Some have recently written about sport (more precisely, about football-Black Dwarf, No. 33, 10.5.70). Their premise is that football is a working-class game with some revolutionary potential, one of the points to support the argument being the aggressiveness involved in a football match. ("We should look on this aggressiveness as a real [but displaced] form of working-class militancy.") But what phenomenon of life in this world is not aggressive? All relationships whether between people, or between people and nature, are in essence aggressive, since they are part of a system of aggression which they reflect. As any social reality, sport is not an abstract phenomenon, a "supra-historical" part of culture. It finds its place in the framework of definite relationships of production which determine its internal structure and very nature. Present sport is determined by capitalist society, therefore it has a class nature and a class function. To take up the example of football again, one should ask oneself for instance why it is that it is so much a working class "privilege". At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ruling class invented sport to meet with a new need. Modern sport rules were laid down by Thomas Arnold as a new means of education. What was needed for imperialist Britain was an army of strong, capable, bold men; men of action who, if necessary, would be ready to act as one man (in other words, men used to teamwork); but the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy wanted to keep this means of education for themselves. Nothing was easier: money and the notion of amateurism would keep away anyone who was "a worker, a craftsman, a day-labourer" as it was described in a text of 1866. Although this situation lasted until 1880, workers succeeded in joining some clubs. The bourgeoisie was then faced with only two solutions: creating a professional sport, an entertainment and a source of profit (and possible work for working-class people and its own sake. This split brought out a radical division: the working class was refused a right to leisure. Working-class clubs were turned into professional sport clubs, football was to become the ruling class needs. a professional game... This is the price the working class has to pay to possess its own "culture". [If we went into this rather long though schematic historical background, it was such as holidays or national insurance (though we also know that these latter-mentioned gains are necessary for the better running of the capitalist system; the point is that they are things which have been fought for, therefore which should be defended). Football has been a cultural imposition.
So much for football. We would like now to try to analyse the sort of ideology sport, in general, reflects and, according to the laws of dialectics, reinforces.
The common denominator of the economic and game system is competition. As it is in the capitalist world where the motor of production, far from being the search for the satisfaction international competition, so it is in the game, the motor of which, instead of being improvisation, spontaneity, physical liberty, is performance (individual or collective) in a competitive structure. In other words, the aim is to strive to be the best one, the quickest, the strongest, the most skilful..."the most", It follows from this that the framework of sporting activities has as key concepts: training, productivity, measure, record.
In a competitive world, the first requirement is to continuously improve one's means of production in order to increase one's result. This process in sport is the daily training. But not any kind is sufficient enough. It has to be the most efficient in the least time. Thus, constant work, order, rapidity and rationalisation are the golden rules. As soon as sport is set in the competition structure (and thus the best production from the body is demanded), one sets in front of oneself this specific form of work, which is first and fore. most an enormous amount of work. One can't even defend it for its developing the body harmoniously. Is it necessary to point out how specialised all true champions must be? Their morning exercises can be the endless repetition of one single gesture.
Surprisingly enough, the total work is not all physical. An enormous amount of the whole enjoyment is spent on bureaucracy. Records,