The Olympics: Where communism wins

[Teacher]

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-30/news/32942993_1_olympic-athletes-olympic-glory-london-games

North Korea is currently number one in medals/GDP

Looking historically it is incredible how good the communist countries were at the Olympics, particularly the GDR.

[AxiomFire]

I'm surprised that North Koreans can manage to compete at all, considering the amount of food provisions they get.

[rylasasin]

What Communist countries?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I thought this was about COMMUNIST countries doing well, I didn't realize you meant statist kleptocracies.

[Sasha]

You would do well too with a state sponserd doping programs (old east bloc), selection programs where parents are forced through (at least economic) )pressure to give up their 6 year olds (china) and in some very despotic countries threats against you and your family if you perform poorly (libya, iraq, NK).
I hardly see what is communist not even socialist about these tactics.
In fact, the only country with a "socialist" sports system, Cuba has been loosing hundreds of their best badeball players over the last years. Can you blame them if in Cuba you are forced to play to play your whole life for some shitty provincial team because you happened to be born in that area and that ni matter how brilliant you are you will never make more than a semi-skilled construction worker. No wonder they do a runner to the nearest US embassy the first chance they get if they can make millions in the major league. Not that I agree with their choices, but i understand them.
Proof again that socialism will need to be acomplished through a worldwide communist revolution...

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-30/news/32942993_1_olympic-athletes-olympic-glory-london-games

North Korea is currently number one in medals/GDP

Looking historically it is incredible how good the communist countries were at the Olympics, particularly the GDR.

Yeah... my uncle was forced to be a runner for the GDR and got force induced steroids. "Communist" countries happen to in fact be nationalist, anti-democratic countries that can get away with such crimes in the name of supremacy.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I always think of Rocky IV...state of the art running-vertically machines to make Lungren into a super human one-punch killing machine.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Seeing as how these athletes are most likely lived and trained nonstop for these events it is not surprising that N.K can perform so well.It honestly isn't as though they have much of a choice, I imagine that the scorn which awaits them back home if they perform lousy must be great.

[hatzel]

North Korea is currently number one in medals/GDP

You know what...I'd actually be really surprised if North Korea (pop. 25.000.000), with the same GDP as Iceland (pop. 320.000), couldn't manage to do pretty well on such a carefully chosen league table. I mean, the North Koreans would only have to find one single solitary medal-winner in that population of 25 million, and then the Americans (for example) would have to win a grand total of...1200 medals to overtake them on the medal/GDP ranking. Australia, with a similar population to North Korea's, would need to win about 100 medals. With that in mind, I'm happy to consider the US and Australia as more befitting of the label 'sporting powerhouse' than the North Koreans are at present...

What I'm trying to get at here is that it's interesting how people can always find statistics that they can look at in absolute isolation, and these are always the statistics that give them the answers they want (medals/population, for example, certainly wouldn't give us such friendly results). Stating that North Korea has the best medals/GDP ratio is meaningless (and pretty misleading, too) if one doesn't point out that North Korea has one of the lowest GDP/capitas in the world, and therefore already has quite the headstart on the vast majority of the other participating countries.

Something else interesting is actually the logic at play here. Even if we ignore any question of the stats as they stand, or anything that was done to achieve such a stat (as has been outlined by others)...when exactly did a country's performance on a medals/GDP league table at the Olympics have any real significance for us? Are we supposed to bow down at the glory of a state that manages to produce a few decent athletes (as if it's the state that is responsible for producing these individuals)? Are we supposed to think that the medal count has any relationship to the amount of support we should lend a certain state? In that case, I currently love China most, then the USA (who I love almost as much), and then there's a little gap in my love before we get to South Korea. Then France. All these countries I prefer to North Korea. Though the fact that I quite like gymnastics means that there has to be a slight weighting, which plays into Japan's favour. They get a little more love than they would have in a wholly neutral world...

[rednordman]

Well done to them. If NK is really as bad as the USA tells you, than these athletes are true inspiration to be successful under such conditions.

[DasFapital]

why are we talking about the DPRK? What about that celebration of capitalism and imperialism that was called "the Opening Ceremony"?

[Geiseric]

North Korea, the microism of Stalinism, is pretty much the reason we have Left Communists and Anarchists... Basically it's more or less a feif that has its entire wealth taken for the military bureaucracy that was put in place by Stalin 60 years ago, managed to survive, and now is degrading into Capitalism. That opening ceremony with the Indian and Irish kids singing God Save the Queen made me want to throw up though. Anyways, being threatened and propagandized for your whole life is a good motivation to do well.

[Khalid]

North Korea, the microism of Stalinism, is pretty much the reason we have Left Communists and Anarchists...

Yes, we all know you Broosterists only exist to slander poor third world countries, not to fight world capitalism and imperialism.

[maskerade]

Yes, we all know you Broosterists only exist to slander poor third world countries, not to fight world capitalism and imperialism.

I've heard of irony before...is this it?

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

why are we talking about the DPRK? What about that celebration of capitalism and imperialism that was called "the Opening Ceremony"?

Cynical british hearts just bursted with pride when Brannagh delivered that stirring speech before all the chimney erecting stuff...*sniff* this is the greatest country...god save Lizzy..:D

[Sasha]

communism!!!!


Chinese diver Wu Minxia took gold in the 3m synchronized springboard in London this week, becoming the first woman in history to win three consecutive Olympic golds.
But shortly after she finished competing, Minxia's father reinforced China's win-at-any-cost mentality when he dropped a couple of bombshells (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--family-kept-grandparents--deaths-secret-from-chinese-diver-until-she-won-gold-medal.html) on his daughter via the Shanghai Morning Post: Both her grandparents had died over a year ago, and her mother had battled breast cancer for eight years.

Wu called us after her grandmother died, I gritted my teeth and told her: "Everything's fine, there aren't any problems." Minxia's parents found such lies were "essential" to ensure their daughter could keep focused on her training. She'd left home at 16 to live at a government-sponsored diving facility.
We never talk about family matters with our daughter. We accepted a long time ago that she doesn't belong entirely to us. I don't even dare to think about things like enjoying family happiness.

http://cheezburger.com/6478057472

[Socialism in One Planet]

i am reading a new book by marc perlemen called "barbaric sport" that is really good. He makes a very good argument against sports (not the activity itself but mass spectator sports and the olympics specifically) and basically says they support a reactionary pro-capitalist agenda. every marxist should read it.

[Joe Hill]

Sports are of big importance to a socialist society. It is helpful to get the people under socialism involved in order to strengthen their health and utilize their skills for serving society. Sports are helpful in developing the New Man under socialism, who is characterized by intellectual, moral, and physical perfection. Unlike in a capitalist society where the people are shut out of sports, under socialism there is a mass sports movement supported by the state that provides access to everyone.

You would do well too with a state sponserd doping programs (old east bloc)
The socialist states have developed world-class sports programs because they are motivated a rational, scientific approach to improve the well-being of the working people. For this, a lot of funding and organization is put into sports policy. Rather than doping, which has particularly been practiced by the imperialist countries' sprinters, the socialists' athletic successes have been because of the state's active promotion and funding for sports, as well as their superior training methods. This explains in part why America and others have recruited a bunch of gymnastic coaches from the socialist bloc, such as Russia's Valeri Liukin and his gymnast daughter.

If you want to talk about doping, just look at the travesty that sprinting has become since the 1980s. Those exposed and punished for cheating have been the imperialist countries' sprinters: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, Michael Johnson, etc. This is what capitalism does to sports: it strips them of any integrity with all of the doping, bribery, advertisements, etc.

The doping calumny holds no water because a country like East Germany won a lot of medals in many events, most of which don't even require a lot of athleticism, but rather technique and skill. Christian Schenk was the decathlon winner in 1988, and the DDR also took gold in boxing, canoeing, shooting, etc....But they didn't get any medals against the imperialists' doped up male sprinters like Carl Lewis.


, selection programs where parents are forced through (at least economic) )pressure to give up their 6 year olds (china) and in some very despotic countries threats against you and your family if you perform poorly (libya, iraq, NK).
What evidence do you have of this other than dubiously sourced reports coming out of the bourgeois media? One example I know about is gymnast Comaneci, whose story does not at all suggest that she was forced into the sport.

Can you blame them if in Cuba you are forced to play to play your whole life for some shitty provincial team because you happened to be born in that area and that ni matter how brilliant you are you will never make more than a semi-skilled construction worker.
I read in a Time Magazine article from the 1950s that the top 10 footballers in the Russia were awarded with pay up to 1000 rubli per month, in addition to the wages of his nominal job. Their living conditions were comparable to those of top bureaucrats. I don't know how it's like in Cuba, but I very much doubt that their top athletes are living in the conditions of a construction worker.