Tokyo Olympics Hide Capitalism’s Crimes
I am having discussions in New Delhi with some Red Flag readers about the Tokyo Olympics.
India won one gold medal and six silver and bronze medals. This is in a country of 1.4 billion people! The politicians, news media and celebrities are talking about this ‘great’ achievement incessantly, filling newspapers, social media, and airwaves.
The seven winners are hosted at special events with the fascist Prime Minister Modi while super-rich industrialists shower them with luxury cars, yachts, endorsements in TV.
The Tokyo Olympic Games hide horrific crimes committed by ruthless capitalism when coronavirus became a global pandemic. There were scenes of millions of workers walking home without public transport, hungry, thirsty, without basic medical care, walking up to 1000 miles to get home.
Some of our comrades participated in arranging food and transport to many in Delhi. We offered Red Flag and communism to the masses as the only way to end the system of exploitation. We consolidated friendships among comrades who are still active with us.
The Tokyo Olympic games also hide that 120 million people in India have lost jobs. Food and petrol prices are skyrocketing. Unemployment is rising; over 50% of non-pregnant women are anemic. Fascist assaults on women, Muslims and Dalits are increasing every day, along with farmers’ suicides as billionaires take over farms. These are the same billionaires who sponsor, finance, and endorse Olympic athletes.
In our informal talk with our comrades, we decided that Red Flag with communist ideas must reach the masses. It is our urgent need to see that we can form more, and bigger collectives based on our experience in Delhi.
Comrades pointed out that some Olympic athletes made symbolic statements or personal stories against nationalism and sexism, but that itself gives an illusion of ‘healthy dissent.’
We believe that it is very dangerous, because no Olympic athlete escapes years and years of corporate endorsement and financial rewards, and it molds them to be patriotic. Above all, they have nothing in common with the toiling masses.
We agreed with the Red Flag article that in communism there will be no Olympics, World Cup, and other spectator sports. In communism, sports will be part of the masses. They will help and promote healthy collective production for the needs of everybody.
However, our most important and urgent task is to win the masses for communism now. When a society without money is created, the masses will figure out communist sports.
Comrade in India
Capitalists Use Sports to Whip Up Nationalism and Division
LONDON (UK)— During the Euro Cup, I witnessed vicious and aggressive displays of English nationalism and Italian nationalism here. This included supporters from both sides shouting aggressively at each other across the streets of London’s West End and even a minor riot by English fans who ended up throwing glass bottles at each other, the same side!
A good article in the last edition of Red Flag asked us to think about the role of sport under communism. As it said, we need to encourage sport for the health of the masses.
Physical education and fitness do not have to be competitive as they are in capitalist society. Athletics can be practiced on an individual level for personal improvement without being pitted against a fellow athlete. Gymnasts, for example, can perform extraordinary displays for the purposes of entertainment which need not be competitive at all.
We could invent new sports and games which promote cooperation and mutual activities. In the Soviet Union the Bolsheviks encouraged mass gymnastics and choreography for entertainment without competitiveness. This was adopted by other countries led by Communist Parties.
Because these parties attempted to ‘build socialism’ rather than communism, they could not overcome class society and its emphasis of competitiveness, inequality and wage labour. But it showed physical education could be used in a different way.
Instead of having teams competing against other teams, why not have one team of athletes in a game in which all of them together must meet some goal or objective, perhaps as in some kind of assault course?
Or perhaps a team trying to beat a clock rather than each other. The possibilities are really endless. In communism the masses will be able to develop the new sports for the needs of communist culture and physical education. Mass games for the masses.
I spoke to workmates about this issue over lunch. They said it would be great to live under communist relations and encourage new activities and sport. They questioned if it would be possible, though. They said they think there are just too many ‘greedy’ people out there who want to get to the top, who will just want more of everything even if we abolish money.
I asked them if that is what they would do? They both said ‘no’ but said those who are rich today would not want to change or give up their wealth.
I explained that they were correct. After a revolution we would have to stop those people spreading their ideas and we would have to transform our culture, like we had discussed about changing the type of sporting activities we would have. I used the example of how some human societies in the past lived with some communist aspects.
I also asked them to think about the difference between Chimpanzees and Bonobos in the wild. Chimpanzees fight, can be violent and have a strong leader. But Bonobos live collectively without violence. They share the food and have a less authoritarian structure and no classes in their groups.
This is not down to biology, as Humans, Chimps and Bonobos are very close genetically. It is down to the social-economic system. Humans are in the grip of capitalism and its culture. That is why we suffer poverty in a competitive, unequal, and warmongering system that pits workers against each other in a struggle to be ‘best’, aim to get to the ‘top’ or keep up with the Jones’.
After a communist revolution the culture must also be transformed as well as the economic base.
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