Anarchist Sports

Without video replays to ensure the ball went over the line, and without refs.

They wouldn't "be run" at all. They would occur spontaneously.

Well I would hope leagues still occur. No hierarchy but the football pyramid one!

Two new model for organising a football team:
1: Captain are abolished, more time outs are available for teams to sit on-field, and make tactical decisions. After a full debate by all players, decisions are made with a 70% majority.

2: Teams elect a delegate-captain, who makes executive tactical decisions by for the team, but is immediately recallable at any time by a %50 majority vote to maintain accountability of decisions.

Discuss:

3. Fuck that and get yourself a clue that having some form of chain of command in a fucking football team isn't going to set us on course for a whole new wave of primitive accumilation.

I transcribed a chapter on anarchist football by the AAP Collective at my blog

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/06/anarchist-football.html

Basically, like that, except with more Buckfast.

Is that worth getting?

i'm sorry but the idea of anarchist sports sounds like the shittest thing ever

I actually went to an "anarchist soccer game" the other day. It was kinda like any of the other pick-up games I play except that the people weren't as good at it, were out of shape, and I had to listen to a lecture before the game started about how the game was "a safe space where racism, sexism and homophobia wouldn't be tolerated." In other words it was regular soccer but shittier.

Sports will be the same, except free to go to and without advertisements and product placement. I wish we had a referee at our local pick-up games.

So you'd prefer it with the racism, sexism and homophobia kept in? gotcha

yeah pretty much

tbh, football's not football without a BIT of xenophobia... and maybe homophobia...

cos if I can't call the Arsenal manager Arse Invader or a smug French cunt, it's just not the same.

see. here i was expecting you to make fun of me saying "soccer" instead of "football" or something like that...

No cultural changes would occur after a libertarian communist revolution. None whatsoever.

Thought I was in libcommunity for a sec.

The way you distort things weeler, anyone would think you're a journo hack.

sport would obviously cease to be a business, but other than that I don't see the need for "anarchizing" football or whatever. There is nothing inherently authoritarian about having a team captain and promoting a spirit of competitiveness on the field.

I heard somwhere, that the SWP wants to ban football after revolution because its "competition"

I like to think that we'd still have professional athletes, whose sole "job", as it were, would be to train and compete. (Except for the odd occasion when they'd be press-ganged for labour on the collective farms). In spite of all the sponsorship and media hype, I still like the idea of events like the Olympics where the best athletes from all over the world compete with each other.

Here: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=15653

Actually, the writer of the piece somewhat disingenuously mentions CLR James, who wrote one of the best books on sport ever, Beyond a Boundary. All this stuff about sport fostering capitalist ideas about competition and rivalry - well it's fair enough in one sense, but for me sport has always been more about fair play, working together, trying your best and having a laugh at the same time.

Yeah coz we definately have a vegan/no sports/child sex agenda.....

Our only problem in this regard is too many members into the pseudo-sports of Rugby and Cricket.

Back onto the main topic, I see no reason why we wouldn't have large-scale competitive sports. I'd think that things like film screenings, music festivals and large sporting events would continue to occur, albeit minus their current functioning as opportunities for capital.

The argument that they are non-participatory, which I've heard before, usually shows nothing more than the prejudices of those making it, as I've never heard anyone argue that novels and poetry will cease to be produced in a post-capitalist society. That SWP argument about competition is just embarrassing. In fact the only remotely interesting political arguments I've seen about sport are about national sporting events, which obviously do a pretty important job in packaging nationalism.

To be honest I'm not sure how the player transfer would function without a market, but then again I'm not that concerned about speculating about the minutiae of an anarchist communist society.

Stop hanging around queers ffs.

If theres no sportswear Deezer will have to walk around in his underwear.
So after the revolution there better still be FULL LONSDALE.

Made by the collectivised LONSDALE factory.

Difficult to leave that shite at work, is it?

There's a team in the Blue Square Premier called Ebbsfleet who are supposedly owned by the fans. Obviously they still operate as any other football club (they have a board of directors) but it might give some idea as to how a club can be run in a slightly more participatory way. I'm not sure exactly how far this goes, because the paragraph heading near the top of the page says the fans can pick the team, but in the BBC interview at the bottom of the page the manager says that doesn't happen, and doesn't seem particularly keen on the idea either.
Examples like Ebbsfleet are obviously not very useful for gauging what sport in an anarchist society would be like (just like capitalist workers' co-ops aren't useful in understanding hypothetical communist production) but it did at least get me thinking about what I want to get out of being a football fan. Personally I don't have a massive problem with leaving the big decisions to a manager, because at least then I have the right to winge about it afterwards.
In general though I'd be pretty disappointed come the revolution if there is no longer large-scale organised sports competitions. I don't see why that would be the case though, unless everyone starts thinking like that guy from the SWP.

I've got a mate who's a shareholder in Ebbsfleet (formerly Gravesend and Northfleet until they changed their name to cash in on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link station). They do select the team via email, though I think the wisdom of crowds kind of works to the effect that if someone's been playing well they get in even if a section of the crowd hate them.

I can't see that there'll be professional athletes after the revolution - it's just we'll all have a lot more time and so long as they do their 4 days a month cleaning sewers they can spend the rest of the time training.

Regards

Martin

Forgetting some of the nationalist connotations , i also did a blog on Gaelic Athletioc Association and their libertarian ethos

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2009/03/socialism-of-gaelic-athletic.html

Clubs cannot be bought and sold and there are no private club owners. On the administrative side, club members elect an executive committee to carry out the running of the club on an annual basis. At the higher echelons of the GAA, such members must vacate their post after four years.

The players in GAA aren't professionals either.

On a related note, the international rules series against Aus is a bit mental for that reason, what with them competing with well paid athletes that like to get rough often.

You have got to be joking .

This question popped into my head whilst watching my beloved Hereford United a couple of years ago... I think the conclusion I came to was a bit of a return to 'the old game'. I think fans would run their clubs, and obviously any form of capital surrounding football or such would not exist, but other than that we would still have the league hierarchy and such. Football would continue much as it does today

Anybody who says different, or who wants to get rid of 'competitive sport' should be shot for counter revolutionary activities, and for holding bourgeois views and being a middle class dreamer.

Ends.

Bambery did an article about it; it's on the net somewhere. His basis for it was how the Italian league system was a vehicle for fascism to battle localism and the rivalries.