No.413885
A Marxist-Leninist critique of anti-sport assholes: elitists posing as leftists.
Two examples of renowned "lefty philosophers" I've seen the last decade that come out against sports openly (Olympics, FIFA World Cup, etc.) are Chomsky (USA) and TGM (HUN).
Their main arguments are the following:
>1. sports don't matter, what really matters is politics
>2. sports are part of the Spectacle™, a form of distraction
>3. sports reinforce bourgeois nationalism
Let's take these down, one by one.
>1. sports don't matter, what really matters is politics
Really depends on what an individual (moreover, and typically, a member of a certain class) deems meaningful, moreover, what really matters is understanding the actual process by which certain phenomenon (such as sports) gain significance to one class (proletarian, typically), while gets scorn from another (intelligentsia, typically).
A typical "lefty academic" spent his entire adult life faced with overwhelming evidence why the current capitalist system – on an intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, etc. level – is completely undesirable, destructive, moronic, while the typical proletarian really just wants another way out from the inhumane production process, a way to relax the fuck out. Now if you pointed out this latter fact to the intellectual, he would be inclined to say that "that is exactly the problem! only if these proles were more politically conscious, less "dumbed down," and so on!"
But then again, the "lefty academic" hasn't spent a single day of his life producing Chicken McNuggets in a McDonald's factory, now has he? The proletariat under capitalism don't just get an "erroneous inclination" to chill out after a hard shift by watching sports. They aren't simply "misguided." He was literally physically worn the fuck down during his working day, during which he hadn't the luxury to think about Descartes (or whoever) or the revolution, and he was constantly eyeing the clock, wishing it to end. You could just as easily replace "SPORTS" in this equation with "alcohol" or "cigarettes" or "cartoons" or what-fucking-ever. The proletarian doesn't choose this out of spite of the revolution, but because his stamina bar is depleted [gaming reference], while the intellectual's [spellcaster's] is full. Without the body, the brain doesn't work either at full capacity, and vica versa. Just as the typical worker might make erroneous judgement about how to spend his free time (from producing surplus value for the capitalists) by watching (seemingly – to the academic) irrelevant shit, so might the ridiculous academic might spend his time giving interviews or writing articles about how the proletariat are being "duped, controlled, misguided" by watching sports.
One must raise the question: is it the prole who is acting irrationally in his spare time, or the academic, who shits on the prole, WITHOUT understanding the prole's motives?
>2. sports are part of the Spectacle™, a form of distraction
On a surface level: no shit – but then again an academic's performance report to his university staff is just as a distraction from his every day job, and a mere abstraction from concrete processes in class.
Another thing pops up: the Guy Debord meme of "le Spectacle." Well, okay then, did this theorist have anything NICE to say about academic achievements? Nope. Did he think that escaping the "spectacle" was an option under late stage capitalism? He explicitly DENIED this. In fact, what Guy Debord would have said about our lefty academic publishing papers/giving interviews about how "our proles watching sports is a part of the spectacle" TO BE PART OF THE SPECTACLE. Which is to say: the intellectual, in his attempt to position himself above the prole, calls out the worker for being part of the "spectacle," but this gesture itself (mediated by online platforms, etc.) is already a spectacle itself.
>3. sports reinforce bourgeois nationalism
In a sense, yes, in a sense, no. A concrete example: TGM (HUN) pointed out how the 2015 FIFA World Cup in its advertisement campaign fed on petty national differences (the posters and TV advertisements were about, say, French soccer team conquering the German soccer team in a war-like fashion) and from this he concluded that soccer as such is "haram."
But then again one is reminded about early Soviet initiatives concerning sports, wherein they organized and held only worker-participated sport events (meaning no aristocrats, children of bourgeois, etc. were allowed to participate), moreover how sex-inclusive these events were, since the Soviets made sure that team sports had an equal amount of male and female players.
But then again, one is reminded how, during the Cold War, the Eastern-bloc countries felt pride not just when their respective nations won a medal, but also when their communist bloc toppled the capitalist one.
I could go on, but to sum up: "lefty intellectuals" will paint participation (for example by Cuba, DPRK, China) in the Olympics as a "bourgeois deviation" but they are deeply wrong. To show in 2021 that our non-capitalist enclaves are still competitive against the capitalist bloc is absolutely essential.
I must add here: I left out several pro-sports or pro-olympics arguments here:
A) Watching a good match in soccer or judo is an aesthetic pleasure, that somehow doesn't register in the foggy minds of intellectuals. Mind you, the ancient Greeks ("the birthplace of democracy") knew about this.
B) The so-called "nationalism" accusation is a smoke screen in most of the cases. For the wast majority of proles, seeing his country of origin win isn't a form of nationalist chauvinism. It's his way of connecting to "something bigger than he is," which is, potentially the working class experience.
Thanks for reading.