Communism Will Support the Full Potential of the International Working Class
SEATTLE (USA), May 30— Capitalism monetizes all the things that humans need to survive and thrive. Things like clean air and water, healthy food, a safe place to live, access to real healthcare. Solid friendships, loving relationships, recreational and leisure activities. None of these human essentials escapes capitalist greed for higher profit and more power.
This includes soccer (“football” in most parts of the world). People around the globe love soccer/football. But capitalism destroys sportsmanship and replaces it with winner$$ and losers.
There is big, big money to be made by the team owners and by FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the governing body of international soccer. As well as by the players on world stage teams. As expected, capitalism corrupts the sport.
“The exploitation of sport for everyone under the capitalist system is monetary exploitation in every sense. It’s sugar-coated by using the children of the working class to enrich this billion-dollar enterprise,” said a friend.
But capitalism does more than corrupt the joy of this sport. It uses it as a world stage to build violent nationalism and patriotism.
This year, FIFA awarded its first “Peace Prize.” It was designated for a person who has “taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace” and “united people across the world”. It was awarded to jingoist, war mongering, racist, sexist, homophobic would-be dictator Donald Trump.
The FIFA World Cup tournament is played this year in Mexico, Canada, and the USA. It is an international rivalry of teams by country that happens every four years.
Benito Mussolini used the 1934 World Cup in Italy as a vehicle to legitimize fascism. So did Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Previous FIFA World Cup tournaments in Brazil (2014) and South Africa (2010) brought urban displacement, forced evictions, securitization, and the sanitization of public space to accommodate tourists and corporate sponsors.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar reached more than 5 billion people. More than 6,5000 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka died in Qatar building infrastructure for that World Cup. But FIFA generated $7.6 billion in revenue from 2019 to 2022, including $3.4 billion from broadcasting rights.
Already Muhammad Arshad, from Pakistan, has died constructing a stadium for the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia.
In the future, when the working class has fought for and won communism, sports will be part of physical activity. It will develop healthy minds and bodies without the need to prove that any human being is superior to another.
Take nationalism, money, sexism, racism, and homophobia out of the game, and it becomes a joy to participate in and/or watch. Sports will be a part of human culture… like theater, dance, music, and literature. Our culture will be a part of our everyday lives.
The point of sports will be the sheer pleasure of playing, win or lose, all part of communist camaraderie and the development of humanity. Join us in ICWP as we fight for this world!
Read the ICWP manifesto Mobilize the Masses for Communism here