EXTRACT: For communists the London 2012 Olympics Games are a truly lurid and ghastly spectacle, whatever Danny Boyle manages to conjure up in the opening ceremony on July 27 - though you can predict with relatively certainly that it will be far removed from the genuine splendour of 28 days later or Sunshine. Every Olympic game, ancient and modern, has been about pitting state against state - warfare by other means. The global elite are coming to town and the British government - to name one - is going flat out to make every business and political deal it can. Meanwhile, working class sports fans can barely afford a ticket or engage in any actual sporting activity themselves - local facilities are being closed down or are just too prohibitively expensive in a time of austerity, wage-cuts and job losses. Instead, just gawp passively at the athletes on the television.
The national one-upmanship and horse-trading that invariably attends the Olympic Games themselves is a fitting, though extremely unedifying, example of how sport under capitalism is turned into its virtual opposite. Rather than being a genuine means of self-expression and self-fulfilment, played for the simple joy of the sport itself, it is utterly driven by commerce and, of course, chauvinism - Team GB can compete with the best. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem.
The national one-upmanship and horse-trading that invariably attends the Olympic Games themselves is a fitting, though extremely unedifying, example of how sport under capitalism is turned into its virtual opposite. Rather than being a genuine means of self-expression and self-fulfilment, played for the simple joy of the sport itself, it is utterly driven by commerce and, of course, chauvinism - Team GB can compete with the best. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem.
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