Will sport & competitive games exist in socialism?
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Thanks for sharing that insightful article, Imposs1904.
Some team sports are similar to battles, with the managers as commanders & the team-members as soldiers. Chess also fits in well with that analogy.
It’s hard to imagine people taking-up sport professionally in socialism; for example, why would someone dedicate their life to being the world’s greatest runner in a world based on co-operation instead of competition?
It’s much easier to imagine people just playing games for fun in socialism (as opposed to there being contests).
If human behaviors are socially learned, how are we going to have and approve a society based on violence and competition ? a society based on violence and competition also produce influence in our minds, socialist society is going to be based on cooperation and harmony among human beings as it was during primitive communism, as Engels said it is going to be a society based on customs
Sports in our society is based on violence and the so called human excellence, similar to the testing in the education system which motivate students to compete against each others, universities also promote competition and violence among their own athletes, and the universities of the rich kids are the best one around the world, it is also part of the capitalist competition, our whole life is being affected by this reactionary and retrograd society
The Soviet Union, China, the USA and Cuba used sports and the Olympics to show their excellence as world powers, and athletes were forced to be strong and violent and to be the best ones around the world, and some of them were under a lot of pressure to show their nationalism and patriotism, and still Cuba is doing the same thing in order to be the heroes of the so called socialist land
One of the most violent sport is American football which has produced the death of many players, there was a neuropathologist who was able to prove that football produce brains damage, but profits is more important than human beings, and many parents want their children to be famous because they are also influenced by the bourgeois ideology based on competition.
Artists and movie actors are heavily influenced by the capitalist competition to produce profits and they become drugs addicts and many have had mental disorders due to the high social and business pressure imposed on them
Marx and Engels thru their anthropological studies on human society were able to prove that primitive communism was not a society based on violence, human beings lived in peace and harmony until the emerge of the class society, even more, within our class society, Christians, Islamics and Jews lived in peace and harmony for more than 900 years
Almamater – why do you equate competition with violence? I love to pit my skills against others in various board games etc. I haven’t sustained any cuts or bruises in 60 years of enjoying competitive pastimes.
Do not mix your personal activities with the logic of the capitalist society. Sports in this society are based on competition and competition is based on violence.
‘Do not’? I can do and say as I wish you pompous individual. My contention is that competition should be confined to sports. And competition is not based on violence. Competition is infantile and harmless fun if those engaged in it are politically mature individuals.
@Wez:
7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.
Please watch your tone.
@Almamater please ignore and only respond to the debating content of Wez’ post.
Have you ever stood on the touchline among a group of parents watching their ten-year-old boys playing football? If anything, Almamater understates his case.
Chelmsford – The title of this thread is ‘WILL SPORT & COMPETITIVE GAMES EXIST IN SOCIALISM?’ How many socialists were within your observed group of parents at the touchline?
Wez – You honestly think that everyone that calls themselves a socialist behaves like a placid angel all of the time?
DJP – Dunno about being placid angels but it would be a mightily embarrassing sight to see socialists sharing the tribalism that Chelmsford describes. But that has nothing to do with the subject at hand and the astonishing assertion that competition always implies violence as stated by a participant here.
Wez “Dunno about being placid angels but it would be a mightily embarrassing sight to see socialists sharing the tribalism that Chelmsford describes. ”
You’re free to watch me and my tribalistic and embarrasing behaviour, full of ale, up at “Sid James” Park every other Saturday afternoon (or Friday, Sunday, Monday, etc depending up on the whim of Sky TV, etc.).
“It’s a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it’s when you discover that your wife left you in May.” – Denis Norden
“Cricket is a game which the British, not being a spiritual people, had to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.” – Lord Mancroft, 1967
‘The Distasteful Nonsense of Olympism’:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240818-the-distasteful-nonsense-of-olympism
The last paragraph of which being:
‘It’s such instances of political oddities that permit the following suggestion: make all athletes truly amateurish by abolishing their associations with countries. Most nation states, soldered and cemented compacts of hatred, based upon territory often pinched from previous occupants, are such a nuisance in this regard. If Olympism is to make sense, and if the ravings of the physique obsessed de Coubertin are to be given shape, why not get rid of the State altogether, thereby making all participants neutral, if only for a few weeks?’
But what is he proposing? What could be the alternative (in a hypothetical but still capitalist/statist here-and-now) to organising by nation-state?
Well, there’s always Industrial Unionism.
The IWW’s industrial unions are generalised into six ‘departments’, that you can see listed here:https://midvalleyiww.org/member-resources/industrial-unions-and-departments.
Things having changed somewhat since 1905, nowadays one of the departmental divisions (this one, of Public Service) is:
‘Sex Industry Workers Industrial Union 690:
All workers who use sexuality as the primary tool of their industry including telephone and webcam sex workers, actors, erotic massage services, erotic and escort services, and dancers and models in night clubs, exotic dance clubs and peep shows.’
So, at the Olympics there might be a soccer team consisting of male prostitutes, porn actors etc; and likewise for women’s sports. Good, huh?
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