrespective of politics.

This apparent disinterest in politics seems a little strange when one recalls that the same McWhirter wrote to British athletes prior to the Moscow Olympics urging them not to go to that country because of Russia's invasion of j Afghanistan.

Writing to Linsey MacDonald, the Scottish runner, he referred to athletes who didn't win medals and said:

. . . having gained no medals you will have earned the contempt of millions of your countrymen.

Such a letter to a sixteen year old schoolgirl is as good an example of bullying as we’ve come across.

The whitewash attempt of The Independent should fool no one. The Freedom Association is just another bunch of well-heeled toffs anxious to protect their class privilege against any real or imagined threat.

Its deep involvement in the Grunwick dispute of 1976, its anti-trade union stance recently against the postal workers proves that "freedom" to the quaintly named "Freedom Association" means freedom to exploit and grow fat on the unpaid labour of the working class.

What's up Doc ?

David Mellor, the Minister of State for Health, is concerned at the long hours worked by junior hospital doctors.

But not too concerned, for according to The Independent 25th January 1989:

But he confirmed the government's intention to oppose the backbench Bill scheduled for debate In the Lords tonight setting a 72 hour maximum legal limit on the junior doctor's working week.

After a survey in Bristol of junior doctors Dr. Ruth Gilbert (quoted In The Independent same day) said :

Suffering from sleep deprivation, Junior doctors are likely to perform monotonous tasks badly, make mistakes over drug dosages and experience mood changes that will make them less sympathetic to their patients.

When asked about the worst aspects of their work 85 per cent of the men and 95 per cent of the women said "exhaustion and hours of work" followed by "acting as dogsbodies doing unrewarding work."

In February 1848 a pamphlet written in German was published in London. It referred to the position of doctors inside capitalism. It stated:

The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The pamphlet was The Communist Manifesto. The authors were Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Sting in the Tail: Money-grubbing Olympics (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money-grubbing Olympics

Some people who watched the recent Olympic Games were interested less in the prowess of the athletes than in their potential for advertising endorsements.

Advertisers are looking for athletes with sales-appeal—no charisma, no contract, and one ad-man predicted that Carl Lewis’s ninth gold medal wouldn’t help him because “He's won before and no one liked him ’’(New York Post, 31 July).

And athletes should know when and when not to shed a tear:

“They're allowed to cry for joy when they win, but any athlete who cries because they've lost can forget about endorsements. ”

But patriotic tears could be more rewarding than mere tears of joy:

“The guy who won the high jump came close to crying during the National Anthem, but he held back, one tear could have been worth tens of thousands of dollars. ”

Maybe the next Olympics will see medals for those athletes who land the most lucrative advertising contracts.

Marriage of convenience

The decision by Boeing, the world’s biggest maker of civilian aircraft, to buy Rockwell, the aerospace and "defence” company, for three billion dollars, is more bad news for America's European competitors.

A spate of similar take-overs in America has produced a handful of industry giants and put European rivals at a competitive disadvantage because they have remained independent—and relatively small.

“But this attitude may be changing—Efforts to create a pan-European aerospace industry capable of matching US rivals gathered pace yesterday when the new chairman of Aerospatiale called on his fellow industrialists to “regroup” their interests ” (Guardian, 9 August).

For any industry' to survive in today’s capitalism it must “regroup” into bigger but fewer economic units—witness what’s happening in banking, insurance, car manufacturing, brewing, retailing, etc., and Europe’s fragmented aerospace and defence industry is belatedly catching on.

Hard Times Down-Under

We have received a pile of newspaper cuttings from a sympathiser in New Zealand which tell some familiar stories.

They tell of strikes involving teachers, telecom workers, air-traffic controllers, and many others, the health service is collapsing, one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, pay and benefits have been cut, etc.

A less familiar story concerns an employer who has ordered his workers to have their “bowel movements ” in their own time only:

“It's a completely reasonable request. It's a personal discipline" (Sunday Star Times, 7 July).

Presumably, this superman has disciplined himself to crap on cue, but for mere mortals it’s a case of “When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!”

Workers in New Zealand are clearly having a tough time, but for some the screw has been turned just that little bit tighter.

Orwell’s “Lesser Evil”

The revelation that George Orwell named “crypto-communists” and “fellow travellers” to the British secret service drew noteworthy comments form some prominent left-wingers.

For example, Christopher Hill, the communist historian, claimed that Orwell’s writing was always ambiguous, and added that “Animal Farm was precisely an attack on communism. ” How an “ambiguous” writer could write “precisely” Hill didn’t say, but presumably he still defends the “communism” which Orwell so brilliantly attacked.

And Tony Benn curiously excused Orwell’s act on the grounds that “the biggest terrorists in the world are states”, possibly forgetting that he had been part of the British state when he was a Labour cabinet minister.

Orwell’s denunciation of the Russian dictatorship was wholly admirable, but in naming names he sided with one bunch of exploiters in its sordid quarrel with another, and that was utterly deplorable.

Big-time con-artists

A vicar at the C of E’s General Synod speaking on Camelot’s running of the National Lottery, described the lottery as evil, and added that “Punters are being deceived on a grand scale. ”

Yes, this is the same C of E which has for centuries been telling folk that after they die they will live on in one place or another., that once upon a time a luckless Israelite got himself done-in as payment-in-advance for their sins, that the meek shall inherit the earth, etc., etc.

When it comes to deceiving punters “on a grand scale” then Camelot has got nothing on the C of E.

Naive Greens

Anyone who wonders why we are so critical of the “Greens” should consider the following.

The United Nations commissioned a group of international economists to advise on the best way of achieving a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Big Issue, 4 August).

Aubrey Meyer, a Green activist, discovered that the economists are working only on the cheapest way of tackling global warming:

"Their task was to work out the slowest rate of increase in emissions that the world could afford. It was putting economics before lives."

And yet Greens remain convinced that this problem can be solved within the capitalist system which creates it.

At Home and Abroad . . . (1972)

The Home and Abroad Column from the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review September 72

At Home

There are signs that the government is preparing to retreat from its previous entrenched position on wages. If this happens it will need careful handling as far as publicity goes, which may explain the heavy caution with which the recent talks between the unions, employers and the government were treated. When they came into power Heath’s government were quite positive that they had the solution to the economic problems which have plagued British capitalism since the war. The unions, they said, must be brought to heel; in future they would be met head on in any industrial dispute. There would also be a special Act which would in effect weaken the unions’ bargaining powers. At the same time prices would, in some mysterious way which has eluded all other governments, be held in control. The promised result of this would be a steady rise in prosperity for everyone. In fact what the Tories were concerned about, as any capitalist government would be, was basically wages and the level of capital investment in British industry, which were affecting the competitive power of British goods on the world market. Every government since the war has come in with promises to tackle these problems and they have all had apparently simple solutions. Every one has had "new” ideas and policies; Wilson’s government, for example, had the Prices and Incomes Board and the Declaration of Intent from the employers and the unions. Who remembers them now? Every government, faced with the day to day realities of capitalism, has been compelled to change its line and to abandon the programme it put forward at the election, while the problem continued as bad as ever. Heath’s had the brief period of open conflict, as he promised and he has the Industrial Relations Act. Some workers have been gaoled, a union has had a massive fine. But British capitalism could not have carried on for long like that; it makes more sense, economically and politically, for the Tories to change their policy. To repeal the Industrial Relations Act would be too obvious a signal of defeat but there will probably be other signs in the near future of the government’s surrender to the intractability of capitalism’s chaos.

Abroad

Since it has never happened before, the killing of the Israeli Olympic athletes helped foster the idea that we are living in times of special cruelty and disarray, and that guerrilla tactics are something of an innovation. It needs only a little effort to recall many examples of similar tactics, sometimes by small bands of killers and sometimes by larger, more organised groups. If the Arabs showed great courage in their raid, it was not the first time that bravery has been used to murderous ends. Capitalist states are always organising the courage of their peoples in a massive effort of destruction. At such times they use any weapon they can, including that of the ultimatum. The famous demand for unconditional surrender in the last war was no more than a threat to murder and destroy on a savage scale, if the other side did not give way — and it was a threat which the Allies carried out. The men who plan and implement such ultimata are not called terrorists and murderers but there is nothing to choose between them and the men who did the killing at Munich, or indeed those Israeli nationalists who waged so ruthless a guerrilla campaign against British occupation in the years after the war. Capitalism is a mass of conflict, springing from the competing economic interests of many rival groups both national and international. In one way or another, force is always applied in these conflicts and capitalism continually conditions its people to accept the use of force, often of a terrifying scale and intensity. The Arabs at Munich acted as they have been conditioned to. The outcome of violence is never pleasant, whether it is eleven dead bodies at Munich or a hundred thousand at Hiroshima. But if the working class are not clear on the issue, if their ideas on it are confused by the illogicalities and the violence of nationalism, they can have no hope of ending a victory of which bloodshed is so integral a part.

Politics

When the Monday Club meet to protest against the Ugandan Asians, they thunder that the immigrants are being allowed in against the wishes of the people of this country. When Wedgewood Bonn talks about British capitalism’s entry of the Common Market, he whines that the voice of the people should be heard on the issue, in a referendum. We do not need to be too perceptive to realise that concern for a democratic society emerges only when policies are being pushed through which the speaker opposes. Tory M.P. Soref supports a government which, like the one of which Benn was a member, has imposed plenty of measures without asking what the majority of people thought or wanted. Democracy is a word for capitalist politicians to play with and to use if they see advantage in doing so. In fact capitalism cannot be a democratic society; it cannot take its people into its confidence, cannot make all its information freely available, cannot run itself as the majority wants, cannot involve everyone in the decision taking from top to bottom. Soref is no more interested in making available full information about race, about housing, population, social services and so on than Benn is in telling us everything about the economy of capitalism. Democracy needs knowledge and when the working class have that there will be no more capitalism with its irrelevant issues and politicians to exploit them.

Voice From The Back: Poisoned, not bombed (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poisoned, not bombed 

For the first time, more people are leaving their homes because of environmental factors than because of war. The world now has 25 million environmental refugees, compared with 21 million war-related refugees. The crisis is largely the result of more than half of the world’s rivers drying up or becoming seriously polluted, according to a report from the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century. The Amazon and the Congo are the two healthiest of the world’s 500 major rivers—probably because they have few industrial centres near their banks, the commission suggests. It blames abuse of land and water resources and poor management by regional authorities for the problem. Guardian, Science, 2 December.

Asking dangerous questions 

The only way to judge the success of an agent of change would be to ask: is it affecting the human condition? Does the internet move food and supplies around the world to the people who need them? Does it relieve human suffering, make us more aware of political prisoners, change the plight of refugees? The role of computers as agents of change is to administer the planet properly, and help us figure out, for example, why farmers in some countries are paid to burn food while people in others starve to death. Or to co-ordinate human effort around the globe in a way that hasn’t been achieved before. Guardian online, 2 December.

Capitalist art 

It isn’t just the bitchiness which, judging by her book, is endemic in ballet. The pain is no joke either: like her fellow ballerinas, [Darcey] Bussell hates giving in to injury partly because ballet is such a short career, and will dance on if humanly possible, smiling through the pain . . . There is also the mental pressure. Criticism in ballet is unrelenting, intense emphasis is placed on the body, and at every stage girls are weeded out and dumped. No doubt this is why, as Bussell observes, “dancers are neurotically unsure of themselves”. Add to this the internecine competition for roles or just to retain a three-month contract, and you have a very nasty environment. But, as Bussell explains, “we can’t be too nice because it’s the rivalry that keeps us hungry and drives our careers”. Night & Day, 21 November.

Where can it go? 

“Capitalism is a force that moves, but it does not know where it is going.” Lionel Jospin, Prime Minister of France, Yorkshire Post, 20 November.

It goes this way 

As the world enters a new millennium, children are continuing to be killed and exposed to abuse in flagrant violation of their rights, according to the executive director of Unicef, Ms Carol Bellamy . . . Despite unprecedented wealth in the global economy, where currency markets exchange $1.5 trillion a day, more than 1.2 billion people struggle to survive on less than $1 a day and more than 600 million are children. Per capita income, adjusted for inflation, is lower today in 80 countries than it was a decade ago. Herald, 13 December.

So much for rights! 

A year after the UN approved a declaration to protect human rights activists, repression has increased throughout the world, according to findings published in Paris today. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said more than 200 activists had been executed, tortured or arbitrarily arrested since the UN vote. But the picture was incomplete as nearly a dozen countries made it impossible for independent associations to operate, while a further 30 states systematically obstructed investigations. Guardian, 8 December.

Games 

America is taking the threat of terrorism at the Olympic Games in Sydney next year so seriously that a US navy battlegroup, with an aircraft carrier, destroyer and submarine will be on stand-by off the Australian coast throughout the games. They will be in international waters ready to respond to any attack with force, including biological and chemical warfare units. Times, 15 December.

Class war casualties 

Up to 55 cases of corporate manslaughter a year should be brought against companies and directors where employees have been killed in the workplace, according to new research. Gary Slapper, director of the law programme at the Open University, said the law needed to be changed and a tougher approach taken to fatal safety lapses in the workplace . . . “When a reckless company kills, the legal system usually just yawns and turns away. There is virtually no deterrent,” he said . . . Since 1965, 25,000 people have been killed at work or in major commercial disasters. Health and Safety Executive reports suggest that 70 percent of these deaths resulted from a management failure. Dr Slapper’s research also shows that 60 percent of deaths were attributable to economic factors, cutting corners to save money as opposed to simple ignorance about safety. Independent, 29 November.

Hard times 

The Duke of Westminster’s nine-year-old heir, the Earl Grosvenor, has been named on a High Court writ. The reason? The lad’s £1 billion inheritance. Thankfully, young Hugh is not about to be cut out of his father’s will. The move, says Jeremy Newsum, the chief executive of Grosvenor Estate Holdings, is “a bit of housekeeping”. This has been made necessary because of dramatic changes in the way the family’s assets, estimated at £1.75 billion, now have to be managed. Times, 15 December. 

Billion-dollar Games (1984)

From the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the biggest media and commercial binges in the last four years got under way at the end of July. We refer of course to the Los Angeles Olympics, rumoured by some simple souls to be a sporting festival but in fact an excuse for making money and reinforcing nationalist prejudices.

These were clearly the most commercialised Games ever held. The stages of carrying the Olympic torch across the United States were auctioned for three thousand dollars a kilometre and prominent alongside each runner was someone in a T-shirt advertising the telephone company, AT & T. Each sporting facility had its own sponsor; McDonalds, for instance, built the swimming pool, and Southlands Corporation the cycling velodrome. Fearing a repetition of the Montreal fiasco of 1976 (where the Games will not be paid for until the next century), Los Angeles only agreed to accept the Games if it could be guaranteed that the city would not lose money on them. This was assured when a consortium of businessmen accepted responsibility and set out to make as much money from the Games as they could.

The modern top-class sportsperson can hardly be other than a full-time athlete. Long gone are the days when it was possible to stay at the top by means of a couple of light training sessions a week. Training nowadays is highly scientific, with different emphases for different events, and a daily commitment is required. This is partly why Olympic eligibility is determined not by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) but by the international governing body of each sport. So runners are allowed to make a living from the sport, while swimmers are not. In 1988, when tennis is part of the Games, professionals will be openly allowed to compete — provided they are under twenty!

The American athlete Carl Lewis has openly stated that "the Olympics are about money and not much else”. And he should know: he calculated that every gold medal he won in the Games (and he won four) would be worth one and a half million pounds to him. There would be endorsements for sports products, of course, but also for clothes, deodorants, and the like. Coca-Cola are discussing an extra contract with Lewis worth over four million pounds. Even this will just keep him in the style to which he is accustomed. He maintains his “amateur” status by having his income paid into a trust from which he can draw generous “expenses”. Not surprisingly, he sees little point in formally turning professional.

It may be worth recalling that the original Olympics of Ancient Greece were not based on amateur ideals either. In addition to victory garlands, sizeable prize money was paid, and athletes eventually organised their own professional associations to negotiate with the promoters of games. It is probably not too far-fetched to discern a professional circuit of games which provided an income for highly-trained full-time athletes. There was no pretence that taking part was more important than winning: victory in competition was what mattered, and there were no records or personal bests.

According to the accepted mythology, the Olympics were revived in 1896 because of the heroic vision and single-minded energy of Baron de Coubertin. In fact, there had been plenty of earlier attempts to do so. In 1612, Robert Dover founded the Cotswold Olympics, which won royal approval from James I (they endured in some form till 1852, when they were discontinued because of “debauchery”). In 1862, some “Olympics” were held in Liverpool, but nothing further came of them. Basically, these were sports gatherings for ordinary people — it took an aristocratic movement to get the Olympics truly going again.

De Coubertin was much influenced by the ethos of the English public schools and sport’s role in them. Thus his list of proposed sports for the first Games included rowing and cricket. The early Games were very much for the rich — ordinary workers could not afford the cost of attending, and sporting organisations were too primitive to arrange and finance large teams. In fact it was not until 1908 that entries were made nationally rather than individually, a change which presaged the later jingoism and national rivalries. Many of the early competitors — especially those from the United States and Great Britain — were university athletes, as these institutions provided some of the best facilities for training and competition.

Ironically it was in 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics, that de Coubertin died. The Olympics had been assigned to Berlin in 1931, before the Nazi takeover, and no had forseen what would happen. No expense was spared in providing superb stadia and other facilities, or in ensuring that the German squad was trained as well as was possible. In 1933 the American Amateur Athletic Union had voted to boycott the Games if German Jewish athletes were discriminated against: but in December 1935 the American Olympic Committee decided narrowly against a boycott. It is often said that the 1936 Games were the first overtly political ones, but a better candidate for this title is the 1920 Games, which were awarded to Antwerp (as an emotional consolation to Belgium after the war) and from which those countries defeated in the war were excluded.

The organisation of events so as to fit in with convenient television timings is a fairly recent innovation but their manipulation for non-sporting reasons is not. For instance, the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards has no connection with Ancient Greek battles. The distance was fixed at the London Games of 1908. The race was run from Windsor to the White City, which turned out to be precisely 26 miles. But an extra 385 yards was added so that the finish could take place in front of the Royal Box.

Talking of royalty, the Games are fated to occur in the same years as American Presidential elections. But for this, there would hardly have been an American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. This year President Reagan has noted the potential for exploiting the Games as part of his re-election campaign. Having been thwarted by Olympic officials in his attempt to secure a more than purely formal role in the opening ceremony, he made the most of every American success. As far as the tame American media were concerned, there was certainly only one country competing.

Which brings us to the boycott on the part of Russia and other East European countries. This was ostensibly because of lack of guaranteed security in Los Angeles but is more likely to be at bottom another move in the lofty and lowly world of power politics. In view of the strength of some of the withdrawing countries, it inevitably means that the achievement of the winners will be devalued, thus reducing the capital that Reagan can make out of American medals. One side-effect of the boycott was the decision of the IOC to pay all the expenses of the Rumanian team, as a way of ensuring some East European presence.

With these the third Games in succession to suffer from a boycott, the IOC executive committee has proposed that attendance at future Games be made compulsory. Of course, the only way to punish infringements of such a rule would be suspension from the Olympic movement. Like truancy from school being punished by expulsion. It clearly takes an Olympic committee to dream up something like this.

The Olympics, then, were not a sporting festival designed to promote international peace and harmony, but a further example of the way capitalist rivalries and priorities pollute and distort every aspect of life under the present social system.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: Another Problematic ‘Class System’ (2021)

The Proper Gander Column from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Paralympics. 

A prestigious opportunity for people to challenge themselves and, through hard work and determination, prove what they are capable of, smash records and win tournaments. But in reality? A cynical opportunity to make money by exploiting the way athletes are ‘classified’, which is ‘flawed, easily manipulated and lacking credibility’. This is the claim made by a recent edition of BBC1’s Panorama: Paralympics: The Unfair Games? Presenter Richie Powell competed as a wheelchair racer in the 1992 Paralympics, only three years after being paralysed from the chest down in a road accident. He speaks with athletes who, like him, have found sport to be a way to empower themselves and not be held back by the conditions they are living with. One of them is para-swimmer Levana Hanson, who explains how her confidence grew after joining a swimming club whose other members ‘didn’t see the disability, they saw me as a person’. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm was later dented by her experience, echoed by the other interviewees, of being a victim of the Paralympics’ system of classifying its competitors.

Taking place soon after the Olympics, the next Paralympic Games are due to start in Tokyo in August, having been postponed from 2020. The event began as the International Wheelchair Games held at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, timed to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Its founders aimed to use sport as therapy for ex-armed forces personnel with spinal injuries inflicted during the Second World War, and to integrate people with disabilities into wider society. The games as we know them today began in 1960, becoming larger and grander with each event. As more athletes with a wider range of medical issues participated in more tournaments, the process of deciding who should compete against who became more complicated. The current system of ‘functional classification’ was introduced in the 1980s, regulated by the International Paralympic Committee. Robert Shepherd, the former British Head Classifier explains that this system is based on testing and categorising ability, so athletes with similar capabilities compete against each other. Richie Powell was classified as a ‘T53’ for track athletes unable to use their core muscles. The lower the number, the greater the level of impairment. Some athletes and coaches manoeuvre their way round the system to get classified as a lower number than they should qualify for, so that they have the advantage of competing against people with more severe impairments.

One tactic is to get assessed by classifiers with a reputation for basing their decisions on negotiation rather than by medical tests. Another technique, apparently widespread among Australian Paralympic wannabes is to have cold showers or over-exercise before a classification assessment in order to emphasise their disability. The ex-Paralympians interviewed on the programme describe how they noticed that they were increasingly competing against, and losing to, athletes with less serious conditions. Hand cyclist Liz McTernan says that her sport is now ‘for the least disabled people that can get in the lowest category possible and win as many medals as possible’. In a bland response, the International Paralympic Committee said it found no instances which ‘could reasonably allege intentional misrepresentation’.

Of course, the motivation for those who manipulate the classification system to increase their chances of winning is money. Athletes and their associated staff rely on funding from lottery and government grants, and the more medals they win, the more funding they get. Their incomes are boosted by sponsorship and endorsement deals, which again hinge on how successful a sold-out athlete is. Ex-Paralympian Bethany Woodward argues that the drive to make athletes more marketable leads to more able-bodied people participating and winning in the Paralympics, ‘cleansing the sport of those very people that it was built for’. She adds that when she and others complained, the authorities told them not to speak out about classification and repeatedly threatened them with legal action. In a bland response, the International Paralympic Committee said it recognised that some athletes have concerns about classifications but ‘sports classes can feature athletes with different impairments’ where there is a ‘similar impact on … ability to practice’.

The ‘greatest scandal ever to hit the Paralympics’, as Richie Powell tells us, was what the Spanish basketball team did in the 2000 games. Shortly after the team won the tournament for people with intellectual disabilities, one of its members revealed himself as an undercover journalist. And his scoop was that most of the team had not undergone medical tests to ensure they had a disability (which in this category meant having an IQ of 75 or less) and were therefore faking their conditions. Following investigations, the team was stripped of their medals and all Paralympic competitions for people with intellectual disabilities were temporarily suspended.

However many bland responses the International Paralympic Committee dishes out, and however the classification process is regulated, the Paralympics, like any institution, can’t escape being moulded by the money system, and nor can the athletes taking part. The classification system itself involves reducing people to numbers, appropriately. The lure of financial gain is bound to push some people to find underhand ways to win. Methods such as exaggerating or inventing a disability are particularly dismissive of athletes genuinely striving to prove themselves, a reminder of how capitalism’s priorities alienate us from each other.

Mike Foster

Olympic invitation (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many commentators were taken aback by the apparent volte-face conducted by China and Russia when they recently accepted South Korea’s invitation to the 1988 Olympic Games. This seemed particularly odd since their regional ally "Communist" North Korea, bitterly opposed participation on the grounds that it amounted to a virtual recognition of the US-backed Southern regime.

The confusion over these manoeuvres stems from the mistaken belief that leaders determine foreign policy in line with their ideological interests. In opposition to this view, the materialist analysis of international relations holds that there are underlying economic forces which determine, over the long run, what actions leaders take. Seen in this light, the "mystery" of the Olympic acceptance is soon resolved.

Following the enforced division of the Korean peninsula by the United States in 1948, Russia and China maintained a seemingly implacable hostility towards the South and lent their support to the Northern regime's drive to re-unify the country. The importance of the North to China and the Russians was dramatically enhanced by the bitter conflict which erupted between these two states in the 1950s and '60s. North Korea occupied a critical strategic position, flanking vital industrial and military regions on both sides. Ritual denunciation of the Southern regime became an important weapon in the struggle to secure the support of the North's dictator. Kim I'-Sung.

The situation began to change in the late 1970s and early '80s. when the stagnation of the Russian and Chinese economies galvanised their respective party bureaucracies into an enforced process of economic modernisation. A necessary condition for success was a massive injection of western capital and advanced technology, which required a downgrading of cold war hostility and an opening up to the United States and its allies through the process of detente.

South Korea occupies a key position here. It is located in the fastest developing economic region in the world and is growing at a more rapid pace than Japan. Its per capita GNP is $2,900, at least three times that of the North. Furthermore, South Korean industry has direct access to the latest technology from the United States and Japan and its manufacturers have proved themselves adept at integrating aid, successfully utilising their advances as, for example, in the development of the four megabit DRAM computer.

The Chinese were the first to attempt to tap into these resources. In the early 1980s they established trading links with the South through Hong Kong and between 1983 and 1985 two-way trade rose from $285 million to over $800 million, exceeding China's trade with the North. More recently a covert direct trade has begun to develop. South Korean businessmen have visited China, and in 1986 the Daewoo Corporation spearheaded the first ever joint venture with a Chinese company, producing television sets in the Fujian province.

The South Koreans have been anxious to encourage these links since China has a lot to offer them: cheap labour, low corporate taxation and an alternative to the increasingly protectionist United States market. President-Elect, Roh Tae Woo, has promised to develop the South West province of Challa as a free trade zone to exploit these possibilities.

The Russians have been more circumspect in making openings to South Korea, principally because of the strategic benefits they derive from naval facilities at Cam Rhan Bay in the North, as well as overflying rights for their military aircraft. The importance of these assets has diminished, however, as the Soviets attempted to create a stable regional environment in which they could pursue economic modernisation. This involved seeking a rapprochement with China and increasingly dissociating themselves from Kim I'-Sung's wilder demands for a military solution to the division of Korea. The last thing the Russians wanted was a clash with either China or the United States, which would have diverted resources away from economic development and threatened the flow of Western technology and capital. Consequently the Russian leadership has moved to relieve tensions with China and has tacitly accepted the present division of Korea as more or less permanent.

These shifts have resulted in the downgrading of the relative importance of the North in Russian thinking. For example, in the early 1980s they were notably reluctant to supply North Korea with advanced MIG 23 fighters, and did so only in response to United States' introduction of F-16s into the South. This reassessment was reinforced by the financial burden to the Russians of supporting the North. Kim I'-Sung's attempts to build an "independent" economy had resulted in an efficient and aging heavy industrial base patterned after Stalin's programmes of the 1930s. The North today has a trade deficit of $465 million and has consistently failed to repay its loans, much to the irritation of some Western capitalists who are now exceedingly reluctant to extend financial or technological assistance. In pursuit of economic self-sufficiency. Kim I'-Sung has also refused to join COMECON and integrate the North more fully into the Russian empire. This has remained a constant source of tension. The Russians are already overextended economically with their commitments in Vietnam, Africa and Afghanistan and strategic returns from their investment in North Korea no longer seem worth the immense cost.

For both China and Russia ideological hostility towards South Korea clashes with the demands generated by the need for economic modernisation. As Marxists would expect, this contradiction is resolved by bringing the ideology into line with changing economic circumstances. The acceptance of South Korea's invitation to the 1988 Olympics is an important part of that process.

Andrew Thomas

This One Will Run and Run (2005)

From the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news that the 2012 Olympic Games had been awarded to London sent the Stock Exchange Index up to a three-year high — the biggest gains in share price were for a company that specialises in wiring sports stadia and other landmark attractions. Clearly many companies hope for an economic bonanza, especially those involved in construction and the hotel industry. Staging the games may be enormously expensive, but some firms at least will make an awful lot of money out of it. The Olympics, after all, are only in passing about sport; they are also about nationalism and, primarily, profits.

Only a small part of the income will come from ticket sales — the overwhelming majority is from the sale of broadcasting rights and corporate sponsorship. So important is this last point that companies who aren’t official sponsors are likely to be banned from associating themselves with the games in any way (Evening Standard 7 July). The government will guide an Olympics Bill through parliament, designed among other things to prevent ‘ambush advertising’, where companies pass themselves off as somehow linked to the games, whether as sponsors or not. However ludicrous this sounds, it’s not unique. The 2003 cricket World Cup in South Africa was sponsored by Pepsi, and spectators drinking Coca-Cola were ejected from venues; moreover, this was sanctioned by new marketing laws introduced by the government. (In No Logo Naomi Klein mentions an American high school which held an official Coke Day with lots of promotional activities, but where one student was suspended for going to school in a T-shirt with a Pepsi logo.) At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, companies had to pay to use any kind of Olympic name or logo (including some that had been established for years under the name of ‘Olympic’).

One of the principles of capitalism is that ownership of something gives you exclusive rights over its use, including whether, and how, you allow others to have access to it. This applies not just to physical things such as land, oil, rivers and factories but also to ideas and inventions — hence the development of patents and protection for ‘intellectual property’, and the clamping down on counterfeit and imitation goods. And, as we can now see, it also holds for particular names and logos, and for advertising space.

The International Olympic Committee jealously guards its control over the Olympic name and advertising at the games venues. Companies who pay hefty fees for sponsorship buy the ‘right’ to advertise and sell their products, to the exclusion of any direct competitors. Just as football stadia are now named after corporations and products such as Reebok and Walkers’ Crisps, and clubs do their best to stop the sale of bogus ‘official’ kit, so the Olympic ‘movement’ says that only companies who stump up the money to them can gain any kudos from the magic O-word and the five rings.

Naturally money has long been talking the Olympic language with regard to the 2008 games in Beijing. Three levels of corporate involvement are envisaged, including partners (cost $40 million), and sponsors (over $20 million). Budweiser, for instance, is the official international beer sponsor, giving its owners Anheuser-Busch the right to use the 2008 games logo for promotional purposes in China and many other countries. And it’s not just a matter of getting money in for 2008. In the words of one marketing expert, ‘The Beijing Olympics will not be about sport, it will be about creating a superbrand called “China”’ (LINK). So as China flexes its muscles in terms of currency revaluations and provides financial support for Mugabe’s thuggish regime in Zimbabwe, it also competes in staging the Olympic free-for-all and marketing itself within world capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Inside the sports industry (2001)

Botile and Ingle

From the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the night of Saturday 16 December 2000 the crowd at the Sheffield Arena must have been stunned when Paul Ingle’s corner forced him back to the centre of the ring to be savagely crushed by his opponent Mbulelo Botile of South Africa. Even one of the commentators remarked that the decision of Ingle’s managers was shockingly unreasonable. Not unexpectedly, Ingle was carried unconscious to hospital with brain injuries. At the end of round 11 everybody, more especially Ingle’s corner, knew he had lost the bout.

The question on the lips of many was why the towel was not thrown in. But how could they do that when they were playing according to the rules of today’s international sports—the cash and fame first before the contender. In fact Ingle’s corner callously hoped that their man could miraculously pull a knock-out.

Gone are the days when games were organised with a view to merely entertaining the audience. In our day the motive behind any activity sports included, is profit. If, in the process of any sporting activity people get entertained, it is an unintended outcome of a purely business-oriented venture. In reality sport is now a multi-billion dollar industry masquerading as an entertainment agency. It has become an industry dominated and controlled by corporate bodies.

Sporting activities are organised mainly by IOC, FIFA, CAF, JBF, WBC, etc. The funds with which these bodies organise games are provided, in the main, by big business. Since business concerns will only spend money if they will make a profit, one can easily understand why they provide the funds—they are financially interesting.

Advertising is an essential ingredient in all profit-oriented activity. Getting people to become aware of one’s products is a vital competitive move. Corporate groups sponsor IOC and Co in exchange ttr the right to advertise their products on radio, TV jerseys, shinguards, gloves, and soon that is why you can never see World Socialist Movement or World Of Free Access or SPGB printed in bold characters and lined up around playing fields on stadiums. What you see is Coca Cola, Amstel, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union Money Transfer, Motorola, Ericsson, etc.

In the same vein other businesses deeply involved in the promotion of commercialised sports are the media houses. TV magnates are able to pay and have a stranglehold monopoly of coverage. They reap huge profits when they “sell” their “product” to other media groups.

Since today’s sports is a matter of business due to its profit-oriented nature, it is always spiced with the not uncommon shady deals. Business is nothing but legalised stealing. Its main rule is “grab-as-much-as-you-can”. International sports is therefore plagued with such inevitable phenomena as bribery, corruption, match-fixing, gambling, betting, pools, etc. In fact most many sports ministers, members of IOC, FIFA (the chief organisers of international sporting activities) siphon away huge sums of money in the process of organising games. A typical example can be seen in the famous Salt Lake City scandal which not only exposed but also shattered the credibility of the IOC and blew apart its five interlocking rings. Again, quite recently some German sportswriters have alleged that the German government and some corporate groups bribed Thailand, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to vote for Germany to host the 2006 World Cup. The multinational corporations mentioned were Daimler Chrysler, Bayer, BASF and Siemens (Gambia Daily Observer 21 November 2000).

Wealth (goods and services) is created by labour. In the sports industry the creators of service (entertainment) are the sportsmen and women. These (mostly) youth are by no means different from workers in the factory; clerks in the bank; teachers in the classroom, etc. Sportsmen and women sell their labour power (i.e. their ability to run, jump, kick, swim, etc) to the owners of the means of production and distribution of the services produced. In sports the means of producing and distributing entertainment include the stadiums, the factories the assorted sporting gear, the media houses, etc. These are owned by corporate bodies, states, local councils and the like. The youth use these facilities to entertain society, who pay money that goes to the owners of these means. The sportsmen and women arc then paid wages by the owners (the employers).

It is a common business practice to fire workers who are considered to be not too productive. In the same way sportsmen and women who do not move mountains to prove, maintain and improve upon their competitiveness risk being booted out of employment. Even the language used by employers, especially owners of football clubs, clearly smacks of the business element in sports. Football clubs who hire the services of footballers are often heard talking of “buying”, “selling”, or “giving out on loan” such-and-such a player. Indeed one sometimes gets the impression that the players are not just wage-earners but real commodities! In one report by Reuters carried in the 6 November Daily Observer (Gambia), entitled “Pele attacks ‘slave trade’ in young players”, the Brazilian Sports Minister decries the almost slave-like ownership of young footballers from Africa, Brazil and Argentina in particular. A very recent example is the case of Kanu Nwanko whose masters, Arsenal, refused to release him (from their bondage) to go to play for his “national” team during the just-ended Sydney Olympics.

Consequences

Having been considered as “commodities” whose price is influenced by market forces, sportsmen and women are constantly engaged in fierce competition with each other. Competition is an unhealthy phenomenon but in sports it is even worse. The use of drugs to enhance performance is a direct result of the unwholesome profit-oriented practices. In the final analysis these people who use the drugs suffer and get disgraced when they test positive. By contrast the organisers and drug dealers, sitting behind their dark sunglasses at the VIP stands get away with their dirty profits.

But perhaps the most serious effect of this dubious U-turn in sports from entertainment-oriented to profit-oriented can be seen in the growing number of serious and in some cases fatal incidents involving sportsmen and women. The story of the British boxer Paul Ingle has already been mentioned. No-one is unaware of the world-famous pugilist, Mohammed Ali. There is also the tragic fate of Michael Watson, another British boxer. A Colombian defender, Escobar, was gunned down in Bogota when he inadvertently scored an own goal during the 1994 World Cup. He met this unfortunate death not because Colombia could not go ahead to win the cup but because, as it was generally believed, some big business people had lost huge sums which they staked in a betting game.

Sports and politics

Another interesting aspect of sports is that it is very much encouraged by governments especially in poor countries. The main reason for this support is the mind-numbing power of sports. A lot of money is spent to get people hooked to and addicted to sports. In fact sports plays the same role as religion, alcohol and the like. Commentators, sportswriters and the like are trained to be able to present the dullest of events or matches to appear to be the most interesting ones to listeners and readers. Sporting activities, as such, are organised constantly and at short intervals—from community through national to international levels. As people’s interest in games soars so is their attention diverted from the mismanagement of social wealth that goes on in the corridors of power. In fact the revolutionary consciousness of people addicted to sports is usually completely blunted.

On this same political front, one notes the narrow-mindedness of so-called sports analysts when they opine that sports encourages togetherness and even has the magic of bringing peace to rival nations. This view dates back to the days of the “Cold War”. These analysts considered the participation in international games by the “West” and the “East” as a positive step towards defusing tension in their world. But a deeper insight into the role of sports in the relations between nations or countries reveals the exact opposite of the claims of these sports experts. Modern capitalist sports is organised with a view to realising profit. Profit-making thrives best when people are kept divided. There is no way then that sports as it is organised today can bring peoples of the world together as one. In reality sports entrenches petty, myopic nationalism and chauvinism. Witness for instance the violence of the famous “English hooligans” during football matches in Europe. There are always running battIe in the streets of towns and cities all over the world during games especially football. Each country sees the other as an enemy. People competing under national flags only helps in keeping them disunited. But we need a single world without boundaries.

Yet sports, at all levels, can be made to achieve its original objective—to entertain both participants and spectators. This however can only materialize when it is freely organised by all persons interested in it—and not only by those who have money. But this possibility is itself dependent on the level of consciousness of humanity When the majority of people come to understand that a society that undertakes every venture with a view to making profit is bound to he plagued with shortcomings. “Money is the root of evil”, as the saying goes. So it is only when the stadia and the factories producing sports-ware are commonly owned by all people, and when the present artificial boundaries dividing them and nations are dismantled that the present violence-prone, drug-infested activity called sport coupled with the slave status of most sportsmen and women can be eliminated. Then sports and games in general can play their unalloyed role of entertaining humankind free of charge.

Suhuyini

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Cameron called for openness and a lifting of trade bans on Burma after visiting the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where he met President Thein Sein.  Later he had a private dinner with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon. Speaking of his meeting with the great pro-democracy leader he said: ‘It was a privilege to sit down with Ms Suu Kyi and try to flog her tanks and rocket launchers.’

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A test rocket launched from North Korea which broke up after one minute was a resounding success, according to North Korean sources. The rocket exploded as a ‘birthday firework’ for the nation’s long-dead leader Kim Il-sung. A spokesman for the NK Space Agency said: ‘We have the technology to rain scrap metal upon any capitalist lickspittle within a twenty mile radius. Let our enemies tremble.’ In separate news, South Korea reacted nervously to reports of NK tunnelling for an underground nuclear test: ‘We want to know just how far they’re tunnelling’.

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The government is exploring new types of pension schemes that would give more security to retiring workers. In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb said: ‘Firms would like to offer their employees a degree of certainty in these uncertain times. We can certainly help by offering workers cast-iron guarantees that they will get nothing out of us when they retire. We think people should shoulder the personal responsibility of disposing of themselves at retirement age in an ecologically-sustainable manner. Wheelie bins will be provided for this purpose at an affordable rate.’

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Hosepipe bans affecting about 20 million customers have been introduced by seven water authorities in parts of southern and eastern England.Thames Water said this week that the bans were unavoidable due to the unprecedented drought of money for fixing leaks. In a statement the regulator, Oftwat, said: ‘If we fixed all the leaks we would save 3.36bn litres per day in England and Wales, but then we’d make no profit at all so clearly sacrifices need to be made by the great unwashed by, um, not washing.’ Meanwhile the water minister Richard Benyon has hit out at claims he left his hosepipe running the day after the hosepipe ban came into effect: ‘It wasn’t a hosepipe. I was just teaching the kids how to water-cannon the local oiks’.

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Iran has blocked access to the official website for the London 2012 Olympic Games, after previously stating it might boycott the Olympics over claims that the official logo spells the word ‘Zion’. The logo designers reject this, saying instead that the logo represents an exploded diagram of the religious fundamentalist brain. It now seems likely that no information about the 2012 London Olympics will reach anyone in Iran. Bookings from Heathrow to Tehran are expected to increase by a factor of 9000 as a result.

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A London 2012 official has admitted Olympic events could be disrupted by ‘one idiot’ after the University Boat Race was halted by a swimmer. British Olympic Association chairman Watt Sallthe Fussabout said it would do all it could to protect athletes in the Games: ‘I can assure sports fans everywhere that Boris Johnson and Francis Maude will be kept indoors with a bottle of gin and a games console throughout the proceedings.’

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The Law Commission has proposed the abolition of 800 antiquated laws, although these do not include the many imaginary ‘laws’ such as the law against eating a mince pie on Christmas Day, or the right to shoot a Welsh person with a longbow on a Sunday in Chester. According to British urban legend, says the Law Commission, there is an ancient law which allows a single individual to wear a metal hat, wave a wand and own every strip of land in Britain. This mythical person would be known as a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ and would be entitled to lord it over everyone as if they owned the place, which indeed they would. A legal spokeswoman said ‘I really don’t know how these myths get around. It’s on a par with the one about taxis having to keep a bale of hay in the boot. It’s amazing that people still fall for it.’