Now that the World Cup is over, the question arises: "Who won?" We aren't talking about teams, but about classes. Was it the imperialists of the world, represented by FIFA, or the workers of the world, represented by the Brazilian masses?

Everything is a struggle between opposing forces. On the one hand, nothing happens unless there's some sort of profit in it. On the other hand, nothing happens without some sort of participation, willing or not, of the working class.

From its start football (soccer) carried that contradiction. It started as a game played and watched by the industrial working class. It grew alongside the industrial revolution in Britain, with the founding teams of the English Football League in the new industrial cities whose populations had exploded as migrants came to work as wage slaves. They formed amateur soccer clubs as a way of building community among strangers, fulfilling a need of the working class.

The game spread throughout the world as a by-product of British imperialism.

Up until 1914 British capital accounted for 42% of world investments, and football caught on in areas where British investments were influential (like Brazil and Argentina). Building prestige for Britain, from the beginning it served imperialism.

In the last twenty years the scope of football worldwide has expanded as rapidly as the industrial working class has grown. Migrants flee rural poverty to search for industrial work in South Korea, China, South Africa, Nigeria. Local soccer clubs build community, but also nationalism, with local clubs organized by national, and sometimes even local, origin. And a new important element has entered the world of soccer: television.

A powerful ideological tool, television works day and night to rob us of our working class consciousness. It works to make us think of ourselves as consumers, and to make us forget that we are the producers of all the value in the world. The World Cup promotes another deadly idea - nationalism. Hundreds of millions pour their passions into nationalist slogans in a dangerous display of false consciousness.

The way we work reminds us of how useless nationalism really is.

Copper, mined mainly by men in Chile, is joined to tantalum from the Congo and tin from Peru or Australia, combined in design in the US or Norway to be manufactured and assembled mainly by women in the Philippines or China as cell phones that will be shipped all over the globe. That's how in the real world we survive - by workers of the world combining their talents and energy day in, day out. How, then, do we come to celebrate our sport - football (soccer) - waving nationalist flags?

The answer is that for the first time in the history of the modern World Cup, the Brazilian masses have shown us we don't have to. Their year-long heroic struggle against the inhuman waste of a FIFA-run World Cup that builds stadiums and makes $billions grabbed our attention. Although the power of the demonstrations eventually waned in face of the brutal repression of the Brazilian state, there was one final demonstration that impacted the competition itself.

Striking teachers surrounded and stopped the buses carrying the Brazilian team to their training ground. The very teachers who ten years ago were nurturing these players were passionately insisting "There Will Be No World Cup!" TV commentators try to analyze the spectacular collapse of the Brazilian team. None of them mention the obvious: their isolation from the masses that nurtured and produced them - the Brazilian working class.

Which brings us back to our opening question, who won the World Cup? Our answer is neither class—yet. It's gone to extra time. Although FIFA was able to complete the competition, the mass demonstrations showed that the masses will no longer live in the old way.

Who wins this World Cup now depends on us.

 If there will be no FIFA-run World Cup, we need to ask ourselves what will soccer look like in a communist society? Won't it reject nationalism and build internationalism? Won't it reflect the day in, day out, co-operation of men and women that creates all the value of the world? Without doubt, with the elimination of money, all sports will promote health and collectivity, not profits!

These are not idle speculations. In their opposition to the World Cup, the Brazilian masses have shown the potential that our revolutionary communist movement must turn into reality. Join us!