sport
From decolonisation to ultra-nationalism: The political transformation of Indian cricket
Pele leaves us but his magic will never die
Russia World Cup 2018: Lukaku, Mbappé and the colonial ghosts within Belgium and France
Muhammad Ali – the athlete-activist whose example lives on
Mike Marqusee: A level playing field? Global sport in the neoliberal age
The idea of sports competition as a mirror or metap
Another Olympics is possible: the socialist sports movements of the past
For more discussion of issues surrounding sport and politics, click HERE. For more on the Olympics, click HERE.
August 7, 2012 -- As Mike Marqusee points out in an article posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, the modern Olympic Games are "a symbolic package: individual excellence at the service of the nation-state under the overlordship of multinational capital". Today, the domination of most sport by the capitalist corporations, crude nationalism and dog-eat-dog ideology is almost complete, occasionally challenged by the actions a few principled groups and individuals. But that was not always the case.
In fact, in the early decades of the 20th century, there were mass socialist-inspired workers' sports movements that sought, to varying degrees, to challenge capitalist control and ideology in sport. The goal was to organise working-class people through sport and leisure, and in some cases to attempt to fashion a new conception of sport.