Sport, socialism, and cultural development

Hanna Eid
Source: Al Mayadeen English
17 Jan 2023 00:31
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Competition can be viewed outside of a zero-sum lens, and neighborhoods can be fashioned with schools which have small class sizes, well paid staff, and sports facilities which can be community centers.

After the Chinese revolution in 1949, “training one’s body was part of the daily regimen and served as both a political and cultural objective

This essay is a modest attempt to interpret pedagogical theories and theories of sport from the 20th century in a new light. I am interested in the crossroads of sport, the state, and socialist construction. I must admit that it is my admiration of some of the heroes of sport, like Fethi Nourine, the Algerian judoka who refused to play against a judoka representing the Zionist regime. His words are evergreen: “I sacrificed my future in order to revive the Palestinian cause. It was an honour for me to be able to do so.” As a student of judo myself, I must say that I believe that his decision is in line with the teachings of the founder of our sport, Jigoro Kano.

Kano says in his famous book Mind over Muscle that moral education is a vital part of judo, and this includes the cerebral knowledge of good from evil as well as an emotional desire to do good and reject evil. “Many people, although they make rapid progress with waza, require a great deal of training in order to reach the point at which they can appreciate the do.”(1) Nourine is not only a master of the waza (technique) but also of the do.

All of this being said, I began to wonder in which ways sport, anti-imperialism, and socialist construction intersect. In what ways has the socialist state (whether in modern China, and DPRK; or the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia) provided, encouraged, and sponsored sport as a means of social development? Theoretically, how could this be continued and recreated in other contexts? First, I will examine the historical and contemporary cases of the intersection of socialist construction and sport, then I will explore what possibilities there are to expand on these models and create new models of education, sport, and socialism.

After the Chinese revolution in 1949, “training one’s body was part of the daily regimen and served as both a political and cultural objective. Mao felt it was imperative to build people’s health in order to maintain and defend the nation. Sports inspired a collective work effort that united the country in the spirit of socialism.” (2) Kim Il Sung came to similar conclusions in his Theses on Socialist Education when he argued that:

Physical education is of importance not only because it increases the physical strength of the children and young people but also because it tempers their minds and wills and raises the level of their culture.

Through sporting activities the children and students cultivate courage, audacity, fortitude and perseverance and increase their sporting skills and cultural attainments. (3)

Similar views were put into practice in socialist Yugoslavia, which underwent what Richard Mills calls a ‘stadium revolution’. The state invested in large stadium projects as well as small sports fields in some of the islands off the Dalmatian coast. This construction was part of the socialist project of building a ‘new man’ as it were. This project has been replicated in various contexts, as mentioned above. The GTO program in the USSR was meant to increase health outcomes, and prepare the population for production and the eventuality of war. In the USSR, Yugoslavia, China, and Korea, this idea of a new man dominated the theories of various ideologues of socialist revolution. Kim Il Sung, as stated in the above quote felt that teaching the new generations included making sure that they possessed technical skills, basic general knowledge, knowledge of arts and science, and this education should be done with the latest technological know-how so that this generation could grow up and plan for the future in a socialist society.

If we fast forward to the United States in 2023, we are faced with a sporting culture which is ‘popular’ only in the media sense. The Super Bowl has tens of millions of viewers every year, as does the World Series. Yet, sport in American society is intricately tied with the consumer society in the sense that one of the most anticipated elements of the Super Bowl every year are the commercials, specially made by corporations to air during the match. Organizations like the NFL, MLB, and NBA are known to be bastions of America’s corrupt capitalist system. Especially in the case of the NFL, sport is something which comes with potentially life threatening consequences. All of this is in the name of entertainment, capital accumulation, and the creation of a spectacle which distracts from the conditions of misery in this country.

While sport in the United States is corrupt and does not promote healthy living, we can look to examples from the past which can inform a future orientation towards sport. In this, I imagine a ‘stadium revolution’ like in Yugoslavia; a scenario in which local communities are given the resources and know-how to have sports complexes accompanied with a program like the USSR’s GTO. The problem is that such a program requires a cultural revolution, a new way of viewing health, healthy living, and sport. While competition can increase people’s moral-volitional principles, the competitive attitude in American sport reflects capitalist competition where it is always zero-sum. In the GTO, all citizens were encouraged to participate in daily calisthenics, minor weight lifting, and the achievement of the ultimate performance. This is opposed to the American body building mentality which is about brute strength with little practical application (maybe an analogy of the current geopolitical chess board?). Pedagogy would need to change, and while many American schools offer physical education throughout the day, it is seen as a joke or a blow-off class. This change would include connecting the mind and body in the education process. Showing students that by training their mind and body towards the goal of bettering society, they can play an integral role in shaping the future.

Competition can be viewed outside of a zero-sum lens, and neighborhoods can be fashioned with schools which have small class sizes, well paid staff, and sports facilities which can be community centers. Neighborhood teams can have a competition like in the GTO program where citizens are encouraged to meet their neighbors and fellow residents of their town while also living out the benefits of healthy living. Iron sharpening iron. In the words of Master Kano: “it is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday”.