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The fact that sport as an institution is so ubiquitous and postmodern does not necessarily mean it is positive in all respects. The first sustained neo-Marxist interpretation of modern

101 In a second interview with Rashied Begg (Sociology, University of Stellenbosch) on 21/02/11 he highlighted the sport-media-cultural complex and how sport has changed in the last few decades, because sport is part of media and culture, a matrix. Subsequently, the rules of the game often change to suit cultures (for example, refereeing via television in the game of cricket). Culture demands these changes, the cultural demographics is such that the “big game” creates the institution of the barbecue (braai) in some cultures and furthermore, matches are often shifted in time to coincide with times in other parts of the world. There is thus a homogenizing tendency that tells people what to watch and when to watch, a globalization of sorts (he cites FIFA as a case in point in that they just about took over South Africa when it hosted the 2010 World Cup) so that it is perhaps no longer “pure” sport. The institution of sport is consequently often more about capital and control via the media than the celebration of sporting achievement, according to Begg.

175 sport arose in the 1970s with the argument that sport is a microcosm of the American capitalist system, that it functioned as an ideological state apparatus. I will focus on Brohm (1989) and Bambery (1996) primarily in order to elaborate on this theme. In arguing that sport is “tainted”, one critically reflects on the idea that the institution of sport and, indeed, the culture that gives rise to the forms that it takes, are not necessarily an indication of the joyful spirit, the beauty of movement or courage and the like, but reflections of a society and its institutions that seek to dominate rather than affirm the “other”. In this respect, sport becomes an ideological tool.

Brohm’s work (1989) is a negative Marxist analysis of sport. He argues that the institution of sport is stifling, that it focuses on elite athletes and is the driving force behind mass and leisure culture in that sport is the predominant physical activity in general. That is, apart from the act of labour, sport is the dominant and fundamental way humans relate to their bodies in a state capitalist society. The sporting legend is above all else a story of the pain barrier, of

“going to the limits of endurance, of being drunk with animal fatigue and of getting a kick out of bruises, knocks and injuries” (Brohm 1989:23). Bambery argues similarly and claims that discipline and training in modern sports often equals a massive distortion of the human body which can lead, ironically, to the loss of youth, inhumane methods and even violence off the sports field (and he cites examples in this regard), because of the stresses associated with high level competition.

Furthermore, Brohm regards the sports institution as exemplifying “practical reason”, which he asserts are the values of traditional, repressive morality, the model of behaviour promoted by bourgeois society. It is the cult of duty for its own sake, the sense of sacrifice for the community, the ideology of the super-ego, of obedience, and discipline. In this respect, the institution of sport is the sublimation of the libido, a sublimation of aggressiveness. It is the experience of every aspect of the body via longed for torture through a controlled process of self-inflicted punishment which Brohm equates with a kind of institutional neurosis, an outlet for moral masochism. The institution of sport is thus an outlet for the instinctual drives deriving from a “schizophrenic relationship to the body” (Brohm 1989:27). Again, Bambery (1996) echoes these sentiments and argues that sport’s obsessive repetition of the body leads to alienation and conceals the real structure of productive and social relations under capitalism. He argues this based on a reading of Marx (1974:152) that: “At the same time the factory work exhausts the nervous system to the utmost, it does so with the many-sided play

176 of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity”

Brohm (1986) goes on to say that the institution of sport is an ideological apparatus of death and torture, held up to be politically neutral and culturally legitimate. Bambery (1996) likewise takes this position and argues that the desperate search for the “right” shape in reference to the body results in pain and misery, that perceptions of the body are thus socially constructed. The “ideological apparatus” puts this it effect through the control of time and quantity (what to eat, how fast one needs to run and so on), drawing once again from Marx (1974) who wrote: “…time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at most, time’s carcass” with reference to the ideological control under capitalism of both work and “leisure” time. These apparently extreme views are rhetoric of sorts by which Brohm and Brambery (following Marx) wishes to unearth the structure behind the mechanism of consumer culture as manifest in sport. The former does so by taking note that the vocabulary of sporting culture is such that the language of the “machine” dominates. Terms such as “human motor”, “animal machine”,

“she’s burning up the track”, “he’s working well – turning our results”, “producing the goods”, “seizes up” and “runs out of steam” (Brohm 1989:29) create a false edifice of teamwork or a collective mechanical operation. Brohm cites Adorno and Horkheimer¹⁰² who have observed that, “…the oarsman, who cannot speak to one another, are each of them yoked in the same rhythm as the modern worker in a factory”.

Bohm further maintains that even though Capitalist society is competitive as sport is, the repressive function of sport is such as to make athletes docile, rather than to build a non-alienated culture of the body. “The body” is a social institution understood in its functional relations to other institutions so that “each society imposes on the individual a rigorously determined utilization of his/her body” (Brohm 1989:63). Therefore, Brohm wants to argue that modern sports impose a “fetish of the body” as it becomes a product to be exploited by the ruling class. Brambery (1996:3) develops this further maintains that the sport belongs to the realm of “unfree activity”. The “rationality” of Capitalist production, based on commodity exchange, reduces all individuality to a minimum. It organises and controls people not only in their work, but in their leisure. In other words: leisure activity is a kind of extension of work in that in the wish to escape mechanised work processes in, for example

102 C.f. Adorno, Horkheimer, 1971, Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Allen Lane, 65.

177 sport, is in order to face it again. Yet ironically, this very escape constitutes a regression back to the service of the machine of industry.

Brohm then goes on to say that sport developed in modern times between 1880 and 1900 at the beginning of the age of imperialism. The first modern Olympics were in Athens in 1896.

In Paris, in 1900, the first major sports competition was the Tour de France and in London there was the advent of the FA Cup. All these major institutions are related to imperialist capital according to both Brohm and Brambery and were linked in conjunction with the universal exhibitions or trade fairs. He claims that sport is the “repressive cultural codification of movement” (Brohm 1989:65) and says this as the institution of sport at the super-structural level is such that sport ideologically reproduces the world of work, that it is a symbolic parallel. The internal structural parallel between work and sport is a “…fact that cannot be denied. That is why sport is a distorted reflection of the serious business of work”

(Brohm 1989:69). Hence, sport developed at the same time as the Capitalist industrial mode of producing in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, alongside the primitive accumulation of capital, the spread of imperialism and colonialism. Thus, a historical analysis which simply states that sport as an institution emerged during the industrial revolution is a first order fact, but via a Marxist account one sees in this a deeper structure, namely the relation between exploitation, sport and sporting institutions. This is a second-order analysis or a meta-theory, a kind of “finality” and one-sidedness that may be extreme.

Brohm believes that sports institutions, such as sports administration consisting of clubs, federations, regional organizations and Olympic committees are all linked to imperialist organizations such as Unesco. Therefore the institution of sport reproduces all the principles of bourgeoisie society in a concentrated form. One way in which this is achieved is through the reduction of space to geometry, that is, a sports arena. It is an abstraction of what is real, tangible and concrete in nature. The grass is artificial; the athletics racetrack looses connection to the earth (Brohm 1989). Consequently, the abstract space parallels a machine-like approach to human beings, a neurotic desire to order, a reductive as opposed to holistic way of thinking, that is, a mathematical rather than sensual and experiential acquisition, like seeing people and things in terms of quantity rather than qualitatively. Hence, like the mechanized assembly worker, the sportsperson has one specialized set of movements. The sportsperson may experience alienation as scientific “support” is such that his or her body

178 does not belong to himself or herself. The crowd itself is reduced to one mass; the so-called individualism of capitalism gives way to uniformity and conformity.

Furthermore, Brohm (1989:77) argues that sport trains people to respect the “fetishised state”, the national flag, the hierarchy of the factory, school and so on. Brambery (1996) develops this further when he argues that, for example official school gymnastics manuals of 1862 and 1868 prescribe exercises modelled on Prussian military drills of 1847. This is enacted through ritualistic ceremonies at sports events which are proto-fascist, militaristic rites with military-type music, medal ceremonies, rhythmic marches and Nuremberg style rallies. Alongside this is the cult of the “Superman”, of individual success and efficiency. This, contends Brohm, is an ideological strategy that creates a mythical idea of permanent competition reinforced, that sport is a preparation for the struggle for life, that one ought to be “fit” (Brohm 1989:118).

This is the productive “body” fantasy allowing the labour force to be further exploited.

According to Brohm, the Olympics is really a fight for the domination of the market; top level athletes are state servants with the job of promoting the regimes’ official propaganda.

Sport, in this sense, maintains the social order or status quo. Those who control the space, namely the institutions, aim to control those in the space (Brohm 1989:165). The message is tantamount to saying: rather throw the discus than a brick. Sports thus soften the inclination to challenge the system, another opiate of the people.

Sport creates order and law, which is maintained through the police and army. Brohm (1989:187) thinks that the notion that sport creates “wellbeing and peace between people”

may not be the case as it is but a holy alliance - politically, economically, ideologically - of the great powers against the small, the oppressor versus the oppressed people/classes.

Brambery (1996) concurs and lists a number of Olympic games marred by political unrest and violence. This may not be so in the vast majority of cases, but one may legitimately ask:

surely state money would have been better spent to combat hunger, illiteracy and underdevelopment rather than major sporting fiascos?

Thus, in accordance with Marxist philosophy, one might conclude that sport masks reality.

For example, it appears to be about equality, that is, that everyone starts off at the same point, under the same conditions. But the “reality is that there is a hierarchic structure of Capitalist production relations” (Brohm 1989:123), that economic competition presented metaphysically as eternal, physically represented in sport, is a ritualistic practice of the political through the ceremonial, institutional rules of behaviour.

179 Sport is sold as “natural” and therefore impervious to the political and to criticism, but, in partial agreement with both Brohm and Brambery, it is transitory and historical. In this sense the institution that is sport is subject to change and with recourse to its obvious affinities with capitalism, this shift in sports practice (and theory) may yet do so as political and economic changes occur.

I am not going to develop a detailed critique of this Marxist slant (and admittedly these two writers fit into a rather extreme view of Marxism which may be contrasted with “softer”

forms) of the institution of sport, but I will explore a few points. I do concur with Brohm and other neo-Marxists that sport is not the last bastion of innocence. However, I think he may err in thinking that the athlete’s engagement with sport is simply dronelike and uncritical. Recall Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the Mexico Olympics of 1968 who gestured with the black power salute on the winners’ podium. In this act they breached Olympic consensus; it was a tentative expression towards a criticism of the institution from the “inside”. Sport itself can be a catalyst towards peaceful democratic change and national unity, the case of South Africa being a good example. As far as performance and training goes, it could be an expression of love for the game, a playful love, individual expression, a pleasurable love that motivates the athlete, rather than the glum, alienating picture Brohm and other neo-Marxists paint.

Furthermore, that “sport can be positively possessed and valued by the working class and used by that class for its own purposes” (Coakley & Dunning 2002:315) is also important, for example, for social upliftment. Finally, in some respects I find a critique of this sort perhaps outdated in the digital and information age, that the critique is consequently too sweeping and broad, though elements of the theory may be sound. What is particularly important for this thesis is that the institution of sport manufactures an image of “the body” which has both an artistic, aesthetic, imaginative function and has a social, economic and political function, the extra-aesthetic. In this sense, there is no clear boundary between art, sport and the

“everyday”.

4.6. Two observations: How does this comparison enrich our understanding of both