In 1932, the International Workers’ Athletic Meet was held in Chicago as a Communist counter-Olympics to those held in Los Angeles that summer.

‘Against the Bosses Olympics!’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 48. February 25, 1932.

THE Olympic Games, part of which are now being held at the fashionable winter resort of Lake Placid and the rest of which will be held in July and August of this year at Los Angeles, are strictly boss class games, organized for boss class purposes and solely for the amusement of a few parasitic “sport lovers”, so-called. The Olympic Games come at a time when imperialist guns are scattering death among the Chinese masses, when actual war is going on, when the imperialists are straining every effort to provoke the Soviet Union into war. It comes at a time when twelve million American workers are tramping the streets unemployed; when nine Negro boys are at the doors of death in the Kilby prison–death at the hands of a lynch-mad white master class; when thousands of Kentucky and Tennessee miners are in a bitter struggle against starvation and terror.

Coming at a time like this the role of the Olympics is clearly that of particularly distracting the attention of the sport-loving workers–and particularly the youth–from the questions of struggle against wage cuts and for unemployment insurance, and of preparing them for imperialist war, especially a war against the Soviet Union. The Olympic Games, with their military trappings and their bitter rivalries on the sport field, reflect, if even in miniature and somewhat distorted fashion, the rivalries of the imperialist powers. Last but not least, the Olympic Games are used to develop chauvinism among the masses under the guise of “national sport supremacy.”

The whole Olympic Games, their organizers and their preparation, faithfully reflect the policy of the capitalist class “at home” and abroad”. “At home”, in the South, Negro athletes are not permitted to take part in the preparations for the Olympics, side by side with white athletes. The law of Jim Crow is solemnly observed on the sports field by the Olympics Committee. Workers do not take part in the tryouts for the Olympics nor in the Olympic Games themselves. Only the sons and daughters of the wealthy can afford to train for them. It is rare that workers can find a place in the Olympics, and whenever they do it is only because of unusual physical ability.

The policy of American imperialism “abroad” is likewise clearly reflected in the policy of the Olympics Committee. The Soviet Union is “not recognized” by the Olympics Committee. The Soviet Union has been boycotted by the International Olympics Committee–headed by barons and counts–ever since the Russian Revolution. This “sport blockade” against the Soviet Union, openly accepted and followed through by the Lucerne Socialist Sports International, is meant to be a barrier between the worker athletes of the Soviet Union and the worker athletes of the United States. Particularly now, when the Five Year Plan has raised the physical level of Russian workers and farmers and when the imperialists are moving towards the armed attack of the U.S.S.R., does the Olympics Committee fear to have the Soviet athletes come before the masses of American workers.

In this connection it is not accidental that one of the leading figures of the American Olympics Committee is General Douglas McArthur, chief of staff of the American army, head of the War Policies Commission, a gentleman who but very recently concluded a tour of the countries on the western borders of the Soviet Union.

To add a finishing touch–if it need any such!–to the openly anti-labor character of the Olympic Games the scene of the major part of the meet is laid in California, in the state in which Tom Mooney, a militant working class organizer, has been in prison for over sixteen years on one of the foulest frame-ups in the history of the American labor movement.

The Communist Party whole-heartedly endorses the campaign against the Olympics initiated by the Labor Sports Union and winding up in the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS ATHLETIC MEET in Chicago in July of this year. It particularly greets the fact that the united front Counter-Olympics Committee. which the L.S.U. has taken the lead in organizing, has tied up the struggle against the Olympics with the outstanding struggles of the working class today. The election of Tom Mooney as honorary chairman of the Counter-Olympics Committee as opposed to Herbert Hoover, honorary chairman of the capitalist Olympics Committee symbolizes splendidly the working class character of the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ ATHLETIC MEET.

The C.P., U.S.A., pledges its earnest support to the worker sportsmen engaged in this campaign against the bosses Olympics. It calls upon all workers and workers’ organizations to support the campaign to the best of their abilities, to make a powerful working class demonstration of the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ ATHLETIC MEET, to develop the heretofore sadly neglected workers’ sports movement, and to bring out clearly the mass character of workers’ sports as shown by the INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ ATHLETIC MEET in contrast with the Olympics, this anti-labor, anti-Soviet jingo festival of a few hand-picked “stars”!

AGAINST THE BOSSES OLYMPICS!

SUPPORT THE UNITED FRONT COUNTER-OLYMPIC CONFERENCES!

HAIL THE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ ATHLETIC MEET!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

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