As Japan sets daily records for Covid-19 cases, the Tokyo Olympics is exposing an anti-worker system in crisis. The International Olympic Committee’s cynical new motto—“Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together”—can’t hide the  vicious lies the capitalists use to keep workers loyal to “their” nation and “their” bosses. “National pride” is built to suppress class consciousness. In a period marked by a declining U.S.-led order and a rising China, imperialists need intensified nationalism to prepare the working class for world war.
Workers in Japan and everywhere need a society organized around the needs of the working class, not the exploitation of the many by the few. Join Progressive Labor Party to build one communist world!
Japan’s profit over workers’ needs
Once a poster child for an efficient capitalist democracy, Japan now reflects the decay of the U.S.-led liberal international order. In the wake of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, a trio of disasters all caused or made far worse by capitalism, the Tokyo Olympics were sold first as “The Recovery and Reconstruction Games” and then as a symbol of “peace.” The reality was something else: the eviction and displacement of 300  families (Washington Post, 7/29), a spike in Covid-19 cases, and steadily worsening conditions for local workers. Since 2013, when Japan was named the Olympic host, the city’s bosses have attacked homeless workers by locking and lighting up public spaces.
Tokyo is currently in its fourth state of emergency of the pandemic. While Japan boasts about its universal free healthcare, less than 13 percent of the country is fully vaccinated (CNBC News, 7/5). The unvaccinated include thousands of workers at an Olympics that cost $25 billion (AP News, 12/22/2020). A ruling class that spends billions on games and robs workers of their health does not deserve to exist.
The working class in Japan is not having it, with 83 percent against the Games (New York Times, 7/23). In fact, six of ten workers in the country rate the Japanese rulers’ response to the pandemic as poor, the most negative assessment of any nation  (Pew Research Survey, 7/20).
Working-class rage is clear in Tokyo. Chants of “Go to Hell, Olympics!'' could be heard from inside the nearly empty opening ceremony (NY Post, 7/23). The week before, hundreds marched by the Olympics Village Plaza to the headquarters of the Tokyo Olympics Committee to denounce Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for gutting social services.  A banner read, “Olympics Kill the Poor.” These protests contain the seeds of communist ideas to organize society around working-class health and needs. To make these ideas a reality, our class needs an international communist revolution.
Rich people’s games exploit workers
Capitalism has perverted the positive striving for physical health and fitness into a two-tiered system of winners and losers. It’s no coincidence that the top five winners of gold medals are among the wealthiest nations: China, the U.S., Japan, Australia, and Russia.
Before every imperialist world war, the capitalists set the course by revving up nationalism, racism, and sexism—all anti-worker ideologies promoted by the Olympic Games. Japan’s entrenched racism, from school policies to public harassment, cannot be hidden by their few Black Olympians (Washington Post, 7/31). China’s a win-at-all-costs policy takes thousands of children away from their families for gruelling training in government-run “sports schools” (Daily Mail, 5/19/16). The Chinese bosses’ world-leading pile of gold medals reflects their rise as an imperialist power now challenging the U.S.
Conditions for U.S. Olympians are no better. Children are funneled into intensive, specialized programs at a young age,  leading to social isolation and psychological damage. Sexism is rampant, with women gymnasts starved into eating disorders and serial rapists enabled as coaches and—in at least one case—the team doctor.
The remarkable athletes on screen—pushed to perform amid a pandemic that has killed more than 4 million people worldwide and the surging Delta variant—are a sad reflection of the hollow promises of a capitalist system in crisis. Under the profit system,  superstars are chewed up and spit out once they can no longer build TV ratings. Even the winners are losers.
As inter-imperialist competition intensifies, these Games are a prelude to a more lethal rivalry: the next global war.  A U.S. Senate committee just approved a bill to require women to sign up for a draft (Military.com, 7/22).
Capitalist disregard for workers’ health
The capitalists’ dictatorship funds sports for a handful of athletes while ignoring the basic needs of billions of workers. For every Simone Biles, the U.S. superstar gymnast forced to choose between her own mental health and the pressure and rich rewards of winning gold, countless children are deprived of nutrition, physical activity, and basic healthcare.
Even before the pandemic, the bosses’ system denied access to essential health services to half the world's population (World Health Organization, 2017). The stark inequalities in health and fitness have nothing to do with individual failures. They’re caused by an abysmal healthcare system; a lack of facilities, infrastructure, transportation, and childcare; low wages, superexploitation, pathetic union benefits, budget cuts, and more. In a word, they’re caused by capitalism.
Athletics for all
Instead of competitive sports for a few, the dictatorship of the working class will have athletics for all. Progressive Labor Party organizes across five continents for communism, drawing inspiration from the first communist revolutions. In the Soviet Union, workers fought the “win at all costs” mentality by building fizkultura (physical culture). Every factory in every industry gave its workers access to physical education and activity. This was an integral part of Soviet life, an intentional way of rallying masses of workers to engage in social and political activity.
In the 1960s, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, leftist workers and students fought for mass participation in sports under the slogan, “Friendship first, competition second.” They emphasized the fundamental unity of our class over the temporary rivalry of competition.
But because these workers’ states failed to abolish all capitalist relations, anti-worker ideas crept back into every aspect of society, including sports. When the Soviet Union and China began making international competitions primary over mass athletic participation, their standards of health began to decline. The reversal of the old movement is illustrated by China’s and Russia's emphasis on Olympic medals and rivalries over workers’ wellbeing. When the working class settled for less, we lost in every way.
Physical culture for communism
Communists fight for a world where all workers can reach their full potential in body and mind. Where the capitalists hope that every worker waving a national flag is a potential soldier for imperialism, we have one world and one class: the international working class.
While the road to communism is a marathon, PL'ers and friends must respond with urgency by organizing for multiracial unity and internationalism. That's the spirit of communism, where “winning” for the working class means seizing state power and building a communist world. Fight for communism! Join PLP!