The boycotter’s indictment of the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

‘The Counter-Olympics’ by Leif A. Dahl from Student Review (N.S.L.). Vol. 1 No. 5. Summer, 1932.

IN July and August of this year, a galaxy of internationally famous athletes will compete for individual and national honors in the Tenth Olympiad at Los Angeles. The current Olympics has a traditional halo and sanctity that are seldom questioned–that are, in fact, inculcated by our educational system alongside the National Anthem and other jingoistic forms. It has become respectable to extol the Olympic games, to follow and comment on them.

The twentieth century games carry little resemblance to their idealized Greek prototypes. They have been subsidized by capitalist interests and elevated to a snobbish and exclusive eminence. Class and color distinctions have been injected; its members have arrogated to themselves the exclusive use of athletic equipment everywhere; its organizational affiliates are used as appendages to national military machines and have become important bulwarks of archaic political institutions. The Olympics, and the institutional ideas they foist upon a gullible public, merit a greater investigation than they have hitherto received.

Race discrimination, characteristic of all large athletic associations, is perhaps the most unsavory aspect of the present Olympics. In the Olympic tryouts south of the Mason-Dixon line, Negroes are forced to compete in separate elimination meets. There is a tacit understanding between the Southern gentry and the Negro athlete that the whites are always to win. A Negro is summarily dealt with, should he, in his enthusiasm, forget this “natural right.” In the North, elimination meets for Olympic swimmers were held in two different pools. The Negroes competed in Harlem, the whites in New York’s wealthiest Athletic Club. It is significant that the Olympics delegation from South Africa is composed entirely of white athletes, that colonial countries such as India and Indo-China have no representatives whatever.

The general athletic temper in the United States, as exemplified in our foremost sportsmen, recognizes the fundamental tenet of color inequality. Dave Meyers, football and track star of New York University was kept out of the Georgia-N.Y.U. game by previous arrangement. A similar agreement existed between the Virgina and Columbia coaches in connection with the star back, Rivero, when those teams met.

Kid Chocolate, the boxer, has been unceremoniously shelved whenever lightweight possibilities have been considered.

The United States Lawn Tennis Association refuses membership to Negro players of whatever excellence.

Eddie Tolan, internationally famous runner, was barred from competition in South Africa, since Negro spectators “might get false ideas of race equality.”

This sordid roster could be increased to book size with a minimum of research. One of the institutions of modern capitalist society is white chauvinism. This is necessary if subject nationalities, at home and in the colonies, are to continue under the yoke of capitalist exploitation. Professionalized athletics, taking its orders directly from the “bosses,” must accept these conclusions as axiomatic, with the result that race discrimination is as apparent in American sports as in Southern lavatories.

Worker representation at the Tenth Olympiad is practically non-existent. The reasons for this are manifold. School gymnasia and stadia are closed to all but the collegiate semi-professional; public sports fields are reserved for the exclusive use of hired teams; excessive hours and overwork render the average athletically inclined worker incapable of physical play after working hours; capitalist athletic clubs exclude workers–and because of the above restrictions, athletics has come to be looked upon as an article for leisure class consumption.

Occasionally, workers are permitted to exercise, but only under capitalist supervision. Baseball teams representing coal mines, steel mills or grocery chains are illustrations of this. These clubs are few in number and their activities are restricted within well defined lines particularly as a means of fostering loyalty or advertising the companies. In the main, however, workers are denied the privilege of sharing in American sports–though they directly contribute to the gate receipts. The stars at the Tenth Olympiad are all the products of collegiate semi-professionalism or capitalist subsidization, stars whose activities are commercialized for the benefit of the promoters.

Sports systems the world over are used as integral parts of war training, as vital cogs in military machines. It is no accident that high Army and Navy officials were appointed members of the Olympic Committee. If the impressionable adolescent can be educated into a preference for the predatory temperament, he makes excellent cannon fodder during time of war. Boy Scout organizations, “boys-brigades” and similar quasi-military organizations are fostered by the clergy and business men. Members of these patriotic groups are paraded on national holidays with the American Legion. When these adolescents have become well trained in nationalism, ‘patriotism’, clericalism, etc., they are sent to higher institutions. There are hundreds of preparatory schools who excuse military training as “healthful child development.” In the summer these young men are sent away to C.M.T.C. camps “to be made a man of.” In the winter they attend R.O.T.C. training as part of their college requirements for a degree. Only in a few of the more advanced colleges does compulsory physical education take the place of military training. By the time these people are ready to assume the responsibilities of adult life they are well-trained infantry or half-trained officers with an upper class ideology.

The most damning indictment against the present Olympics Committee is its deliberate refusal to invite Soviet athletes to participate. The Soviet Union occupies one sixth of the land area of the globe, and numbers a population of 160,000,000 persons, but it is barred from an international sports meet founded in part on the premise that it will promote international good-will! The U.S. capitalists and generals who are in charge of the current Olympics are carrying out the same program in athletics as they are in politics and economics–“Boycott the Soviet Union!”

The Olympic practice of starring individuals is most vicious. These stars are the innocent victims of a sport machine that is found in every American college. They are taught that athletic prowess establishes them above the ordinary mortal and that the personality fostered by athletic competition is highly desirable and useful in after life. Athletes swallow whole these ideas that come to them through their coaches, spokesman for the wealthy and influential alumni who dictate athletic policies.

The concern of every university in things athletic is theoretically the physical development of its undergraduates. But specialization excludes ninety percent of the student body! Students of exceptional physical endowment are singled out in their freshman year, isolated in the social and mental vacua of training quarters and tables, and allowed the exclusive right of athletic equipment, paid for in large part by the rank and file of undergraduates. Semi-professionalism has never been honestly doubted since the publication of the 1930 Carnegie Report, the disclosures of the Columbia Spectator campaign of 1931 and, more important, since the Middle States Athletic Association recently admitted the prevalence of the practice by passing a law barring from intercollegiate competition, athletes subsidized through “athletic scholarships.” Excellence in any sport has become so desirable that scholastic ability is frequently disregarded by colleges.

In answer to the above objections, the Labor Sports Union has organized an International Workers Athletic Meet to be held in Chicago from July 29 to August 1. Workers from all over the world are invited. Delegations from the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany, France, and South American countries have pledged their support. The United States will have a large representation from workers’ clubs in every industry. There are no eligibility rules specifying race, color or social requirement. Any organization subscribing to the spirit of the Counter-Olympics may take part.

The Counter-Olympics is being organized along broad social lines which constitute a repudiation of nearly everything for which the regular Olympics stand. Worker athletes will protest the illegal imprisonment of Tom Mooney, their honorary chairman, and will demand his unconditional release. They will fight discrimination against Negro athletes and athletes from colonial countries; they will demand the free use of public school gymnasia, stadia and sports fields by all workers; and immediate appropriations from cities and states for athletic facilities in working class neighborhoods. They will protest the use of sports for capitalist militarism and war; demand recognition of the Soviet Union by the Olympics as well as by their national governments. They will protest against the system of starring individuals, and semi-professionalism in college sports, and demand universal intramural sport programs without military implications.

Sports organizations have responded admirably to this program. Street runs and elimination meets are on union calendars all over the country. It is another matter with the university undergraduate. Because the games have not been sufficiently publicized in their true aspect, and because many undergraduates do not yet recognize their affinity with the working class in the struggle for intellectual and economic freedom, they have not pledged delegates to the Counter-Olympics.

It has been mentioned above that the average student is denied participation in facilities he has paid for; that when he has completed his academic work he acquires a job that makes additional physical exercise necessary to a well regulated and healthy life. His college denies him the right to learn games that would provide the means of such exercises; the city and state, by failing to provide public recreational facilities denies him the privilege of such exercise. He, together with the vast army of workers, is a victim of the noxious system of “starred” sports. He, too, should protest against the current Olympics and all it implies.

The National Student League as spokesman for the revolutionary students of America takes its stand alongside the workers in supporting the Counter-Olympics. It recommends to all member organizations that discussions be held on the Olympics and on the reasons for fighting them; that the Counter-Olympics be publicized effectively as possible through Counter-Olympic tryouts, articles, handbills and general discussion; and that a committee be appointed in each club to supervise and raise money for the sending of student delegations to the Counter-Olympics. The students should show their solidarity with the working class on this issue. LEIF A. DAHL

(Editor’s note–Additional information and entry blanks may be obtained from the Labor Sports Union at 16 West 21 Street, New York City).

Emerging from the 1931 free speech struggle at City College of New York, the National Student League was founded in early 1932 during a rising student movement by Communist Party activists. The N.S.L. organized from High School on and would be the main C.P.-led student organization through the early 1930s. Publishing ‘Student Review’, the League grew to thousands of members and had a focus on anti-imperialism/anti-militarism, student welfare, workers’ organizing, and free speech. Eventually with the Popular Front the N.S.L. would merge with its main competitor, the Socialist Party’s Student League for Industrial Democracy in 1935 to form the American Student Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/student-review/v01n05-sum-1932-student-review.pdf