Marxism

Douglas Booth suggests quite correctly in the initial chapter of this volume that theory in general is a contentious subject for sports historians. It may in fact be the case that the theoretical insights of Karl Marx and the various Marxist interpretations of sports history are among the most contentious of all. As Booth says, the issue that raises the ‘hackles’ of sports historians perhaps more than any other is that of agency. In other words, based on Marx’s particular understanding of the capitalist mode of production, people’s free actions and volition – their agency – seem to disappear in favour of social structures, in particular Marx’s emphasis on the basic economic foundation of capitalist society, its attendant class structure, and the over-arching influence these have on individuals’ lives. This criticism of Marx’s theory of capitalist society may seem judicious given the countless examples of historical figures and groups who demonstrate their ability to ‘see through’ the ideological false consciousness of capitalist class structure. Not the least of which, the working-class based workers’ sports movement during the 1920s and 1930s, used sport to fight for workers’ rights and, in the process, organized into vibrant national and international movements, including the Workers’ Olympics, which at one point in time stood as a viable alternative to Coubertin’s Olympic movement. Apparently the camera obscura to which Marx famously referred in The German Ideology may not be so all pervasive after all.1